Animal Rights Groop Takes Aim at Gopher Shooters

[Whitebeard]

Animal rights activists are blazing mad at Canadians in the rodent-infested Prairies who will try to kill thousands of ground squirrels this summer in a shootout offering rifles as prizes.

A hunters organization in the province of Saskatchewan hopes to attract up to 1,000 people to enter the derby, which last year saw 63 entrants kill more than 60,000 Richardson's ground squirrels, or gophers.

Animal rights groups have blasted the contest as barbaric. But organizer Len Jabush fired back on Thursday and said it provides a helpful service to farmers with crops and pastures overrun by the rodents.

"It's not cruel," said Jabush, manager of the Saskatoon Wildlife Federation. [color:"red"] see picture below [/color] "Gopher shooting has been going on ever since man got involved in the Prairies."

Farmers consider the gophers as pests because they eat and trample young crops.

The rodents -- slightly larger than a gerbil -- dig holes in fields, burying plants in large mounds of dirt, said John Bourne, vertebrate pest specialist for the Alberta government.

The mounds damage farm equipment, and cattle often injure themselves by stepping in the holes, Bourne said.

The rodents emerge from hibernation in mid-March and spend a busy 100 to 120 days gathering food. "Farmers see the crop -- virtually day by day --disappearing," Bourne said.

In Alberta, the rodent causes damages worth an estimated C$20 million ($14 million) to C$30 million damage each year. "It's no chopped-liver problem in the West, here," Bourne said.

Gophers have proliferated since 1993, when the Canadian government restricted the use of strychnine, a poison long banned in the United States because it kills a wide range of birds and mammals, Bourne said.

The rodents are now encroaching on suburban areas, he said, causing problems at airports when birds of prey lured by the rampant rodents collide with planes.

Lush crops would obscure the infestation, Bourne said, but two years of severe drought and sparse crops have exacerbated the impact.

Bourne is researching ways to prevent the rodent damage other than wide-spread poisoning, or by the more expensive and labor-intensive methods of shooting and trapping.

"I think that shooting gophers makes some people feel good, that they're seeking vengeance on this rodent that's causing all this problem," Bourne said.

"The fact is that rodents don't want to go out and make farmers mad, they just want to exist. It's the biological principle of life."

[Kansas]

So last year 63 people killed over 60,000 of these critters. Around 1,000 per person. I will have to watch for a Viper caravn heading north from Texas...

[MHQC]

Little bastards. They can destroy your garden in one day. I usually shoot around 400 a year. Farmers ask you to come over and exterminate them. I do this for free. Great target practice.

[Confrontational]

"The fact is that rodents don't want to go out and make farmers mad, they just want to exist. It's the biological principle of life."

ITS A FUCKEN RODENT - kill 'em...

If they knew that for every one they kill - 60 are conceived - then there wouldn't be an issue - eh?

[cough] - save the nice cuddly furry animals - but where are these fucktards in regards to abortion................ Exactly - KILL THE LITTLE VERMIN... and then turn the guns on the activists...

:bonk:

[Motor City MadMan]

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[BigCarrot]

Almost 1,000 each! Damn that's a lot of gophers! Do they have a cookout afterwards?

[Genetic Cesspool]

"The fact is that rodents don't want to go out and make farmers mad, they just want to exist. It's the biological principle of life."

How does he know? Did he ask the gophers if that was the case, or is he just speculating?

Perhaps the gophers are real bad-asses with piss poor attitudes and their sole purpose in life is to make farmers mad? Maybe they are thrill seekers who love to go and trample crops in the hopes of getting shot at, with the coolest gophers being the ones that don't get shot?

[SRT Mike]

I wonder if these animal rights groups also give shelter and care to other animals....for example mosquitoes, horseflies, mice, sewer rats, etc? Or does the animal need to be cute and fluffy before they don't want it killed? If they would just release some documentation on exactly how cute and fluffy an animal must be before it should be protected, it would be much easier to see where they are coming from.

[Tie]

Maybe they will send out human shields!

[Excess]

nothing like seeing them explode when a .223 hits them !!!!

[Motor City MadMan]

Originally Posted by SRT Mike

I wonder if these animal rights groups also give shelter and care to other animals....for example mosquitoes, horseflies, mice, sewer rats, etc? Or does the animal need to be cute and fluffy before they don't want it killed? If they would just release some documentation on exactly how cute and fluffy an animal must be before it should be protected, it would be much easier to see where they are coming from.

Soooooooooo true Mike. These groups are only interested in protecting the cute, fuzzy animals aren't they. They could give a shit less about the ugly animals and fish. Fucktards. Ugly animals need lovin' too.

They'll act as human shields when some hunters are out legally hunting a bear, but where are they when some hunter is about to mow down a wild boar with his trusty .44? These fuckers need to get a life. I am a hunter and it really irks me when people have no problem going to the grocery store and buying meat in a pretty little package when someone else raised the animals in God knows what conditions and God knows how humanely they were slaughtered, but if you let Bambi live free in the wild for a few years and drop him in his tracks with a .30-06 rifle they get all bent out of shape. Either way you get the same results-a dead animal that is food on the table. Just because they are too much of pussies to kill the food themselves doesn't mean hunting isn't right.

[Makara]

"If we kill all of the golfers, they'll lock us up and throw away the key."

[Motor City MadMan]

Originally Posted by makara

"If we kill all of the golfers, they'll lock us up and throw away the key."

"The gophers, I said kill all the gophers you ninny." "OK, let's do the same thing but with gophers." "You fuzzy foreigner, it's not my fault no one can understand you."

Or something like that.