Wild chickens

[birdmove]

    Here on Hawaii Island (i.e. the big island), Puna District, where we live, there are quite a few wild chickens. If left unchecked, they would get out of hand. We have a coop, so sometimes, if I can catch a hen, I might keep one now and then. Next option, if I catch hens or roosters, often I can give them away for free. Next option, catch and release them in the jungle. Last option. I shoot them. My neighbor lady will take them and make soup or whatever.

    I have been trying to catch this one wild hen, before she starts laying, as soon after that, there will be 6-8 maybe peeps running around, and it starts all over. This hen just wouldn't go into the cage so I could trap her. So, today, there she was, where I could take a safe shot, so I took it. Perfect head shot at about 10 yards with my Daisy 880. Eight pumps behind a 6.9 grain RWS Super H Point hollow point. An old Leaper 4x32 AO scope. She flopped a bit on nerves, but was quite dead. Got a call in to my neighbor to see if she wants the bird.

    I have one old wild rooster we call grampa, and we let him be. About a year ago, an intruder rooster came and beat the bejeezus out of grampa. I won't stand for that, so I sent him to meet his maker. I have one more trouble making rooster. Either I catch him, or shoot him. My neighbor wants him either way. Then about two more young hens, and I should be done for a while.

    A Daisy 880, as mentioned above, can do this job. I also go after rats at night going into our coop. We have an acre here, and no fence, so have to watch for these critters. Rats here often have a very nasty disease called rat lungworm, and that disease is as bad as it sounds for humans. Do rats have that on the mainland??

    My 880 is approaching 3000 pellets gone through it. It's quiet, easy to pump, quiet to pump, and accurate enough to maybe 15 yards of so. This job is never done, but somebody has to do it.

[Blowpipe Sam]

What a great story!  Wild chickens.  Whooda thunk it?  I've always argued that the little bird in a package of silhouette targets was a duck.  Because chickens aren't game animals.  Now you've shot that argument down. 

[only1harry]

Feral chickens are a big problem in the islands of Hawaii.  They are like our ground squirrels or groundhogs.

[birdmove]

What a great story!  Wild chickens.  Whooda thunk it?  I've always argued that the little bird in a package of silhouette targets was a duck.  Because chickens aren't game animals.  Now you've shot that argument down. 

    Literally!

[Tonykarter]

What a concept!  Wild chickens.  I'd love to have them here.  I might then shoot something other than paper!  There'd be a permanent pot of chicken soup on the back burner.  And my wife cooks a mean pot of chicken soup. 

I bet they taste like...chicken.

[Jshooter71]

We have wild chickens in Arkansas, but they belong to somebody somewhere. Wild dogs in Arkansas are the same as the wild chickens. Most folks in Arkansas don’t keep their pets or chickens at home or in a fence. If they’re on my property, they’re game. Long as the wife or kids don’t find out. I’d sure like to hunt them all, but then I’d be labeled the bad guy.

[PeterC]

My brother has farm land on Maui that borders a abandoned macadamia nut orchard. He gets lots of wild chickens migrating onto his property. Used to have about 4 different groups of chickens around the house and their roosters crowing mid day was unending. Sometimes during a phone call it was difficult to hear due to the roosters crowing.
Next door neighbor does plant research and develops new varieties of flowers. Anyway, chickens somehow got into his greenhouse and ate about $10K worth of plant starts. Well after this incident neighbor bought me a .22 springer to remove the chickens. This gun sent me down the air gun path and eventually to PCP guns and eventually to hunting wild pigs with airguns.

Chicken hunting is great sport as they have excellent eye sight and hearing. They taste horrible though. Real gamey taste. Have tried all kinds of ways to cook and stew. Only way I found is to pluck, gut and put in ice water with a little white vinegar for 2-3 days (same for wild pigs), but is too much work for a chicken. Have some neighbors that trap them and put them on chicken feed for a month or two and that gets rid of the gamey taste.


Jungle fowl taken with .30 cal impact

[Blowpipe Sam]

You'll never see a feral chicken around these parts.  I wish we had them.  Coyote love them.  The locals tell me that a tethered chicken is the best bait for coyote.

[only1harry]

You'll never see a feral chicken around these parts.  I wish we had them.  Coyote love them.  The locals tell me that a tethered chicken is the best bait for coyote.

I agree, they wouldn't last long at all.  We have way too many predators that HI does not, like fox, bobcat, coyote, raccoon.  They would all be after the chickens and wipe them out quickly.  For all we know there were wild chickens running around a few thousand years ago in the US or most of the world, until the predators wiped them out. 

[Xraycer]

I lived on Kauai for 5yrs, so I'm very familiar. My only gripe with these feral chickens was that some of them would crow in the middle of the night.....very loudly! 

[Blowpipe Sam]

You'll never see a feral chicken around these parts.  I wish we had them.  Coyote love them.  The locals tell me that a tethered chicken is the best bait for coyote.

I agree, they wouldn't last long at all.  We have way too many predators that HI does not, like fox, bobcat, coyote, raccoon.  They would all be after the chickens and wipe them out quickly.  For all we know there were wild chickens running around a few thousand years ago in the US or most of the world, until the predators wiped them out. 

And yet grouse and pheasant survive in the wild here.  And we have feral housecats too.  A FWC biologist told me years ago that feral cats are the worst invasive predator there is.  They kill everything without compunction.  Anyhoo...  I think some of the gaminess issue of feral chicken definitely comes from their diet.  I know from experience that in Texas Rabbits can become inedible at certain times of the year from eating sage.  Around here a feral hog that has been feeding on acorn mast in the hardwood hammocks is prized eating while one that has been feeding on fiddler crabs in the salt marsh ain't fit to eat.

[Bentong]

But good eating with this one feeding on fiddler crabs!!👍

[Blowpipe Sam]

But good eating with this one feeding on fiddler crabs!!👍

Right on! Sheephead is darn good eating!

[Tater]

But good eating with this one feeding on fiddler crabs!!👍

Right on! Sheephead is darn good eating!

Tastes like chicken?

[Xraycer]

But good eating with this one feeding on fiddler crabs!!👍

Right on! Sheephead is darn good eating!

Tastes like chicken?

I'm betting it tastes like fiddler crab

[Bicycleman]

You'll never see a feral chicken around these parts.  I wish we had them.  Coyote love them.  The locals tell me that a tethered chicken is the best bait for coyote.

I agree, they wouldn't last long at all.  We have way too many predators that HI does not, like fox, bobcat, coyote, raccoon.  They would all be after the chickens and wipe them out quickly.  For all we know there were wild chickens running around a few thousand years ago in the US or most of the world, until the predators wiped them out.

Wild chickens would probably still be around the US if they had not tried to cross the roads.

[birdmove]

    I remember a small parking area in Hilo. Don't get me srong, as I LOVE Hilo! But a group of chickens obviously hung out pretty heavily in that spot. The slimy greenish chicken poop was a thick coating. Nasty stuff. Hilo is like the rainiest city/town in, I believe, the world. The rain kept it nice and moist.
    Despite Hilo being so rainy, they also get lots of beautiful sunny days. It's just that, sometimes when it rains, it REALLY RAINS!! 
    I have trapped and given away probably 15-20 chickens. One time a couple were just finishing build a chicken coop. I had just trapped a mother hen and about five babies. I have them all to this couple. I'm sure it worked out well. When trying to introduce a strange hen into an existing group of chicken, they will pick on the newby, sometimes to the point of killing her. We have four hens, one who survived being introduced into a group. The four hens easily keeps my wife and I in eggs, and we often give some away.

[Bullfrog]

Game type chickens can make it. My ancestors on their farm in rural north Florida kept several hundred fighting chickens in feral conditions that they used for their egg and meat birds. No care was given to them. They just lived wild in the woods like wild turkey. In that era they would have been contending with the usual North American predators plus red wolves and panthers. The game chickens reproduce faster than human and animal predators can take them.  Once a month my grandmother would stalk the woods in the remote parts of the farm and harvest 30 or so at a time for the family's monthly chicken meat and it never put a dent in the population. My great grandfather and uncles would collect the stags a couple times of year and then condition them for cock fighting. They'd catch the stags at night on the roost by sticking a long pole under their feet and they'd instinctively step onto the poll off the tree branch they were roosted on.

[Bullfrog]

You'll never see a feral chicken around these parts.  I wish we had them.  Coyote love them.  The locals tell me that a tethered chicken is the best bait for coyote.

I agree, they wouldn't last long at all.  We have way too many predators that HI does not, like fox, bobcat, coyote, raccoon.  They would all be after the chickens and wipe them out quickly.  For all we know there were wild chickens running around a few thousand years ago in the US or most of the world, until the predators wiped them out.

The original wild chickens do still live in the jungles of SE Asia and they deal with all the predators that live there. Domestic chickens have had the wild instincts bred out of them. I raise a derivative of the wild chickens free range on my farm and I've only ever lost one adult of their kind to a predator in over one and a half years. On occasion I will loose a chick or two. They're the chicken equivalent of wolf-dog hybrids.







That last one is a bad SOB. You can see it in his eyes. He's so aggressive that I have to keep him locked up for safety. I use him for breeding stock. The trick is to get that aggression turned towards other animals and not humans.

[Blowpipe Sam]

Game type chickens can make it. My ancestors on their farm in rural north Florida kept several hundred fighting chickens in feral conditions that they used for their egg and meat birds. No care was given to them. They just lived wild in the woods like wild turkey. In that era they would have been contending with the usual North American predators plus red wolves and panthers. The game chickens reproduce faster than human and animal predators can take them.  Once a month my grandmother would stalk the woods in the remote parts of the farm and harvest 30 or so at a time for the family's monthly chicken meat and it never put a dent in the population. My great grandfather and uncles would collect the stags a couple times of year and then condition them for cock fighting. They'd catch the stags at night on the roost by sticking a long pole under their feet and they'd instinctively step onto the poll off the tree branch they were roosted on.

That's the kind of local folk lore I love to collect.  You can bet that information will turn up in one of my early Florida cultural programs for the park  Thank you!