Rural Dog Wars Part 2 - Shoot and Call the Sheriff

This story's from a guy I'll call Walt who does work for me on my place.

Walt is also near my age, and grew up on a farm in the county next door and has raised cattle all his life.

He now has about 100 acres and one thing he does to make money on that acreage is to buy day old, or so, dairy heifers from the dairies, and raise them until their old enough to breed and sells them back to the dairy farms.

You might wonder why dairies would sell their heifers only to buy them back a year or so later.

Well, raising a dairy calf is hard work, as momma's milk goes into the bottle or carton.  The baby gets sold and is bottle fed in a barn until it's big enough and strong enough to be weaned and put out on pasture.  The heifers are given time to grow, then bred and the dairies buy them back as close to milk production as they can.

So Walt's got a barn full of baby calves and one night there's a gawdawful ruckus out there.  He gets to the barn to find two Rotts high tailing it out of there.  He's left with a couple of dead calves, and some badly mangled ones.

Walt leaves his wife with the calves and takes off in his truck after them.  Fortunately, he knows where they're going, and catches up to them right before they head up their owners driveway and ...

BLAM, BLAM.

Next morning, the neighbor pulls in and demands to know if Walt is the one who shot his dogs.

Walt says "yes" and the man starts off about the dog's price and the AKC papers and whaterverthefuck and Walt says, "you want to come into my barn and see what's left of my calves and we can let the lawyers decide who owes who what, and if you don't like it go call the sherriff."

The man storms off, and may or may not have called the sheriff, but never bothered Walt again, and never had anymore dogs go wandering off his property.

So, the moral of the story is:
Shoot, Fess up to it and Tell the Bastards to CALL THE SHERIFF if they don't like it.