Gentle on Dogs and Quarry

If you work your dogs regularly, you learn to value both the dogs and the quarry.

A smart digger learns to slip a spade between the dog and the quarry if it is at a stop end -- especially if it is a raccoon or a fox that cannot dig away. Why let the dog get injured when it has done its job, which is to locate, bolt, or bottle the animal in a stop end? The dog is valuable, and so too is the quarry.

Any fool can terminate quarry. There is no skill in killing. If it must be done (it is often a requirement for farm permissions when it comes to groundhogs), it should be done quickly with a gun or blow to the head.

Better yet is to let the animal go, especially if it is a fox or raccoon. If you hunt every weekend, it is too easy to bleed a farm white by killing off all the fox and raccoon in a matter of weeks.

If you must have a fox or raccoon on the mantle, buy a finished taxidermy piece -- it will be no more expensive, and you are guaranteed a good mount of a large specimen in prime coat.

Best of all, let your trophy be a picture. A shot down the hole is proof and memory enough of a dog that has done its job.

For those that prefer a picture of the complete animal in the full light of day, make a light-weight pole snare and learn how to use it. The design at the link is my own invention, and it works like new money.

In the picture at top, the snare is set, with the digging bar placed vertically in the pipe to slow the fox down a bit and steer it into the snare.

A fox or raccoon can be snared around the neck, but a groundhog has no neck, and so at least one leg has to pass all the way through the loop before it is pulled tight. And, for the record, the little fellow at right was released unharmed.

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This post is recycled from this blog circa Jan, 2005. And yes, I am still using the same snare and the same bar!