Youth and wildlife, good decisions

[winged1]

A bit of a story, concerning the daughter;

My wife has a pieve with the local bunnies, that they disrupt her hard work by eating her plantings. She's often asked me to deal with them to which I usually just laugh. So while I was away on a couple days fishing, she asked the oldest daughter to do the deed. With much prompting they hauled out my old recurve and broadheads and the daughter, with much reluctance spent the afternoon practicing her rusty bow skills. Sure enough that evening, as per the wife's master scheme, the largest bunny shows up. 'Shoot it' she coaxes the daughter. I can just imagine the anxiety as the daughter finally tells her mother, 'If i shoot it, it's going to run around the neighbourhood crying with an arrow stuck in it'. After a moment of contemplation, they put back all the archery equipment. I laugh to myself, but let them soak in the vision, for thier own good.

[sco22]

I live on an acreage East of Edmonton and the hares out my way are going crazy in numbers. Years ago when there were no houses built around us I would use a low velocity 22 shell for hares and gophers. Now the subdivision is full and the lots are only 2 acres - so I use a pellet gun. I was quite surprised, twice, when I first used it last year. The first surprise was that I shot the pellet gun from my deck into the garden (we have trees and open field behind us) and hit the hare killing it in about 20 seconds. The garden is about 150 feet from my deck. The second surprise was that it ran suqare into the middle of my neighbors yard and croaked. Luckily he is a hunter too and was okay with it.

This year the numbers are out of control. I must see one every night.

Cheers.