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> [...] if your young children are being swarmed by 30-50 feral hogs you probably aren't going to disappear into your house, unlock your gun safe, retrieve and

> [...] if your young children are being swarmed by 30-50 feral hogs you probably aren't going to disappear into your house, unlock your gun safe, retrieve and load your gun then come back to their rescue 5 minutes later. I may be misunderstanding your comment, but that seems perfectly reasonable to me. Retrieving a gun doesn't take 5 minutes. Let t be the time at which the hogs arrive. I can sprint from my basement to the top floor in a bit over 5 seconds. I can find something in a closet in about 5 more seconds. That's about 12-13 seconds to having a gun in my hands, but let's account for opening the gun safe and fumbling around for magazines. The clock is now showing t+30. Let's now assume the gun isn't loaded. I'm probably a bit stressed by all of this, but almost anyone can load a magazine-fed rifle in 5 seconds. t+35s. Now I have two choices: 1. Open the bedroom window (~3s), take aim (~2s) and fire. => t+40s 2. Sprint down to the ground floor (~3s), run out the back door (~2s), get into a shooting position (~3s), aim (~2s) and fire. => t+45s A conservative estimate has me shooting hogs in 45 seconds. If I live in a place where this is a problem, I'm also likely to take steps to prepare. I might keep the gun safe in a more accessible place (e.g. the garage). I might store the firearm in the gun safe with a magazine already seated in the well. I might keep my eyes open and notice the hogs at a distance, giving me the time to fetch a gun sans the frenzy. In some parts of the world, it's common to keep a rifle at hand when outside. I don't live in a part of the world where I have to deal with feral hogs, but this doesn't strike me as a "gratuitous excuse to shoot 30-50 feral hogs". Nor does it strike me as diagnostic of unsafe firearm handling, as others have suggested. -- EDIT -- The most worrying thing here is the idea of shooting in a place where little kids were running around/playing just moments ago. While this kind of situation can be handled safely, it's also where dramatic accidents tend to happen. A big problem with firearms handling is that it's a perishable skill. You forget. You get rusty.

anonAndOn 6y ago
PTSD your kids much? What 5 year old wouldn't want to have dad actively shooting at/near them?
- pvaldes 6y ago
  A hurt pig can turn into a really dangerous creature, will charge against any human, including children, so shooting them is the worst idea possible. Females are social. Killing one of the small pigs will 100% grant triggering a vicious attack from their mother and aunts. Just running towards the children and allow the pigs an escape route would be a much safer move. The tale looks much more like an excuse to explain having a lot of furtive hunting in the fridge IMO.
  - omginternets 6y ago
    Did you mean to reply to me? I haven’t been confronted with feral pigs, so I’ll take you at your word. What I can say with great confidence is that it doesn’t take 5 minutes to get a gun, so the fact that someone manages to shoot pigs in their back yard doesn’t in itself point to furtive hunting. I guess that leaves us with two possibilities: - poaching - a bad response to a legitimate threat You can rest assured that we agree both are bad.
    - dmoy 6y ago
      It was for sure not poaching. It is strictly legal to hunt feral pigs any time of the day or night (!!), any time of the year, without permit in Arkansas, so long as it's on private property. You can even do it on public property if you have a generic hunting license, though there's time-of-year and time-of-day restrictions in that case. There is no bag limit. You can even do it with night vision. But yes, shooting pigs with small children playing nearby isn't good. I don't know the context, maybe it was very obvious that the kids all got safely inside and accounted for.
      - pvaldes 6y ago
        If it was Europe I would say 100% excuse to poaching. I had seen similar cases here of hunters claiming that there are too much wildboars so they must be granted a special permit to hunt more out of season. Cameras at the same time don't show the wildpigcalipse that newspapers claim ... but if is legal in US, is legal. Definitely unwise in any case. If this is a concern in some areas, just a small stone wall around the kids's playing area would deter the pigs to enter. They do not jump very well.
wahern 6y ago
> I might keep the gun safe in a more accessible place (e.g. the garage). I might store the firearm in the gun safe with a magazine already seated in the well. In many U.S. states a gun safe or other secure storage isn't required. (And even when required people don't necessarily obey it.) Getting your gun might be as simple as grabbing it off the living room wall. It might even already be loaded. Even in households with children--that's why accidents happen.
- omginternets 6y ago
  Indeed, though that’s another topic entirely.

anonAndOn 6y ago

PTSD your kids much? What 5 year old wouldn't want to have dad actively shooting at/near them?

pvaldes 6y ago
A hurt pig can turn into a really dangerous creature, will charge against any human, including children, so shooting them is the worst idea possible. Females are social. Killing one of the small pigs will 100% grant triggering a vicious attack from their mother and aunts. Just running towards the children and allow the pigs an escape route would be a much safer move. The tale looks much more like an excuse to explain having a lot of furtive hunting in the fridge IMO.
- omginternets 6y ago
  Did you mean to reply to me? I haven’t been confronted with feral pigs, so I’ll take you at your word. What I can say with great confidence is that it doesn’t take 5 minutes to get a gun, so the fact that someone manages to shoot pigs in their back yard doesn’t in itself point to furtive hunting. I guess that leaves us with two possibilities: - poaching - a bad response to a legitimate threat You can rest assured that we agree both are bad.
  - dmoy 6y ago
    It was for sure not poaching. It is strictly legal to hunt feral pigs any time of the day or night (!!), any time of the year, without permit in Arkansas, so long as it's on private property. You can even do it on public property if you have a generic hunting license, though there's time-of-year and time-of-day restrictions in that case. There is no bag limit. You can even do it with night vision. But yes, shooting pigs with small children playing nearby isn't good. I don't know the context, maybe it was very obvious that the kids all got safely inside and accounted for.
    - pvaldes 6y ago
      If it was Europe I would say 100% excuse to poaching. I had seen similar cases here of hunters claiming that there are too much wildboars so they must be granted a special permit to hunt more out of season. Cameras at the same time don't show the wildpigcalipse that newspapers claim ... but if is legal in US, is legal. Definitely unwise in any case. If this is a concern in some areas, just a small stone wall around the kids's playing area would deter the pigs to enter. They do not jump very well.

wahern 6y ago

> I might keep the gun safe in a more accessible place (e.g. the garage). I might store the firearm in the gun safe with a magazine already seated in the well. In many U.S. states a gun safe or other secure storage isn't required. (And even when required people don't necessarily obey it.) Getting your gun might be as simple as grabbing it off the living room wall. It might even already be loaded. Even in households with children--that's why accidents happen.

omginternets 6y ago
Indeed, though that’s another topic entirely.