Wow, that sounds sinister, doesn’t it? It sounds like the name is not so much spoken as intoned: “The Killing Cooooonnnnnne,” like a tool of unspeakable torture. Actually it’s a quick and merciful way to dispatch a bird, and I got mine at Home Depot.

Or more accurately, I got the sheet metal for it at Home Depot. The pop rivets and tools I already had, and Jess and I put it together in about 15 minutes.

A killing cone just holds the bird motionless for the coop de grace.* Its body goes upside down in the cone, its head comes out the hole at the bottom, and a rubber band holds its feet together. You slit the throat and in about two minutes you can withdraw the body from the cone and begin skinning. The bird just goes to sleep, and that’s it.

In case you’re still reading, here’s how I made mine.

In the home heating and ducting area of Home Depot you can get a sheet of 16” x 30” stainless steel for about $6. You’ll need a sharpie marker, a straightedge/ruler, tinsnips, and gloves. Mark the center of the long edge (at 15”). Make another mark about 5” out from either side of this center mark. Connect the two side marks with the opposite corner of the metal and cut along your lines. (You’ll need gloves; the cut metal is rather sharp.) You’ll now have a trapezoid that’s 30” wide on one edge, 10” wide on the other, and 16” deep. Then, with a helper, curl the two diagonal edges together to make a cone. You’ll need to predrill in order to rivet them together. We put duck tape* on ours to soften the cut edges.

Hang the cone small side down and secure with screws near the top edge. I hung mine from an old pallet, leaned up against the poultry fence. I positioned the wheelbarrow filled with wood shavings (usu. used for duck bedding) to capture the blood, which makes excellent fertilizer. Jess put it around our fruit trees in the garden area.

Sorry, I’m not meaning to be graphic here. But if you eat meat, it was alive once, and it came to you in roughly the same fashion. Still, I’d guess that animal wasn’t home raised, and it wasn’t held in the arms of its owner before its demise, and it didn’t hear him thank it for its sacrifice before it died.

*yes, that is a pun.