DNR looking for snowmobiler who ran over, killed 57 ducks

Journal Sentinel ^ | Jan. 14, 2009 | Ryan Haggerty

[Fester Chugabrew]

I’m with ya, Ted.

[decimon]

Somthing fishy here.

57 ducks don't just sit around while somebody runs them over with a frickin snowmobile.

No, they don't.

[x]

I hated Howard the Duck, too.

But, hey, that was years ago. No point taking it out on our fine feathered friends now.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I’ve done it dozens of times. Gun the sled, pull back hard on the bars and go right over open water. Not a lot of water, but 20 or 30 feet is pretty easy at 40 or 50 mph on a frozen lake.

[expatpat]

Why didn’t the ducks fly off when the snowmobiles approached?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I don’t understand why the ducks didn’t scatter. 57 dead ducks happened for some other reason.

[marktwain]

“Exactly. At least the Native American tribes respected the animal that they hunted for food. Killing just to kill is psychotic.”

---

Just another myth. Humans routinely killed far more than they could eat. The reason that they or other predators did not kill more was that it was a lot of hard work.

When it was easy to kill more than you could eat, they killed more and ate the choice parts.

This may be a hard truth, but it is the truth. A lot of people may not like it, but much of the difficulties that we find ourselves in today as a country comes from the desire not to have to face hard truths.

It matters not one bit to the deer if they were killed and eaten or just killed.

What matters, really, is that there is a sustainable population of the animals. It makes no sense to exterminate useful creatures.

[devane617]

Some things I just don’t get.

[CaspersGh0sts]

I was surprised by this, too, but snowmobiles can really move. Getting one going 80 mpg isn’t that difficult. When you get one going that fast and on sleds, they’ll definitely skip over water. I have good (idiotic) friends who didn’t anticipate a lake freeze and ended up nearly sinking one. They did eventually make it across but were definitely sinking.

Dangerous things, snowmobiles.

[Farmer Dean]

I’ve seen what some people are capable of when it comes to animal cruelty.Some of the images will haunt your dreams.

[CaspersGh0sts]

You get all sorts of variations on this answer. Some would get offended by me killing off coyotes I have no intention of eating but who have every intention of eating neighborhood cats and dogs.

Sorry, Cool & the Gang, but if a yote is menacing my dogs in the middle of the day, I’m going to take him out.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

“The snowmobiler skipped over open water?

That’s news to me. I’ve never heard of a snowmobile being able to ride across water. How in the world do you pull that off?”

You’ve never been to the Siren, WI. waterskip competition, I see.....

[MARTIAL MONK]

And if you don’t make it? How well do they do as a submarine?

[Hot Tabasco]

The snowmobiler skipped over open water?

Given the extreme temps over the past month, its quite likely the ducks were congregated on a small patch of open water with the ice surrounding it of sufficient thickness as to allow a snowmobile with sufficient speed to span the limited open water and kill the ducks floating there. Heck, I've seen that many ducks floating in a 15' x 15' spot of open water on the lake I grew up on.......

[dennisw]

Ducks move fast.
Kind of hard to kill 57 ducks in my opinion

[MARTIAL MONK]

Democrat ducks. Not too swift.

[Flycatcher]

Kind of hard to kill 57 ducks in my opinion

Kind of hard to run a sub 4-minute mile too.

But people can and people do.

[Hot Tabasco]

57 ducks don't just sit around while somebody runs them over with a frickin snowmobile.

Sure they do if they're congregated in a small patch of open water on a small pond and the snowmobile ambushes them at say 50 miles an hour........

I've seen that many ducks in the only open water on a pond many times, I've just never seen a deviant snowmobiler try to run them over.......

[r9etb]

At least the Native American tribes respected the animal that they hunted for food.|

Not much respect involved in driving herds of buffalo over a cliff... But it was undoubtedly effective.

[wgflyer]

I remember an English tabloid front page photo of a swan with an arrow in it's neck, still swimming around. The rancor in response was far greater than that toward the crooks in any of the following pages, or editions, who robbed, raped or burgled the general population. That was all ho hum. The people seem to be saying “kill us, rob us, plunder our society, but leave the darned swans alone”. I'm seeing a lot of that on this thread. Cruelty is a fact of life. A society that allows cruelty to it's own members, en masse, can hardly expect lesser critters to be spared. The solution, here, is not protecting or emoting over a bunch of ducks. The solution is to get rid of those who prey on us, which requires a higher standard, which means critters will have much happier lives.