Is It Legal To Shoot Animals On Your Property

When Can You Impale an Beast That Comes on Your Property?

Whether it'southward legal to shoot or kill trespassers is i of our most common property law questions. Short answer: generally just in self-defense and in fear of actual damage or death. And while we normally don't think of animal trespassers in this light, perhaps we should.

An unidentified Texas human being was recently hospitalized and had his jaw wired shot after a bullet he fired at an armadillo in his thousand at three a.m. ricocheted off the brute's armor and struck him in the face up. The status of the armadillo is unknown, but the man's unfortunate fate raises an interesting legal question: When can you legally impale animals on your property?

Animal Trespass

About jurisdictions have animal cruelty laws that prohibit people from intentionally killing animals (with the obvious exception of licensed hunting). In California, for instance, a person who "maliciously and intentionally maims, mutilates, tortures, or wounds a living animate being, or maliciously and intentionally kills an brute" tin exist charged with a felony.

New York'southward animal cruelty law is fifty-fifty more than comprehensive:

A person who overdrives, overloads, tortures or cruelly beats or unjustifiably injures, maims, mutilates or kills any brute, whether wild or tame, and whether belonging to himself or to another, or deprives any animal of necessary sustenance, nutrient or drink, or neglects or refuses to furnish information technology such sustenance or beverage, or causes, procures or permits whatsoever fauna to be overdriven, overloaded, tortured, cruelly beaten, or unjustifiably injured, maimed, mutilated or killed, or to exist deprived of necessary food or beverage, or who willfully sets on foot, instigates, engages in, or in any way furthers whatever act of cruelty to any brute, or any act tending to produce such cruelty, is guilty of a class A misdemeanor.

Neither California'southward nor New York's beast cruelty laws are specific to location, so they would presumably employ every bit to your holding as to someone else'southward.

Animal Attacks

There are important exceptions to most animal cruelty laws. For instance, it is permissible to kill an brute under California law if the creature is a danger to life, limb, or holding. And the important qualifier in New York'south statute is "unjustifiably injured, maimed, mutilated or killed." Nigh courts have interpreted animate being cruelty statutes, to allow killing a unsafe animal so long as the killing wasn't malicious.

Most of usa wouldn't see a wandering armadillo at three in the forenoon equally dangerous to anything but our gardens flowerbeds -- and even then, some diced cayenne peppers tin can go on the armored trespassers abroad. But, as one Texas homo institute out, that armor might be more than dangerous than we think.

Related Resources:

Find Animal Lawyers Nearly You lot (FindLaw's Lawyer Directory)
Is It Legal to Hit Your Pets? (FindLaw's Constabulary and Daily Life)
When Are Constabulary Allowed to Shoot, Kill Dogs? (FindLaw Blotter)
Nat'fifty Pet Owners Day: Top 10 Legal Reminders (FindLaw'due south Police force and Daily Life)
How Much Is Your Pet Worth, Legally? (FindLaw'due south Constabulary and Daily Life)