The poll worked for me. When I tried it in a second browser the cookie must have caught it. I wasn't able to vote twice.
Here's my comment:
People who have no clue about life here have no right to judge anything we do. Have any of you who think this is all about fur taken into consideration the rest of the story? How about the kind of damage many of these animals cause? Raccoons, fishers, coyotes and bobcats are predators that cause damage on farms and to pets. How about the beaver that flood roads and restrict access to and from homes, schools and jobs? They run up our road expenses when roads are damaged and culverts are dammed. Look around you folks, there's more to this than a winter coat. Take some time to educate yourselves instead of showing your ignorance.
I tried to upload a photo of the suffering caused by raccoons but there's a system error that won't allow the upload to complete. Have you ever seen what happens when a raccoon pulls the legs of young rabbits through their cages and eats them? How about headless birds? Raided song bird nests? I can also show you what happens when a starving bobcat happens upon a farm where children are playing in the snow. There are thousands of acres around me. When predator numbers build up so high that they're in my barn in February because there aren't enough small wild animals to go around, I have to do what's necessary to protect my livestock. When that means calling in hunters and trappers during very well regulated seasons, that's what I do. It's much kinder to trap an over abundance of animals than to sentence them to a frigid winter of slow starvation in deep snow. Trappers check their lines daily. A short time in a leg hold trap and a merciful bullet to the brain is much more humane than what the bobcats went through here a few winters ago. You might change your mind and think so when you look out your window to find one sitting in your driveway waiting for your cat to be its next meal.
Are you familiar with the dozens of deer coyotes chased into a lake and drowned two winters ago? That wasn't in any way kind to the deer.
Someone asked: THESE TRAPS SHOULD BE BANNED. WHAT HAPPENS IF A CHILD GETS CAUGHT IN IT? We watch our children. We do not let them out to play on trap lines in the woods. Have you ever stepped on a trap? Our feet are much larger than an animal's foot. It's startling but it doesn't hurt because it doesn't spring closed. And, when's the last time you heard of this happening? Let's deal in facts, not hypothetical what ifs.
Ignorance isn't bliss. It's annoying.
