Home › Forums › Campfire Forum › Feral cats
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Have a go at these putty tats from the territory…
You can read about them here:
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/huge-feral-cats-of-northern-territory.htm
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I would be interested to know the “unnatural history” of these feral giants, which the brief article doesn’t get into–what cat species they descended from (obviously brought originally by Europeans) and how is it that they have evolved in a short time to be so much bigger than their domestic antecedents. Clearly, grocery shopping for them has been good.
In the case of feral predators, my ethical rule of “If I don’t want to eat it, I won’t kill it,” goes out the window. Feral cats are monsters to be destroyed by any possible means and everywhere they occur. Wild cats are relatively easy to trap (I have heard)so you’d think that would work well with these mutants also. Trap and kill.
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Dave, I’m the same with feral predators, feral dog packs are massive (in number of dogs and environmental impact) not far west of where I am now. That will be my next hunting project as I’ve never hunted predators (besides a few days trying to outfox a fox).
As far as genealogy of the cats is concerned, I don’t know if it’s any particular heritage. There is a general rule with introduced pests in Australia that they tend to get longer legged as they spend more time here. They generally live in wide open land and as they migrate across predator free plains, taller, faster animals get there first, breed with other taller, faster animals that got there with them and so it goes (cane toads are a well documented example of this). Add to that in the cat’s case an ecological gap of medium-large predators begging to be filled like a vacuum, the bigger cats that can kill bigger prey get sucked into that niche. Evolution in action.
Euros have been here for over 200 years now, female cats are fertile at 7 months. That’s a quite a few generations I suppose.
As far as trapping as a solution goes, it falls victim to the same problem as most other things here. There is just too much space. There are cattle stations the size of European countries and American States (and not the midget ones in either case) and only a handful of people to fund/action the trapping. Maybe when the cats are big enough to kill cattle money will be invested.
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Don’t disagree with the kill feral cat or dog mantra. As long as you remember they are living beings just doing their thing and only feral because some stupid human put them in that environment.
Having said that–when the cat sign gets high around here (farmer barn cats) I pack the trusty smith and wesson .22 pistol on my stump busting walks–quick clean kill.
Jim when it comes to dogs–be careful. They can take some amazing punishment. War story–we got busted down in central America on a drug lord bust by the village dogs that we failed to account for in planning the snatch–one took 4 silenced .45 rounds in the head and still kept barking. Our solution the next time–take a female (dog) in heat from local pound and release her at edge of village 😀 works!
Now if we can just get a season on those who put the feral animals out there–wouldn’t that be fun.
Semper Fi
Mike
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I’ve hunted them with bow and gun. Box trapped them with rabbit type box traps. It all works well. While bow hunting is fun if you want to seriously get rid of the problem just bring out the old 20 ga side by side with some 1 oz #4’s. Quite effective and very quick on those running shots.
Found out the hard way that blunts won’t work on a feral cat even at 12 yds. The blunt knocked the breath out of it and removed a huge chunk of hair from its side but failed to kill it. Few days later and a change of hiding location I spotted the same cat coming in to hang out around the house with a chunk of hair missing from its shoulder. Made a good spot to aim for…..
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Good point, Mike. Just because we deem an animal to be bad, and in this case feral cats are the baddest animals out there, imho, there should be no hatred or cruelty involved in killing them. Feral cats, including well-fed housecats allowed to run free, kill millions of songbirds in the U.S. daily and the same around the world, and who knows how much small game. They should not exist. But it’s not their fault they were born cats. So the killing should be done with regret rather than glee, and as always fast and clean as possible. Reminds me of a turning-point altercation I had with my father when I was 17. He had long been in the habit of saying, when he was angry at me, for which he had great and regular good reason, “As long as you’re living under my roof, boy, you’ll do as I say!” My response this time was: “I didn’t ask to be born in your house and I’ll be out of here the minute I turn 18.” It was the only time I can recall him being speechless. In that case, I was the feral cat.
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Fellas, I agree whole heartedly. Aussie hunters often talk about feral animals like they’re the devil. The hunters of course see themselves as avenging angels out to do the lords bidding. In my little experience there is no cruelty or evil committed quite like that done by a man who thinks he is purging the world of evil. Poor little pig is just another animal trying to live his life. You can guarantee I do more ecological harm living here than any pig, dog or cat has ever done. In my opinion they’re as deserving of respect as any other animal that walks the land.
Mike, that’s a funny story about the dogs 😀 I’m not exactly sure how a dog hunt will go. I’ve seen some footage of guys hunting them with rifles and boy, when they howl them in they get some big packs coming their way. At least with a rifle the shot scares the rest away. Not sure how they’ll react to an idiot lobbing little sticks at them. That being said I’ve only ever heard of guys being treed by the dogs, not actually taken. Maybe I’ll be the first, but as my Dad is fond of saying of such things, at least I’d make the papers 😉
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Duncan, thanks for the hot tip on the blunts, I would have definitely tried using them on a cat.
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David Petersen wrote: Good point, Mike. Just because we deem an animal to be bad, and in this case feral cats are the baddest animals out there, imho, there should be no hatred or cruelty involved in killing them. Feral cats, including well-fed housecats allowed to run free, kill millions of songbirds in the U.S. daily and the same around the world, and who knows how much small game. They should not exist. But it’s not their fault they were born cats. So the killing should be done with regret rather than glee, and as always fast and clean as possible. Reminds me of a turning-point altercation I had with my father when I was 17. He had long been in the habit of saying, when he was angry at me, for which he had great and regular good reason, “As long as you’re living under my roof, boy, you’ll do as I say!” My response this time was: “I didn’t ask to be born in your house and I’ll be out of here the minute I turn 18.” It was the only time I can recall him being speechless. In that case, I was the feral cat.
Dave:
First acreage I lived in had a good sized feral cat population. Did my best to “curb” it, but was failing miserably. Until a family of foxes moved onto my property. Cat problem went away PDQ! That was 4 years ago, still a family of foxes there and still no cat problem!
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Ahh, the natural cure. Ironically, if they’re red foxes they are non-natives! But non-native wildlife is better than feral domestics, in more than one way.
Around here, over the years, what has kept the feral tabbys down is a combo of great horned owls (which make really short work of light-colored nocturnal cats; I got to watch it once, years ago), coyotes, bobcats, and best of all the local cat lady moved on to her reward in the big litter box in the sky. 😈
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Even feral cats like catnip. Not that I’d tempt them or anything. There be a bunch less “strays” around than there were around my part of town.
Feral is a loose term as far as I’m concerned. If a cat is roaming the neighborhood killing birds and leaving them lay or taking them home (whoops) and adding to their collection of dead critters they’re feral as far as I’m concerned. We have laws dealing with animals roaming the streets and neighborhoods and cats are on the list of being contained within a fenced enclosure or upon a lease. We also have laws about firearms and whatnot being fired within the city limits but the pound will loan traps :D. Darn the luck.
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Walked out of the barracks one morning on Adak Ak. heard this horrendous cry, turned and looked up—at the top of the telephone pole was a mature bald eagle with Sylvester clutched in his talons. Folks learned real fast not to let kitty out.
Of course the down side to so many eagles was that while duck hunting on the island you needed a salt water rod and reel with treble hook–once the duck was in the water you had to snag it and reel it in before Mr. eagle got it. And you had to make sure if he hit it first you didn’t snag him because then you were looking at $10,000 fine and a few years in jail. Thankfully my lab Buck was big and fast and usually beat them to the prey.
I guess the only way we will get this back to trad. bow-hunting is to ask ausjim to post pictures and stories of his feral dog hunt—hopefully we won’t read about it in the Sydney times.:lol:
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ausjim wrote: Duncan, thanks for the hot tip on the blunts, I would have definitely tried using them on a cat.
A bit of sarcasm? Our feral cats rarely reach the size of normal house cats if they are truly wild and living on the land so it seemed reasonable that a large blunt would work. Their toughness is impressive though, given their small size. The cats shown in your pics would dwarf the cats I was hunting. They must get plenty to eat down under.
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Duncan wrote: [quote=ausjim]Duncan, thanks for the hot tip on the blunts, I would have definitely tried using them on a cat.
A bit of sarcasm?
Dunc, my apologies if it came off as sarcastic. It was a genuine thank you 🙂 Despite the big cats in the pics, all the cats I have personally seen have just been normal size and I definitely would have had a go with a blunt.
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