Feral cats in Australia are a huge issue, with feral cats covering up to 99% of the country they have contributed to the decimation and extinction of at least 28 native mammal species.
These feral cats are much more aggressive than normal everyday house cats and are known to be excellent hunters.
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The Australian government has put a bounty on the heads of these feral cats, offering money per body handed into the authorities as these cats have been destroying ecosystems and killing native wildlife.
These self-proclaimed cat hunters have been getting a lot of abuse from social media sites on behalf of cat lovers saying things such as ‘I think we need to focus on steps we need to take in reducing feral cat populations by means of desexing cats’ which is responded to by the cat hunters by saying ‘desexing the cats isn’t going to save our native wildlife as the cats are still able to hunt and kill’.
Cat hunters argue that the most humane method of dispatching a cat would be to shoot them in the head with a bullet, they say that this is the quickest and least painful way of euthanising feral cats.
One cat hunter specifically states that he is not out to cause any pain or suffering to any cat
Feral cat hunting is becoming a more inclusive job with women joining to help dispatch cats, smashing the gender stereotype of women not being capable of shooting.
Most cat hunters use small traps usually used for rodents and pests such as squirrel, racoons and skunks and then they use a gun to dispatch the feral cat. They claim that this Is a job that needs to be done.
‘Barry’ the self-proclaimed cat man is a hunter of these feral cats and is ‘aiding’ in the preservation of Australian wildlife. He has an unconventional method of dealing with the cat’s corpses, in which he skins the deceased cats and uses their pelts and fur to make items and store as a trophy in his house
Barry also stores records of every cat he catches, he notes data such as weight, colour and approximate breed, he also notes the number which is roughly 1400 feral cats as of when this information was taken.
Barry says that he has nothing against household cats he just doesn’t like feral cats as they’re hurting the eco-system that he lives in, he says that there has been a definitive improvement in wildlife numbers after he has started trapping dispatching skinning and turning these cats into trophies. Barry’s work is heavily supported by locals of Australia.
On the other hand, Florida state of America is attempting to capture, neuter and release cats instead of dispatching them humanely
