How to finish a half-dead bird?

[sm]

How to finish a half-dead bird?

Have your buddy put his shotgun down, pick up bird wait for me yell "pull"...he throws bird , I shoot bird, and he then yells "dead bird". Now wasn't hard now was it?

We in the South have our own way of doing things...

Yes I have used the above , knife, pull-snap-head , bite head, pliers, and pressure to artery method...still one might need Columbair practice tho'

 

[TrapperReady]

sm - You forgot the easiest of all. Just make sure your dog is ill-behaved. That way, by the time you get the bird, the head has been crushed, the neck has been wrung and it may have even been breasted out.

 

[Sisco]

The problem with wringing a doves neck is that the head will come off and the rest of the body will go sailing.

Here's a tip: Don't ever try to drag a wounded turkey from it's hiding place under some mesquite and wring its neck. That's why God gave them spurs. That and they're pretty tough birds. Don't assume just because you finally got hold of its neck and swung it in a couple of circles that it won't recover and remember those spurs God gave him. A sharp easily deployed knife comes in handy in this situation.
Hand-to-hand combat with a West Texas turkey is exciting though, and makes for interesting conversation around the campfire. Don't ask how I know this

 

[Harry Tuttle]

a swiss army knife makes an OK pheasant sap

Theres plenty of body mass to snap a pheasants neck with a quick twist and a flick

 

[sm]

TrapperReady...
I've hunted with that dog!
You too - huh?

 

[NRA4LIFE]

I'm with Sisco. It is unbelievable how strong the wings are on a large Eastern bird. And I gaurantee, you will NEVER forget how sharp a 1 1/4" long spur is after it is propelled into the meat of your arm. Of course, this is just speculation on my part.

Oh, back to the question at hand. How to dispatch a wounded bird. If it's a wounded turkey, blow is head clean off.

 

[Sisco]

blow is head clean off

That would've been my first choice. When we went looking for the wounded bird my hunting partner took his shotgun, I grabbed my rifle just in case we came across a feral hog. Didn't want to shoot the turkey from two feet with a 25.06. Suppose I could've though.
I had been packing a 6" 357 mag but left it in the truck too. Nothing like being prepared!

 

[Andrew Wyatt]

Kukri. that's what it was designed for, after all.

 

[BIGR]

A sharp blow to the head will usually do it. My grandpa always snapped their neck.

 

[Chuck Jennings]

Bite the heads, crush them until you feel the bird go limp.

Next time on American Hunter:

Dove hunting with Ozzy!

 

[Surely]

pruner

How about a small tree pruner? A less messy option would be to carry a few rubber bands and loop one around its neck a couple times, would be dead quite quickly. How about a 300000v taser like you use for self defense? I know they can knock a dog down for a good minute, small animals would probably react worse, might even kill them. You could try sticking a firecracker up its ??? and lighting it? Better yet use a whistleing bottlerocket. How about stepping on its head till you hear some crunching? You could throw it up in the air and shoot it again on its way down. Or run it over with your truck. Stick its head in the exhaust pipe of your atv or truck and rev the engine for a minute or so. Find a body of water and drown it. Im sure there are more ways, but I dont have the time. Really its not hard to kill a bird thats already been shot, they are fairly fragile animals.

 

[St. Gunner]

Use enough gun, maybe?

Henry Bowman preferred the .375 H&H, but for the rest of us an AR-15 with a plugged 3rd magazine and some of those new Barnes 63gr X-bullets so we don't get in trouble for shooting lead at migratory birds.

I carry one of those pocket tools with the Marlin spike in it, just slip that sucker into the back of the heads of the big birds.