You see there was this rooster. He was one of the yard birds I wrote about in another post.
At the start there were three yard birds. Then a hawk got the smallest cockerel before it was full grown.
The other cockerel and a hen have been wandering about the farm since then without any interference from me.
Eventually they started to get into some bags of feed I had stored in the barn, tearing open the bags and making a mess.
I decided to off the rooster, now a full grown Rhode Island Red about 18 inches tall. My hope was that the hen would then find her way back to the main flock to get some company.
I decided to off him a few weeks back but never seemed to get around to it.
Yesterday I was going out to take care of the peeps and saw that the yard birds were close by. I have feed stored near there too; I didn’t want them to get into it so I decided it was time to do the chore.
I shooed them out of the shed and waited for the rooster to wander some distance from the hen.
I used the small revolver I carry with me all the time and shot him from about five yards away.
He jumped up as if frightened by the noise and ran off to a place several hundred yards away. He left a few feathers behind but otherwise showed no other signs of injury.
I though I must have missed him although I couldn’t quite see how I could have at that distance.
Like most shooters I don’t practice as much as I should. It worried me.
It was not possible for me to do anything more about him in the time I had. I needed to get back to work.
Later that evening I went out to do the other chores and noticed he was still in the place I had seen him last, now dead as Cesar.
Chickens are famous for running around for a time after having their heads chopped off, so I guess it’s not as hard to kill them as it is to convinced them that they have undergone a change of state.
My bride bought me that pistol for my birthday last year. I’ve shot some paper targets with it as well as a few grapefruits. None of those things got up and ran away after I shot them.
The gun is primarily intended as a self defense piece. It is a Smith & Wesson 38 special snub nose revolver and was loaded with ammo intended for self defense use.
If I’m ever forced to use it on some 300 pound bad guy named Bubba I hope it makes a more immediate impression on him than it did on that rooster!
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Jim, that reminds me of a funny story. About 12 years ago, in summer, my dog, who was young and foolish at the time, got hold of one of my neighbor's roosters, who had wandered into our yard.
I was inside doing something, and just happened to look out the window and see my dog with the bird on the ground, and feathers flying. I ran out and yelled at her to "leave it" and she went bolting off, looking guilty.
The bird didn't move, so I went to put the dog away, and tell my neighbor that my dog had killed her rooster. She walked back with me, to get the bird. We got within about 2 feet of the bird, when it jumped up, and took off for the barn.
When we finally got hold of the bird to inspect the damage, we just had to laugh. Yep, my dog had held that bird down, plucked about half the feathers off of it, but there wasn't a tooth mark or scratch on the bird's skin.
That rooster ran around half-naked till his feathers grew back, and my neighbor teased me relentlessly about my dog that couldn't even kill a trespassing chicken right, lol. That rooster was cured of coming in our yard, though!
Cheryl
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