Been in situations in the past that I don't care much to talk about. I generally don't like to kill animals unless I'm hunting for food. There was a time when I lived in a rural area (VERY rural). "Neighbors" (2+ miles away) had dogs that just ran wild all the time. I drove and rode past them every single day sometimes multiple times a day, whether it be for work or getting to the pastures. At the time I generally rode the 3 wheeler to the pastures, but to work drove the car. Well it just happened that the place I lived at was up on a pretty nasty hill, and the road went straight down (not alongside) the hill, so it was fairly steep. With trees on both sides and at the ends of the hill, there was shade on the road for more than 90% of the day so in the winter time, if there was any rain and the road didn't dry up, it'd ice up quickly. That generally meant that I'd park at the bottom of the hill and ride the 3 wheeler down there, lock the 3 wheeler up, drive to work, then home, and hope that the 3 wheeler was still there so I could ride back up the hill to the warm cozy house. Well the dogs just ran loose all the time. I had them mostly trained to stay away from the house, BUT sometimes if we (roommates and myself) were cleaning deer, or bear, or sometimes hogs they'd show up. I didn't care for them but just couldn't shoot them. They were all pretty aggressive dogs. One afternoon I got home from work, jumped on the 3 wheeler to go hunt the property. Got going, dogs came running again. Couldn't really speed up much because it was already icy and treacherous. One of the dogs kept nipping at my pant leg. Others got wind of the idea and did the same thing. I finally got away from 'em but I guess my scent was easy to follow, they found me at the tree stand and wouldn't leave me alone. Needless to say, I felt threatened. SSS as another poster mentioned. Never did have much trouble out of them after that. I sat there in the stand for a while pondering if the neighbors cared about them or not but nobody ever said anything so I guess not. This was over 20 years ago and I still think about it once in a while.
Only other time I shot a dog was when a mangy mix breed was acting weird when I was hog hunting on family property. Dang dog kept coming after me. I'd out run it (on foot mind you), it couldn't keep up, acted weird, but was very aggressive, so I shot it dead on site and let the crows & vultures clean up the mess. That dog needed to be put down as it was sick and obviously the location where it was, it had to be wild or abandoned-there wasn't a house or person's camp within 20 miles.
Had to put several feral cats down at one point and that bothered me at first but I got over it. 2 of them had been run over, the other one had some kind of epilepsy so bad that it had constant seizures, sometimes it would just quit breathing. I couldn't watch them suffer anymore and put them down myself.
I could tell about a man who made his 8 year old daughter watch while running over a toe sack full of kittens but I ain't going there. It just makes me mad to think about it.
