Dealing With Aggressive Roaming Dogs

I own livestock, so I'm used to shooting neighborhood dogs that are killing my livestock. I've no qualms about it. Especially considering the way dog owners invariably behave when confronted about what their precious poochie has done.

Were it me, I'd be inclined to use my rabbit squeeker and see if I could lure them in to kill them. Animal calls can work well. Squeaky noises and a stuffed animal sitting out in the open brings in canines. For some unknown reason, a stuffed snoopie works real well, btw.

Now, from a practical perspective, you've made it a little sticky by going over to the probable owner and threatening. So you've tipped your hand as it were. SSS can still work, but when their precious poochie suddenly goes away, you've painted a target on your own forehead. If you wish maximum peace, keep your mouth shut and admit nothing.

nicksta43 wrote: I sold a sixty something year old Vietnam vet a .22 rifle because a coyote had been coming around and one of his dogs got missing. A couple months pass and he tells me he has killed two deer with the gun. I said he was brave to try and use it to take down a deer. He said you just have to know where to aim.

My grandfather and his brothers told me all kinds of stories about them taking down deer with .22's as kids. And they said that exact same thing.

Having very little first hand experience in this, my reply here should be taken with a grain of salt; it seems like a lot of folks would be better off with a decent SKS instead of a .22 for just about everything that's been discussed.

To the OP, good luck with the dog issue, seems like putting it down humanly is the best route out of this mess.

To the op, if you want to take the time to find pepperballs or even just use paintballs, I'll gladly loan you an electro paintball marker, loader, and air tank. Set up to run whatever rate of fire you want. Just make sure I get it back, :D got faces to paint come august and Sept. I just ask that you try and avoid shooting an animal in the face with it

In reply to pres589:

Well there are plusses and minuses to using something like the SKS. It does have more power and it is semi auto so decent rate of fire. However the action is loud, the firing is loud and accuracy is spotty depending on the individual example. Surplus ammo is decently cheap, however something suitable for hunting does cost more. The SKS is also not a lightweight weapon to pack around.

The reason the 22 has long been the choice for putting meat on the table is several. The rifles are cheap (even more so than a SKS even when they were cheap got my Marlin for $50), buying the right model they are inherently very accurate like pill popping accurate at 50 yards, ammo is dirt cheap even for the good stuff and very light. Another huge benefit is that the report from a 22 is very quiet compared to something larger and it will not carry as far so less chance of wildlife officials hearing the shot and putting you in jail.

curtis73 wrote: But, if no common respect can be earned, a .38-55 is my choice of calibers. For the most part, the bullet completely disintegrates which means ballistic matching is nearly impossible. One shot to the vitals can liquify most of the abdominal organs, but make sure its within about 75 yards; after 100 yards you could practically catch that 255-grain bullet with a baseball mitt.

Are you berkeleying with me? The .38-55 carries a good bit of energy downrange, a little fact-checking says it's moving at 1190 fps at 100 yards, and 1090 at 200...with more energy than a .357 Magnum has AT the barrel.

It's no .220 Swift, but you're just bullE36 M3ting.

Honestly, I don't think you'd even have to shoot them. A 12-gauge going off is usually loud enough to scare the piss out of almost anything living, including some people You could probably get away with blanks even, just fire into the air.

Remove all the shot out of a few bird rounds, works well. Wadding stings like a &%&?&-? But sometimes you want that little bit extra.

Well I was outside most of the weekend and no dogs. I'm thinking I did find the owners and convinced them i was serous about dealing with matters myself if necessary. Just in case I'm borrowing a game camera and strapping it to a tree in the back yard. If the dogs come back I will have photos to show animal control.

On the up side, I live in a really crappy part of town. Discharging a firearm won't even raise an eyebrow around here. My wife and I pretty much have a rule: gunfire is fine, return fire means a trip to the basement.

I had a similar experience as others mentioned earlier- grew up way out in the sticks and most of my childhood pets were the half-starved mutts that were dropped off by others. Now, I live with my wife and kids on a couple of rural acres and have neighbors, just nobody right next to us. Still, my dog stays fenced and/or inside our house in spite of there being no law that says he has to. Some of the neighborhood mutts are annoying, they form little packs and get into mischief. Mostly I know where those belong, though. The ones that worry me are the mystery dogs- the ones that show up and nobody knows from where or what they have been into.

Also- on the non-lethal tip, there’s always an air rifle – a Daisy 880 is $40 and 2-3 pumps with a pellet to the butt will get the attention of just about any dog acting up within 40 yards or so. We used to do that to send a message to strays that got into the horse pasture and decided chasing our livestock was fun. It works. Most dogs catch on and find somewhere else to be.

Not sure what I’d do if I lived in a close-packed neighborhood and there were aggressive dogs walking about, but it probably would involve carrying a stout 4’ walking stick/ cane. And I’d build a fence- not to keep my people in, but to keep the other stuff out. That’s actually coming up at my house as well, even out in the country burbs as we are. The $1500 or so it’ll cost me to connect the big dog run to the backyard is worth it.