Killing a winged duck

[Hamster]

I think people who regard the simple neck breaking method using nothing but a single hand and the birds weight/momentum either haven't seen it done correctly or simply don't know how it should be done.

 

No doubt a priest is also an effective method but who is infallible enough to never be caught without one and who says all blows delivered with a struggling and frightened creature will always be unfailingly accurate and have sufficient force to kill (and not just daze or worse, inflict even more pain albeit temporarily) ? You can't forget to take you hand with you and once mastered (easily done using a dozen dead pigeon) it is much more effective, death is instant.

 

Another less easily mastered method is to stare it to death from inside your old banger whilst wearing a Casio using nothing but envy.

Edited December 21, 2016 by Hamster

[motty]

I have never been left with a head in my hand after wringing the neck of a duck or goose.

[neutron619]

Two other methods that nobody has mentioned so far:

 

1. If it's a small bird, strangulation. Note, before anyone has a go, that I don't mean strangulation with the object of causing asphyxiation, which is drawn out and will cause the bird to suffer and is therefore unacceptable. I mean strangulation for the purpose of cutting off the blood supply to the brain, which - done right - causes the bird to lose consciousness in a second or three and basically not to suffer at all.

 

I hasten to add that I'd only do this on a badly winged that was still flapping too much to spin it and that I've never tried it on a duck, so it may not be applicable here. However: hold the bird by the neck between the first two forefingers of your stronger hand (or between thumb and forefinger) just under the skull. Squeeze as hard as you can, and use your other hand to pinch your fingers together if you think it's necessary. You're basically squeezing the arteries in the birds neck shut. The bird will stop scratching / flapping and fall unconscious within 2-3 seconds. Hold for another 20-30 to make sure the heart stops and put it in the bag. If in doubt, hold for longer - if the heart is still beating and you let go too soon, the (now brain-damaged) bird may revive, which I think most of us would agree is cruel. If you follow that method with thumb / forefinger, you may be able to use your thumb to snap the bird's neck as you hold it, which is equally effective and just as quick. Push in to the joint of spine / skull with the tip of your thumb to break the nerve.

 

2. If all else fails, or you can't get to it quickly to apply one of the methods mentioned here, do it a favour and shoot it again. You may render it inedible, but in my book, not letting the thing suffer is more important than getting a meal out of it.

[widgeon man]

I'm seriously shocked at some peoples 'methods' of dispatch! .......I didn't realise it was such an issue in the shooting community, I was taught from a very young age. Best,simplest method for all birds, light grip between thumb and fore finger, twirl it using body weight of bird in a sharp tight circle, you will feel it 'give' press fingers between vertebrae to check. With goose, imagine you are cranking a turn handle on an old car! Two sharp flips of the bird and tug back against body weight as it is falling will break cleanly....

It needs to be fast, efficient and simple to reduce suffering

[Penelope]

Exactly.

 

I'm seriously shocked at some peoples 'methods' of dispatch! .......I didn't realise it was such an issue in the shooting community, I was taught from a very young age. Best,simplest method for all birds, light grip between thumb and fore finger, twirl it using body weight of bird in a sharp tight circle, you will feel it 'give' press fingers between vertebrae to check. With goose, imagine you are cranking a turn handle on an old car! Two sharp flips of the bird and tug back against body weight as it is falling will break cleanly....
It needs to be fast, efficient and simple to reduce suffering

[Isaidduck]

I don't pretend to be overly experienced but I cannot believe the advice given from neutron619 I very much doubt you could make a mouse unconscious in two or three seconds let alone a pigeon or goose as for strangling it for another 30 seconds to ensure its dead well the mind boggles if you think this is how quarry should be treat then it's nothing short of shameful

[Richie10]

Two other methods that nobody has mentioned so far:

 

1. If it's a small bird, strangulation. Note, before anyone has a go, that I don't mean strangulation with the object of causing asphyxiation, which is drawn out and will cause the bird to suffer and is therefore unacceptable. I mean strangulation for the purpose of cutting off the blood supply to the brain, which - done right - causes the bird to lose consciousness in a second or three and basically not to suffer at all.

 

I hasten to add that I'd only do this on a badly winged that was still flapping too much to spin it and that I've never tried it on a duck, so it may not be applicable here. However: hold the bird by the neck between the first two forefingers of your stronger hand (or between thumb and forefinger) just under the skull. Squeeze as hard as you can, and use your other hand to pinch your fingers together if you think it's necessary. You're basically squeezing the arteries in the birds neck shut. The bird will stop scratching / flapping and fall unconscious within 2-3 seconds. Hold for another 20-30 to make sure the heart stops and put it in the bag. If in doubt, hold for longer - if the heart is still beating and you let go too soon, the (now brain-damaged) bird may revive, which I think most of us would agree is cruel. If you follow that method with thumb / forefinger, you may be able to use your thumb to snap the bird's neck as you hold it, which is equally effective and just as quick. Push in to the joint of spine / skull with the tip of your thumb to break the nerve.

 

2. If all else fails, or you can't get to it quickly to apply one of the methods mentioned here, do it a favour and shoot it again. You may render it inedible, but in my book, not letting the thing suffer is more important than getting a meal out of it.

 

 

2. If all else fails, or you can't get to it quickly to apply one of the methods mentioned here, do it a favour and shoot it again. You may render it inedible, but in my book, not letting the thing suffer is more important than getting a meal out of it.

 

Are you actually serious???????

 

Quite a few clueless people on here.

[neutron619]

I don't pretend to be overly experienced but I cannot believe the advice given from neutron619 I very much doubt you could make a mouse unconscious in two or three seconds let alone a pigeon or goose as for strangling it for another 30 seconds to ensure its dead well the mind boggles if you think this is how quarry should be treat then it's nothing short of shameful

 

Well, kind of you to comment, but have you tried it? Sounds like not, in which case I don't think you're going to be able to legitimately contradict what I've said.

 

What is it you're trying to achieve exactly? Doing it the "right" way according the religion of St. Isaidduck? Or do you want the thing unconscious and not suffering as fast as possible?

 

You'll note also that I said: "I hasten to add that I'd only do this on a badly winged that was still flapping too much to spin it" which I don't think is particularly heretical, given that as someone observed, HMQ also spins birds to despatch them.

 

As for a mouse, you're being ridiculous - there are plenty of ways you could make a wounded mouse unconscious in two or three seconds, starting with treading on it.

[scolopax]

A winged duck or goose on the water or even running for the water gets shot again if safe (ie no dog running in...but no wildfowling dog does that ).

 

I favour the smack on the back of a head with a stick method of dispatch for a bird in hand.

 

Do not do what I did a few years ago, dog retrieves a big greylag after a good hunt in the reeds, head up. Decided that my wading stick was too long to give it the full swing I thought it needed. Put goose on floor, raised stick to hit it on the head, it jumped up and flew off, dog gave me a look of total disgust.

[neutron619]

 

 

2. If all else fails, or you can't get to it quickly to apply one of the methods mentioned here, do it a favour and shoot it again. You may render it inedible, but in my book, not letting the thing suffer is more important than getting a meal out of it.

 

Are you actually serious? ? ? ?

 

Quite a few clueless people on here.

 

I quite agree, and yes, I'm deadly serious.

 

Wounded duck falls 20 yards away, the wrong side of a drainage ditch on your shooting wash and to get to it you'll take 20 mins to walk round. Duck is all the while flapping, clearly distressed.

 

Are you seriously telling me that you'd leave it for 20 mins whilst you walked round to despatch it with a priest, rather than taking an aimed shot at it from short range to kill it?

 

What's more evil - shooting the thing? Or leaving it to suffer whilst you take your time to do it "properly"?

 

I know what I'm most comfortable with.

[Richie10]

I have a dog to pick it up and bring it to me to dispatch.

 

I wouldn't put on the ground and shoot it again....

 

 

If it was swimming yes, but not if I have it in my hand...

[Isaidduck]

No I have not tried it and have no wish too , I shoot because I enjoy it as a sport rather than enjoy the killing , with the advice you give i can't help but think you enjoy the killing a little too much as you seem to want to prolong suffering rather than end it I would question if such a person should have a gun.

[neutron619]

I have a dog to pick it up and bring it to me to dispatch.

 

I wouldn't put on the ground and shoot it again....

 

 

If it was swimming yes, but not if I have it in my hand...

 

Then we're talking at cross purposes.

 

If all else fails, or you can't get to it quickly to apply one of the methods mentioned here, do it a favour and shoot it again. You may render it inedible, but in my book, not letting the thing suffer is more important than getting a meal out of it.

 

Please note what I said: "if all else fails" - by which I don't mean "after you've tried all the other methods here and it's still not dead", but rather "if you can't master or aren't confident in using any of the techniques listed above". The OP said he's inexperienced, so he may not have grasped twirling the birds just yet.

 

The "if you can't get to it quickly and reasonably" bit ought to be self-explanatory, hence my comment about a bird falling in an inaccessible place above.

 

Either way, the OP said he'd been delayed in getting to the wounded bird in his original post. I meant to imply that if it was either going to take a long time to get to the bird, or if attempting one of the methods above in a cack-handed manner would cause more suffering, it could it would be kinder to shoot the bird again, where it fell. I certainly did not mean, if you have the bird in your hand, put it down and shoot it.

[neutron619]

Two other methods that nobody has mentioned so far:

 

1. If it's a small bird, strangulation. Note, before anyone has a go, that I don't mean strangulation with the object of causing asphyxiation, which is drawn out and will cause the bird to suffer and is therefore unacceptable. I mean strangulation for the purpose of cutting off the blood supply to the brain, which - done right - causes the bird to lose consciousness in a second or three and basically not to suffer at all.

 

I hasten to add that I'd only do this on a badly winged that was still flapping too much to spin it and that I've never tried it on a duck, so it may not be applicable here. However: hold the bird by the neck between the first two forefingers of your stronger hand (or between thumb and forefinger) just under the skull. Squeeze as hard as you can, and use your other hand to pinch your fingers together if you think it's necessary. You're basically squeezing the arteries in the birds neck shut. The bird will stop scratching / flapping and fall unconscious within 2-3 seconds. Hold for another 20-30 to make sure the heart stops and put it in the bag. If in doubt, hold for longer - if the heart is still beating and you let go too soon, the (now brain-damaged) bird may revive, which I think most of us would agree is cruel. If you follow that method with thumb / forefinger, you may be able to use your thumb to snap the bird's neck as you hold it, which is equally effective and just as quick. Push in to the joint of spine / skull with the tip of your thumb to break the nerve.

 

2. If all else fails, or you can't get to it quickly to apply one of the methods mentioned here, do it a favour and shoot it again. You may render it inedible, but in my book, not letting the thing suffer is more important than getting a meal out of it.

 

 

No I have not tried it and have no wish too , I shoot because I enjoy it as a sport rather than enjoy the killing , with the advice you give i can't help but think you enjoy the killing a little too much as you seem to want to prolong suffering rather than end it I would question if such a person should have a gun.

 

Could you please explain to me how the highlighted parts of my original post tally with your assertion?

[figgy]

i use various methods depending on the bird,smaller birds i just push my thumb nail through the vertebrae of the neck against my finger dislocating the joint very quickly. On larger heavier birds a quick spin and flick snaps the neck. Never had them stay alive after it,have had the odd head come off if too vigorous.

 

You can buy dispatch pliers, but i still think a good technique learned will serve you well.

Edited December 21, 2016 by figgy

[TIGHTCHOKE]

i use various methods depending on the bird,smaller birds i just push my thumb nail through the vertebrae of the neck against my finger dislocating the joint very quickly. On larger heavier birds a quick spin and flick snaps the neck. Never had them stay alive after it,have had the odd head come off if too vigorous.

 

You can buy dispatch pliers, but i still think a good technique learned will serve you well.

 

Amen to that!

[Smokersmith]

Good job the OP for asking for advice when it was clearly going to be an emotive issue ...

 

Rather looks silly for 5 mins, then get the job sorted, than continue on in a clueless way.

 

Well done .....

 

 

For the count ... I'm a neck wringer .....

[neutron619]

At the risk of encouraging further Mr Isaidduck and friends, has anyone actually stopped to consider what happens physiologically when each of these dispatch methods is employed?

Consider the action taken and the consequence for each of the things described in this thread and the picture isn't quite as clear cut as lots of people here would like to believe.

Personally, I prefer to use a priest to dispatch birds - a sharp blow to the back of the head to destroy the brain and upper spinal nervous system. Even if the rest of the bird is alive for a while afterwards, the bird isn't aware of that fact. No appreciable suffering is caused, if the blow strikes true.

My belief is that, given the difficulty I and others have sometimes had whilst learning to shoot, in mastering the "spinning" technique, that a priest is the most humane means of dispatch, at least for an inexperienced shooter. The organ which could potentially "measure" the sensations of pain or anything else (i.e. the brain) is destroyed, so no suffering can be "interpreted" even if the signals are sent from the rest of the body.

Now think about the spinning technique. Done properly, the neck is snapped, the spinal cord breaks and the bird immediately "flops". It's clean, apparently quick and humane.

Or is it?

Consider a couple of edge cases. For one, humans break their necks and it sometimes kills them, but it's by no means guaranteed. In fact, lots of people - perhaps most - survive, some recovering well. Others who suffer spinal damage, not so well. Both groups often go on to live many years afterwards in a more or less disabled state.

For another example, think about something most of us are probably slightly more familiar with. Deer, shot in the head, have to be bled out ASAP after the shot.

Why is this the case? One reason is because the animal is still, in terms of the circulatory / respiratory system, alive for some time after the shot is taken. The heart, if not destroyed, will continue to pump blood whilst the red cells still carry sufficient oxygen for it to beat. This is why stalkers occasionally still get injured by a reflex kick from an apparently dead animal if they follow up too quickly.

The point of those examples is simple: the heartbeat in most animals that have them is a chemically-operated reflex and not a process directly controlled by the brain. Paraplegics' hearts do not stop because their spinal cord is broken and deer still kick, even when their brains are destroyed.

Back to the birds. If you spin the bird around by it's neck, you'll hopefully break the spinal cord and the arteries supplying blood to the brain. Without blood, the brain quickly deactivates, the bird loses consciousness and therefore doesn't suffer.

Done cack-handedly however, you break the spinal chord, but the arteries are twisted around the spine without breaking. The brain still receives blood, but the bird is paralyzed because it's spinal cord is broken.

Now to the organ I haven't mentioned yet - the lungs. Breathing in most species is partly-reflexive, but - here's the key point - is regulated (if not outright controlled) by the brain. Think about it - you can consciously control your breathing, but - in most cases - humans can't control their heart rate simply by thought.

Why are the lungs important? Simple. If you twist that bird or otherwise break its spinal cord, it's lungs stop working. No instruction gets sent from the brain to the chest muscles to relax or contract. The transfer of oxygen into the blood stops.

However: the bird still has oxygenated blood in its veins. If the arteries supplying its brain with blood aren't blocked or broken, it's still potentially conscious. It just doesn't look like it, because it's paralyzed from the upper neck down.

Most of us would put that paralyzed (and hopefully dead) bird in the bag without a second thought, but here's the thing: unless you know for certain that blood isn't reaching the bird's brain, there's a very real chance that it's still conscious, quietly suffocating to death as the oxygen already dissolved in it's blood is used up by the heart muscles.

The bird in this situation will soon lose consciousness - but much as the tales of people continuing to speak after being executed by decapitation in the middle ages are true, so is it true that this loss of consciousness will take an appreciable amount of time. The bird will suffer.

Here's the thing: I am specifically NOT arguing that we should not spin birds. Clearly it works and does not seem to cause much suffering. Most of the time, the brain / upper spine is damaged enough that the bird shouldn't feel anything.

What I am saying though, is that there are some people who need to get off their high horses about the "proper" ways of dispatching birds and learn a bit of basic animal physiology. They need to remember that suffering is experienced by the mind, in the brain, and that if the brain still receives blood, it continues to function, irrespective of the state of the rest of the body. They need to remember that there are different stages of death (e.g. brain death, respiratory death) and that only the death of the brain guarantees that the animal will not continue to experience what is going on.

 

Spinning birds, to my mind, often causes very quick brain death, but not always - most of us will have seen this at one point or another. How many of us have spun a bird several times before it's died, even though we thought the neck snapped the first time? Decapitation or destruction of the brain on the other hand, does kill every time, and if not quite as quickly, then certainly without inflicting suffering.

 

Or is it that we just don't want to look too hard at the gory details and kid ourselves that quiet asphyxiation is fine - provided we can stuff the bird in the bag and not look at it happening?

Edited December 21, 2016 by neutron619

[Isaidduck]

I have not been on here long but can't help but notice you are very much into you war and peace length posts , this is generally when you are trying to prove you are right and everyone else is wrong ,.

I am going to guess that like me you have very limited real experience but think by coming up with such drawn out posts people will think you are the font of all knowledge .

You can pretend all you like you can write as much as you like but throttling (for that is what it is ) is not nor ever will be l suitable way to dispatch a injured bird or animal.

Now clearly you will have to have the final say as you do seem the type that likes the sound of his own voice so I will now bow out and let you have such.

[Old farrier]

My word 3 pages

 

Lot to consider here

Obviously fastest and best 👍

 

There are many methods however a lot depends on your physical build and exactly where you are

Personally go for

Wrong necklace

Then priest/stick

Then spin bird

All depends on bird and environment

 

Always make a point of showing the youngsters on shoots how to dispatch a wounded bird (runner) when we are picking up

Lesson 2 for them is how to make there own priest 😊👌

 

 

Number of years ago I had a big dog who regularly brought back 2 birds at a time 😊

On his 6th season he got spiked badly by a cock bird shortly after I noticed that he never brought back a live Cockbird??? So watched closely when I sent him on a runner he hunting it and on finding it he put a paw on its back and a swift bite to the head job sorted 😊

Never any marks on birds except crushed skull

 

I miss that dog ☹️

 

Only did it to cock birds never hens

 

Anyway OP priest is the way forward and hopefully your chance of the same happening are greatly reduced

 

Admire you for posting on a controversial subject 👍

 

Get a dog though

 

All the best

Of

[Cranfield]

Three pages on how to despatch a wounded bird is quite sufficient.

Most of the methods mentioned in this thread will work.........except hitting it with a watch.