I am a rural non-gun owner

[beevul]

62. Rural...very rural...gun owner here.

Probably as rural and possibly more rural than anyone else posting on DU.

The nearest town is an unincorporated town of 23 - if you include the local store owners cat having had kittens - or so the joke goes. Our nearest neighbors are 1.5 miles away, and police response would be 20 to 30 minutes to our location. We live several miles to the south of this town, smack dab in the middle of farm fields. Around us, live several packs of coyotes. You can go out on the porch in the evenings and listen to them call back and forth to each other.

While I don't much expect them to try to take an adult human, they have taken some of our cats, and tried to take some of our precious pommies, once even off a leash. They are brazen, aparently having become semi-accustomed to human contact/presence. We see them run across the road all the time, when driving the dirt roads and even the highways, and they're very very common to be seen, after having been hit by a vehicle.

I have hunted them, killed a few, but this is generally ineffective in getting them to stay away. Urinating along our property line - don't ask, it involved drinking large quantities of liquids - was more or less ineffective. We have them run right past our front steps from the tree line, through our yard, and out the driveway, while we were sitting on those steps...and they give a glance, and lazily keep trotting on their way. They are not alarmed by our presence.

During the warm season, we've taken to being armed and alert when we let the dogs out, paying careful attention to the dogs and keeping them close. This, in the past has led to having to stand between a coyote or four, and our little ones whom they wish to make a meal of, before we took to being armed. They still fear the sound of gunfire.

We have lost several of our babies, in spite of our efforts.

As a solution to the coyote problem, we are considering this (a pair of them, in fact):



No, thats not a mutated 'pit on steroids lol. Its a boerboel. They call them "lion dogs", and they are very much protector dogs.

That being said, we also live in a corridor that seems to be the preferred escape route for prisoners when they escape the local correctional institution, so I'd still rather have a gun in the house than not. Those that know me hereabouts on DU, know that I own two functional firearms - a 17 caliber rifle, and a single handgun.

This being an old farmhouse, the windows are large, and though I know where they keys are, breaking in would be trivial for anyone that really wanted to, whether we were home or not.