🙁....the dog ate your meds?

I want to be the devil's advocate here. Merganzers are fish eaters as well as commorants. Around where I live along the Susquehanna river it is teaming with both and the fish population is showing signs that their presents is reducing them. So why not shoot them to keep their numbers in check. Coyotes are shot and not used same as crows, rats and a gew other animals.

That old PETA broad is gonna get you now....she is perfect morally and optically, you know.
Just because she can't gum a merg...

Skippy, I would be I have more waterfowling experience than you do and I do not like to see birds and animals shot simply because they are there and mergansers are not putting a hurting on fish populations so just keep your juvenile crap to yourself! First Joe Biden, now you!

Oldtimr I said I was being the devil's advoate. I beg to differ on the fish population. https://www.ducks.org/hunting/waterf...mon-merganser; https://www.answers.com/Q/What_do_cormorants_eat; https://www.mossyoak.com/our-obsessi...ing-your-fish;
I drive over one bridge on a regular basis and I've seen as many as 150+ comorants standing side by side across the breast of the dam (I'm a pretty darn good estimator). Not knowing how many are in the water plus you add in the merganzers in the area and that is a lot of fish taken. Both trash fish and game fish like bass, perch, pike, pickerel, musky etc.that never get a chance to grow.
And just for the record I never said I shot them I just said that those animals were not used sans maybe coyotes for their pelts. As a kid I heard of several people going to the landfill and shooting rats with their 22s but something I never did.

Bronko, my response was not directed at you, it was directed at Fogie.

I am a bit late to the argument and since it was stated about not shooting animals and not eating them what about good ole yotes? Definitely agree that no animal should be just target practice though.

Now I eat most of what I take but I draw the line lol. I also won't eat the hogs I take but I will donate them to a buddy that likes them.

As far as waterfowl I am kind of new to the sport and have found that if the meat doesn't taste too good to soak in saltwater for 3 days then make jerky. Seems to have helped with some snow geese anyway. Good luck in your hunts.

..except that you made a feeble attempt to address the thing that he opined.
You aren't a hunter, you are a killer..you already said that you wouldn't eat a coot or a merg because you can't cook or some ridiculous blather meant to impress someone. You shouldn't be in the field with a gun if you would refuse to eat what could be shot incidentally.
You profess of perfection in your bird ID skills, I highly doubt that is fact. Yep...
You are a killer, not a hunter...for shame. :wink:

You have just proven my opinion of you, you are one excuse after another. You have the same excuses as all the other so called duck hunters that can't tell what they have shot till is is dead on the water because you are afraid if you take the time to identify what you shoot you will lose the shot. No reason for any more dialog.

You need to eat what you shoot and quit losing mergs and coots in the bushes, okay?