I realize he was trying to help. And I DO appreciate that. I kinda feel like I'm picking on him...I'm not trying to run him down, or make him out to be a bad person.
But euthanasia means GOOD death. Euthanasia by gunshot means ONE shot.
Shooting something 5 times is torturing it, no matter what the shooter's intentions are. If he didn't have better gun training than that, he shouldn't have been carrying a gun.
It's easy for me to criticize, since I wasn't there... but I don't hunt either, and I have very minimal training with guns (I would have a hell of a time trying to figure out how to load his rifle, for instance), and I know this.
The scope is ever only useful for long-range stuff, so the fact it was getting dark is irrelevant to use of the scope, when he was standing close to the moose anyway. Also... MagLight makes it not nearly as dark. Even if you don't have one in your car (and why don't you? they're much useful!), he should have had.
He should have known that a 22 (which is what he most likely had) wasn't going to go through the shoulder and into the heart very well on an animal that large, and he should never have tried such a shot, especially in an an animal that was laying down and therefore probably curled up with more muscle than normal bunched in front of the heart.
He should have just started from the front, got as close as possible before she started thrashing, waited for her to calm a bit, and shot her in the head to start with.
I will throw in a comment that I don't expect you guys to've known but may come in helpful in the future (like when you're trying to load that hypothetical injured deer into your backseat): if you blindfold damn near any large animal (deer, elk, big horn sheep, etc), they will lay still and let you do about anything. Approach from behind/above a down animal, throw a blanket or a jacket or something over her head, and they will usually just freeze. As long as you keep the blindfold on, you can then examine/manipulate them with minimal fuss or struggling. (I recommend still staying out of the way of the legs, because getting kicked, even by accident, hurts like hell.)
Of course, shooting a blindfolded animal means you probably get a hole in your blanket, but the blankets I carry in my car are for the dogs to sleep on anyway, so I don't really care about that.
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Date: 2007-07-07 04:19 pm (UTC)But euthanasia means GOOD death.
Euthanasia by gunshot means ONE shot.
Shooting something 5 times is torturing it, no matter what the shooter's intentions are. If he didn't have better gun training than that, he shouldn't have been carrying a gun.
It's easy for me to criticize, since I wasn't there... but I don't hunt either, and I have very minimal training with guns (I would have a hell of a time trying to figure out how to load his rifle, for instance), and I know this.
The scope is ever only useful for long-range stuff, so the fact it was getting dark is irrelevant to use of the scope, when he was standing close to the moose anyway. Also... MagLight makes it not nearly as dark. Even if you don't have one in your car (and why don't you? they're much useful!), he should have had.
He should have known that a 22 (which is what he most likely had) wasn't going to go through the shoulder and into the heart very well on an animal that large, and he should never have tried such a shot, especially in an an animal that was laying down and therefore probably curled up with more muscle than normal bunched in front of the heart.
He should have just started from the front, got as close as possible before she started thrashing, waited for her to calm a bit, and shot her in the head to start with.
I will throw in a comment that I don't expect you guys to've known but may come in helpful in the future (like when you're trying to load that hypothetical injured deer into your backseat): if you blindfold damn near any large animal (deer, elk, big horn sheep, etc), they will lay still and let you do about anything. Approach from behind/above a down animal, throw a blanket or a jacket or something over her head, and they will usually just freeze. As long as you keep the blindfold on, you can then examine/manipulate them with minimal fuss or struggling. (I recommend still staying out of the way of the legs, because getting kicked, even by accident, hurts like hell.)
Of course, shooting a blindfolded animal means you probably get a hole in your blanket, but the blankets I carry in my car are for the dogs to sleep on anyway, so I don't really care about that.