KILLING GREY SQUIRRELS

I agree they are a nuisance though a lot of your comments are, imho, somewhat tendentious.

The point here is that the gentleman involved didn't (according to the report) make a clean kill. I have no problem with him killing grey squirrels, provided he does so quickly and humanely.

It is entirely appropriate to prosecute him for not doing so; it seems to me a fine would be more sensible than a community order.

The comment from ....@gmx.com has been somehow deleted in cyberspace. It was most informative and I would ask that it be re-submitted

I have managed to retrieve your comment and reproduce it below.

"Be that as it may the legal question for the bench was the humaneness or otherwise of the animal`s dispatch from this world."

Except the accused plead guilty so there wan't really a question of whether the offence took place or not. The sentence will presumably take into account the severity of the inhumanity amongst other factors.

Having skimmed the SNH report you linked to, it is clear that (1) An air rifle is considered and acceptable way to kill squirrels in traps. (2) There is some question on whether two shots ("to be sure") might be considered unlawful. Five over a period of several hours would certainly appear to be inconsistent with a quick death. (3) Leaving the animal injured but alive seems to have been the major issue. I think even the most experienced "shot" would accept that occasionally a kill could be ineffective and need repeating (SNH suggest >95% kill first time in slaughterhouses is considered acceptable - by extension there should be less than 1:1,000,000 animals still alive after 5 attempts - as happened here). Note that SNH state, "repeat application (i.e. a second shot) can (and must) be carried out immediately if there is doubt about the effectiveness of the first shot", and elsewhere in the same report, "If there is any doubt about the confirmation of death, a second method
must be used to kill an animal. This is considered good practice."

I do note that the media article you linked to suggests that the court were told the best way to kill it was by lethal injection but SNH advise this is impractical. Perhaps had he not been self representing a good agent would have questioned this?

Given that he had the premeditation to source a suitable trap, weapon and ammunition it does not seem unreasonable to me that he should have also obtained the knowledge and skill necessary to effectively "finish the job". His apparent lack of humility in the media article would not help his case. If nothing else he's been a little naive doing this in full view of his neighbours - anyone who wasn't trying to make a point might have been aware of the sensitivities to the public about furry little animals.

You've managed to get some sensationalist tabloid type reporting in your blog though: one aggressive squirrel in a US park does not mean that squirrels are just waiting to come into our homes and attack toddlers.

Without the benefit of a Legal Advisor right now, I can't quite see the value in deferring sentence for reports. Reports can be necessary for some disposal options, but are any of them really likely in this case? Perhaps the bench thought the greatest value would come from sweating about it for another month? Of course we never know all the facts of the case or the offender, but unless there is an important piece of missing information I can't see him leaving with anything more substantial than a financial penalty.

Do we really need the state to intervene wrt individuals and squirrels?!
Perhaps we could leave it to each individual's conscience and get on with something useful.

I'm keeping quite about a previous incident involving me, ants and a kettle just in case.

Looking at the X-ray photographs, the air rifle pellets seem not to have deformed at all and to have only penetrated a few centimetres into the animal. This is indicative of an air rifle which is grossly under-powered for the job it was being used for.

The man's actions in this incident were also negligent, in that he shot the animal twice at close range but did not check to see that it was dead. He should have done so, and should have despatched it by some other means (a brick comes to mind here) were it not dead by then.

The fact that a grand total of five shots failed to kill the animal demonstrates that the man is an idiot, his rifle is an underpowered pop-gun and that the prosecution was entirely justified. I do not like grey squirrels and would happily shoot them myself, but I would be careful to ensure that the gun I had was powerful enough to do the job before embarking on such an action.

The man who acts for himself has a fool for a client and a rogue for an advocate ?

The man who winds up the RSPCA and then acts for himself ... !

I think it's wrong that the political aspiring RSPCA caan. bring a direct criminal prosecution without going through a third party such as the cps I. would put them on a para with the NBC licence people ,but I do think the clown s Gould have found a more humane way of killing it