In Fort Lauderdale, FL., as Local 10 News reports, “Residents of a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood are warning that a woman and man have been hunting peahens and peacocks in the community.”
As you can imagine, the mostly “pro-peacock” neighborhood in Ft. Lauderdale is in an uproar. Janet Swanson, a local resident stated, “I have no idea what would cross somebody’s mind that they would come out here in their truck to shoot peacocks”.
We don’t know either Ms. Swanson. Shooting animals from trucks in residential neighborhoods is never a good idea.
However, as an avid hunter, the first thing that popped into my mind was: Peacock? How do they taste and where can I hunt them?
My curiosity was peaked, and I wondered, is it even legal to hunt peacocks in Florida?
After performing a thorough search of the web, I discovered that Blue Peafowl, are not considered wildlife. They are classified by state law as domestic livestock, the same classification that applies to chickens. (But, do they taste like chicken? That’s the real question here.)
“According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, that means the state has no authority to regulate the birds. Instead, the task of making and enforcing laws about peafowl is up to individual communities. Each community may have its own rules regarding what a resident is permitted to do to remove or eliminate nuisance peafowl from the area. However, peafowl may find some protection under Florida’s state animal cruelty laws.”
Okay avid hunters, don’t book a trip yet, there isn’t a hunting season for peacocks in Florida. However, if they aren’t considered a game animal in Florida, why was someone hunting them? Oh, the woes of Floridians.
Apparently, not everyone loves peacocks as they can be quite noisy. Fortunately, there are alternatives to being arrested and going to jail for shooting a peacock down in the street . . .
You can either get permission from the state to poison them or just call your local authorities. I’m sure these are the phone calls that make cops in Florida love their jobs: “domestic disturbance, peacock involved”.
Either way, seems like such a waste of a potentially great tasting bird and a beautiful mount.
Interesting, indeed. Peafowl are in the pheasant family. Just kook how beautiful the male Ring-neck pheasant is. Why would anyone want to hunt them? They taste great! And yes, they taste like chicken as they are a mild white-meated bird, excluding legs, etc… So now the question about legality of hunting them. If they are not a regulated game-bird, there is no season, you make sure that you ARE IN an area where hunting is allowed and you have the land-owner’s permission, I would think that you are able to harvest peafowl. Think about feral hogs in the same manner.
Asinine idea, “hunting” peacocks. If they overpopulate an area and become a serious nuisance or hazard to public welfare then I can see a reduction program. If this is the result of a desire for a “trophy” then, well, it’s just asinine.
A neighbor in Lakeside, CA said that they taste like turkey.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
It is a known fact that nominative animals always become a nuisance when they start to overpopulated a place they don’t belong. Housecats have become an intruder, and nuisance pest through out the world. Their saliva is toxic, and everything they get a hold of becomes, deathly sick, or moods very strong antibiotics to over come the saliva. Tiny pricks in the skin let the saliva in to the blood stream which immediately causes infection. Cats spread several diseases from their worms, fleas, and ticks. The is scratch, and bites become infected, causing infection, and a blue streak in the infected area. Feral cats are very aggressive, approaching any one, of animal nearby. Most areas have several thousand feral cats around and cat activists defend them, and want to spay and neuter and turn them loose again. This has been shown not to have any positive effect. Cats have destroyed many types of wildlife, causing extinction in many of them. What can be done to protect people, and animals from these cats ?
Just because you shouldn’t, doesn’t mean you can’t.
the folks who whine about hunting peacocks would think nothing of ordering up some KFC or Popeyes chicken. Peacocks are eaten where they are native birds, Don’t see an issue with hunting them as they are noisy and destructive birds and you plan on eating them.
I never saw anyone come to the defense of chicken or turkeys. And it is a known fact that they suffer at the hands of man. I’m not going to say that I would hunt them, but if they are overpopulating an area and we can’t find anything else to eat… so be it!