My First Kill - Alex

Two days ago I shot my first gopher. To tell you the truth I was a little sad killing one. My weapon was a special rifle. There are specific reasons for killing these animals. Among them are that they break the livestock's legs when they dig their holes and they eat our gardens and crop's. We need to save our crops and garden's, so read on.

 

A mixed bag of emotion

Since I have never killed another mammal before, I knew that it was going to be a little hard, but I got past it. After a while I shot one because I knew it was for the livestock and the crops. The sadness was not too bad because I continued to kill some more after that.

 

The rifle

My cousin Nolan brought a rifle to the farm. It was the same type that my Dad had as a child. It was a .22 Cooey single shot model 75. When you are loading you put a bullet into the rifle. Push the lever forward and down. Pull back another metal bar and then you are loaded.  You aim by finding the spec at the end of the rifle and line the shot up with the target. Finally you pull the trigger. That's how you shoot a rifle.

 

The circle of life

We take good measures against animals that eat our gardens and crops other than cows. We shoot, poison, fence, etc. We don't shoot animal like squirrels, chipmunks and birds because they do no harm. We do what we have to do to keep animals out of our farm.  We use dogs for larger animals and cats for small rodents. It's the circle of life.

This experience shows the circle of life in the barn yard and we are at the top.  It was a little saddening having to put a gopher out of his misery after I already shot it. The rifle is the all time killer of the gophers. The land and crops are going well and the gopher population dropped by 14 over the last few days. Now every night I hear a coyote and the next morning the dead gophers are gone!

 

By Alex Perry!