I used to hunt a lot when I was growing up in Texas.  Sometimes on a deer lease, they offer you a bounty for non game animals that have become pests or dangerous.  I hunted a South Texas lease that was offering a $50 bounty on domestic dogs.  That's right, you shoot the Beverly Hills chihuahua, you get half a bill.  I asked the land owner why he'd do that and he explained that there was a nearby trailer park where the residents didn't control their dogs.  They were packing up (when domestic dogs pack up they often stop acting like pets) and killing his livestock.  He said he had talked to the manager of the park and posted signs for the residents, but had gotten no response. 

I spoke to one of the guys that was hunting the lease before us and he said he stopped hunting deer altogether and got 7 dogs.  "How the fuck do you shoot 7?  Were you using an AK-47?"

He replied that he had a plain old .3006 and had shot four before they knew what was going on.  He then got out of his blind and yelled "here doggy doggy" until they came back and shot three more.

That sounded kind of cold blooded to me, but he did pay for his trip and then some.

I had no intention of blasting anybody's pet even if the opportunity presented itself.

I hunted deer at dawn and dusk and hunted bird during the day.  I was walking back to the camper with a 12 gauge when I came across a full size pitbull mix walking around by itself.  It had no collar.  It wasn't in a pack of other dogs, so for all I knew it belonged to the land owner.  It struck a pretty agressive posture and started to growl and bark.  I'm a full sized guy and had a shotgun, so I wasn't too intimidated.  I walked around it. 

When I passed the dog up and started to walk away, it charged me.  When I turned to face it, it stopped and continued to growl.  I walked backwards, facing it for a while and it just stood there.  But when I turned my back, it rushed me again.  We kept this up for quite a way down the dirt road. 

Eventually my patience was exhausted.  I removed the bird shot from the double barrel 12 gauge and replaced it with buckshot.  Then I got down on one knee.  As soon as I was small from the dog's point of view, it charged me.  It was tearing up turf and slobbering the whole way.  My plan was to wait until it was at point blank and give it both barrels in the kisser (the shotgun had two triggers).  At the last minute, however, I chickened out.  What if the dog pulled a move from the Matrix and I missed with both shots.  I'd then have to reload with the dog latched onto my face or balls.  So I just hit him with the full choke barrel.

BOOM!  The dog cartwheeled to a stop right in front of me.  I under estimated the mess a 12 gauge with a 00 buckshot load made at 20' range.  That's 9 large pellets moving at 1600 ft/second.  His skull apparently broke apart like an eggshell.

I didn't want to kill Fido.  I was a full grown man with a shotgun.  If I were the land owner's 12 year old son with a pellet gun or even a .22, the whole exchange might have gone differently.  I didn't feel too bad and got over it almost right away. 

Before you ask, you bet your ass I collected the $50 bounty.