@AmosBurton I don’t care about what people think they do with ticks. I deal with my own ticks every year. They aren’t going anywhere. I’m thinking forward. I’ll have to protect my garden. I’ll probably get some hatchlings this spring as well. Also the dog need to understand his job. He’s got the alert thing down, but not so much the chase and kill. I think he’s used to me killing. So I took the opportunity to at least get him familiar with the scent and getting close to the possum. Before he wouldn’t even get close to them. I tried to encourage him a little on the carcass to get him comfortable.
the thing about possums is they freeze involuntarily . you can freeze a possum with a low power bb gun that just bounces off , once frozen you have time to get a pellet gun that will do the trick . when we lived in Oak Park IL i kept a red rider next to the back door , once froze i would walk up and gangland style , dispatch with a C02 pistol .Here’s what I saw as we approached the kennel.
@L.Leon In all honesty it wasn’t the most humane in the sense of a timely dispatch. First shot through the fence was a neck shot. ITT went down and I thought it was done. Pup ran over there and when I looked through the thermal again it walked out of the kennel dripping blood from the neck. When the pup didn’t attack it, I called him off to get him out of my line of sight. I’m still working on him discipline with this one. He’s good when he knows I’m target shooting, but because I’m not out here shooting everything moving it’s hard for him to tell when I’m going to shoot an animal outside of squirrel hunting. We see rabbits, raccoons, possums, foxes, deer, horses, armadillos, and an occasional coyote. I’m usually shooting at coyotes and dillos around him. We saw a fox later that night and before I could discern Fox from coyote, he gets in my line of sight and enters a stare down. Turns out it was a fox and I didn’t shoot. Anyhow, after the pup came back to me I shot the possum until it stopped moving. I’m pretty sure it was gone before it stopped moving but I owed it that much to be sure. I emptied the mag with the last two or three shots up close. I don’t like to pretend things aren’t the way that they are so I wanted to clarify that. It was probably a 2-3 minute ordeal. 2-3 minutes is a long time to fight (as humans) and a long time to watch or allow something to die in my eyes. Although Texas hunting regs requires me to let a deer bleed for a half hour before attempting to retrieve it.
