We live in the city, and the administration prohibits firearm discharge in the city.... lots of critters go around the house, including deer. I get to watch them go by.... and grind my teeth
Same here! When I was a kid my brother and I were too young to drive, we each bought full military Argentine 7.65 Mausers and declared total war on varmints, mostly groundhogs.
One farmer paid us to shoot every groundhog on his farm, and we did. It was a three mile walk to his farm.
The last groundhog was a genius and denned under the farmer's garage and dined of the farmer's wife's garden.
Very early one morning I was sitting next to the house under the open kitchen windows while the old couple were in the kitchen. He was eating breakfast and she was washing dishes right inside the window.
That old groundhog was a wily one and took a long time to emerge enough for a shot. I spotted his head and the ground held his stance like that until I decided to go with the shot.
My rifle roared, the farmer wife screamed, and a dish flew into the air and broke on their kitchen floor.
I heard the old farmer roar with laughter and then exclaimed loudly, "There went that dirty last one"!
My bullet went true, right through the groundhog's head. It was about a 75 or 100 yard shot.
The farmer was paying us 25 cents for each kill and handed me an extra dollar for that last one. Back in those days, a dollar was a lot of money.
That all started when my brother and I were walking past the farm and spotted some groundhogs in the hay field so we asked permission to hunt. The old farmer had just broken an axle on his hayrack because of a groundhog hole and swore revenge.
At that time, we received .25 scalp bounty at the courthouse per groundhog and $2.00 for fox scalps.