Thread: Feral Cats

In the news...
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post...id=app-android

^ In the manawatu and wanganuni people are shooting cats and not doing the job properly..
Using slug guns/air rifles and the cats are making their way home for the owners to deal with them.
Not condoning shooting cats with air rifles but make sure you have a 100% kill shot and dispatch them properly so the owner doesnt contact the press and say
'gun owners are bad , they shot my cat' !

Mind you , people moving into the country and subdivisions dont realise what damage the cats are doing to the wild life , and dont understand why cats are hammered by farmers.

Just my 2 cents.

@Jusepy, very good point and something I fully agree with. Unfortunately kids shooting cats with air rifles has been around for as long as, well, air rifles.

Head shots only with a .22LR subsonic would also be a very sensible approach, especially if you are using solids. Be very mindful that this can also go badly wrong.

You may recall the story / thread about the Taumarunui cat was shot on the golf course by the groundsman. That whole thing turned extremely toxic on Facebook, though ultimately no police action was taken against the groundsman.

However there has been a number of subsequent posts on that group page with x-rays of pet cats full of pellets and one with shrapnel from an unknown projectile. Needless to say this has fuelled the ire of the ignorant cat owners.

Despite having shot my last couple of feral cats with the .22LR, I fat prefer the instant splattery of the .223 with a frangible 50 grain varmint bullet at 3400 FPS.

I can assure you they do not get up from that.

17hmr is good for cats, ive got a few with mine

Lol exploding cats.

Man there’s some big ones out there!
Awesome skins on some as well, if you can get past the smell.
For those that are interested they smell very similar to lion. Been up close to a couple of wild tranquillised lions and they fear pong.

As for skins when in the far north on a pig hunt we arrived late at night so sat in the working mans quarters and got stuck into a few beers.
It turned into quite the party and at one stage my mate who was working there stood up and walked towards the living room door which was shut.
He put his fingers to his lips and shush us bends down and we’re all looking. There’s this cats tail poking out under the door he grabs it facing away from us and pulls we can here the cat kicking of meowing and pop out comes this cats skin
Being all half cut it took a second for the penny to drop

Was doing some work on great barrier back in the early 2000’s and was a great story circulating round at the time. God I hope it was true… old mate has been on a cat trapping contract for a few weeks Being a bit feral at the best of times that long out of human contact lowered his inhibitions a touch further and he decided a bit a tayloring would be a good way to while the evenings away. Fast forward another few weeks and the end of his contract he dons the efforts of his sewing and decides to head straight to the pub to show off the fruits of his labours. He steps out of the bush into the middle of what passed for town right into the middle of a camera wielding bus load of tourists. His full multicolour feral cat tuxedo complete with a different type of ‘tails’ and cat head epaulettes along with the reek of somewhat dried but still fresh cat was apparently quite the topic of conversation for the Japanese tourists for the remainder of the tour and one imagines lead to all sorts of legends about the ‘bush men of barrier’.

I saw a parent and some young 1/2 grown kittens up Kiko rd yesterday arvo, this morning I took up a couple of Doc 250 traps. Will see what eventuates. Lots of young pheasants at the moment