Cweed..we used to trawl up big stingers while prawning up the gulf,quite a few have healed stumps,where they obviously been chopped.its a bad situation when you have a massive ray on your hopper,when all you want to do is get it, and any other fish back in the water alive.they were obviously stressen,and trying to stab us with their barbs..we would put our crab rakes on the tail and just grab and snap off how ever many barbs they had on them..no you dont need to cut the tail..if you snap them straight back they come off easy..and they will grow more.