Sunday, March 06, 2005

Wisconsin: An open hunting season on domestic cats?

This hasn't exactly been a hard hitting weekend at Jiblog. That isn't going to change with this post.

It seems a hunter in Lacrosse wants the state to have an open hunting season on domestic cats:
The 48-year-old firefighter from La Crosse has proposed that hunters in Wisconsin make free-roaming domestic cats an "unprotected species" that could be shot at will by anyone with a small-game license.

Now I'm no cat fan, despite being a cat owner. I'm also a supporter of hunters. But this is just a bad idea. I know that it isn't uncommon for hunters to take a shot at a feral cat when small game hunting, but opening small game hunting up to domestic cats is going to create an all new set of problems as people sue hunters over the destruction of their animals, or the first time some little girl watches a hunter obliterate her beloved pet and her dad gets in an altercation with the armed hunter.

Update
I so beat The Corner on this story

2 comments:

Paul said...

Your right - this may not be the right solution, but feral cats are a problem, and they should be taken care of somehow. They prey on game and song birds, as well as other small species (I'd guess frogs, field mice, voles and such), and really do not belong in the woods.

Have you ever seen a healthy looking feral cat? I haven't.

Lance Burri said...

You mean that's not legal now?