The Kodiak Den

Spring has Sprung

2010-03-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

In the last 9 months, I've had so many ghost rat encounters (rat noggins perfectly lined up in the cross-hair, only to see the pellet somehow miss by seeming to pass through the creature), I was convinced that either 1) my yard was truly haunted by the spirits of rat hunts past, 2) my shooting ability had entirely deteriorated, or 3) something was wrong with my R1.

Three weeks ago, I had a rat coming out in broad daylight under the bird feeder, that I somehow managed to miss from 15 yards away. Two weeks ago, I had a rat on the bait station well-lit and centered, and somehow didn't hit him. If I wasn't prepared to declare an all-out supernatural visitation of the rodent kind, I was definitely at the point where I had completely lost all confidence in my shooting. I did target sessions where I would concentrate on nailing my hold consistently from shot-to-shot, only to see promising groups on the paper get ruined by a few flyers. I really wondered if there was some internal issue with the rifle, maybe it had a failing mainspring, maybe there was a faulty seal somewhere - maybe it was in desperate need of a tune. Well, I ended up going where I should have gone from the start - back to B.B. Pelletier's blog on Pyramyd Air. And there was ol' B.B. telling me that many accuracy issues with air guns are the result of a dirty bore. Of course! It was a total V8 moment.

Bonk! Clean the barrel you idiot

The truth is, I had been afraid to clean the bore of my rifle since I had no experience cleaning guns (not even a firearm), and since every tutorial I have ever read about cleaning an air rifle was filled with warnings, cautions, and BOLD LETTER DON'TS. The last thing I wanted to do was be the jackass that ruined a fine rifle because he didn't know what the hell he was doing with a cleaning rod. But I had, a couple years ago, purchased from the Yellow Forum Classifieds a Beeman Basic Cleaning Kit (no longer for sale) which included a cleaning rod, cleaning patches, bore cleaner/degreaser, and .20 cleaning pellets. So I had this kit in my closet, but had never used it out of a combination of not seeming to need it, and downright fear.

So a few nights ago, I decided to sack up, studied the instructions, and proceeded with the cleaning. I soaked a cleaning patch in the degreaser, tentatively pushed it through the bore from the breach, and repeated. Having never cleaned a gun, I have nothing to compare it to, but the black muck that came out on the patches was substantial. I ran many dry patches through until the black residue turned to a rusty brown, then faded almost completely. I then went out back and fired a few quick-cleaning felt pellets through. The directions in the kit said to fire 2-3 at a time to provide extra resistance (since they are so light) and keep the piston from slamming too fast and potentially damaging the gun. It was all I could do to force two of the things into the breech, so I went with that. When I squeezed the trigger, I was greeted with a very loud bang that set my ears ringing. I can't say with any certainty, but I wonder if the pellets, being so light, went supersonic. That would account for the loud bang. But I also didn't know if there was some sort of dieseling going on due to the cleaning fluid, or heaven knows what else. Of course, a lack of knowledge didn't stop me from promptly loading up two more cleaning pellets and repeating the exact same ear-ringing discharge. Then I put the gun away, hoping I hadn't ruined the gun or caused the neighbors to call the police.

The next day (yesterday), I took the gun out to see if anything was to come of all my trouble. I placed lemons on the bait station (about 18 yards away) to stand in for rats. I also went back to the Crow Magnums (my favorite, and once-upon-a-time-accurate-in-this-gun pellets) and again worked on nailing my hold consistently. I was encouraged with the results (there were no misses!) though I had to spend a little time getting the zero reset for the weight of the CMs. By the end, I was satisfied and started feeling a little trace of the old confidence return.

Last night at sunset, I baited the station on the fence with more sun butter and Cheerios (that combo is like rat-nip). I set up at the patio table and pointed a red-tinted flashlight at the target. At about 8:00, I saw that same big roof rat I missed a couple weeks ago come ambling up and watched him take the first Cheerio. I cocked and loaded my rifle, but he was gone by the time I got it in position to shoot. I had about a 20-minute wait until he came back again, but this time I was ready. I brought the rifle back up, replicated my hold from the earlier target session, and put the cross-hair on his head. He was eating off the very front of the bait station, and I was seeing him almost directly head-on. Through the scope I could see his two eyes glowing red, reflecting the light of my torch. I squeezed the trigger and thought I heard the thunk of impact. I heard a subtle squealing and then a thump as the rat fell off the fence and landed in the plants underneath.

I took a flashlight along with my gripper/reaching tool out to the scene and there that fat bugger lay, as dead as can be. I was pleased to see that the accuracy was spot on: the pellet had gone in exactly at his left eye and not exited. He was a big one - fat and 16 inches from stem to stern. Bagged and tagged and into the trash.

I don't want to jinx my success, but I can only hope that the cleaning was the missing element all this time. Only time and more shooting will tell. But I am really happy with last night's results. It feels like I finally got my gun back.

The Tale of the Ghost Rat

2010-03-02T13:48:00.000-08:00

Gather round the campfire and I'll tell you a ghost story, and don't mind that red-tinted flashlight shining under my chin... In a previous post, I told of how I had perfectly centered a large rat in my scope, had fired, and upon going to look for his carcass, realized that I had somehow completely missed him. The eerie part was that the strike point of the pellet was right behind where he was stretched out. Either this was some sort of Jules Winnfield "Divine Intervention" or that was one lucky rat.

"We just witnessed a miracle, and I want you to fucking acknowledge it!"

As described in my previous post, I had bagged a couple of rats over the following nights, but when the ghost rat reappeared, by the time I got my gun up and ready -- he vanished and did not return. So I camped out on a subsequent evening and saw him again. How did I know it was him? Well, he was a fairly large rat, which helped him stand out from some of the others I had seen. Plus he had this very distinctive approach to the bait station -- an approach that no other rat duplicated.

This time I waited for him to come all the way down and sit on the bait station. He did. I lined him up and took the shot. The pellet thunked the wood but again I was astonished to find there was no dead rat. In fact when I went over to look for him, I could hear him angrily scolding me with a gravelly chattering from somewhere back in the bushes. The sound continued as he made his way back along the fence line going deeper into the brambles. He was pissed. So was I. The ghost rat strikes again.

I decided to give it one more try. Several nights later I baited and waited for the phantom to appear. He showed up early and started taking the bait. I quickly shouldered my gun, lined him up and fired again -- and again I missed. I was speechless, but the rat had more angry chattering for me as he faded back into the bushes.

I was completely flummoxed. At this point, I had zero confidence in my shooting. I thought I was doing everything right -- I was replicating my loose hold each time, slowing my breathing, taking shots that were perfectly lined up, squeezing the trigger slowly and evenly -- all the tactics that are key to accuracy. And yet I was missing.

The next day I took a closer look at my rifle. With the two-way recoil inherent in spring guns, it is not uncommon for the screws that hold the scope mounts to the rifle to become loose and for the scope to actually shift position, with accuracy suffering. When I checked them, all screws on the scope and mounts were perfectly tight, and the position of the scope relative to the rear scope stop had not changed at all. Then I looked at the screws that hold the metal portion of the rifle inside the wooden stock. Aha! I found that both of the forward screws had become loose. When the screws get loose, it can change the way the gun moves/vibrates on each shot (the gun is now able to move erratically within the stock). Any variance in that movement will result in inaccuracy. That's why it is so critical to establish and repeat the way you hold the rifle, and to hold it loosely -- to allow the gun to vibrate the exact same way with each shot. Tom Gaylord calls this "the artillery hold". So I tightened the screws and went out to shoot some lemons. Replicating my nighttime position and hold, I was pleased to see that I could again put pellets where I was aiming.

That night I placed a little more sun butter and some Cheerios on the station and just stayed inside all night. I wanted the rat to start to feel like it was safe to come out again. The bait was gone the next morning.

So that evening, I went out again, determined to make the ghost rat into exactly that. Right at 9 o'clock, I spotted a rat on the fence peeking out from the edge of the vines. He was about two feet away from the bait station, staring at the sun butter, but he was looking out in my general direction trying to tell if the crazy guy with the gun was out there. He disappeared for a while, but showed up again about a half-hour later. Again he ran along the top of the fence before going behind it, out of view. He followed his now familiar routine, poking his head over the top of the bait station, stretching down to reach the food and finally just hopping down to sit on the surface. I carefully raised the rifle into the open palm of my hand, centered the cross-hair on his head and squeezed the trigger. I heard the thump of the pellet as it connected with the rat. At long last, that was that. The beast never even dropped to the ground -- he died right on the bait station.

A most satisfying kill

The pellet went in the top of his cranium and exited over his right shoulder. I hope this accuracy is a sign that my marksmanship is on the mend. Only time (and more rats) will tell. But for the time being, this is one ghost that has been busted.

I ain't afraid of no ghosts

Same Bait Time, Same Bait Station

2008-05-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

After the mysterious incident at the bait station in which a pellet seemed to pass harmlessly through a rat like it was some ghostly apparition, I decided to make some changes to my approach. I surmised from the rat's skittish behavior that the reddish plastic over my flashlight wasn't as undetectable as it once seemed -- especially when the batteries were at full strength -- so I needed a new tack. I 'borrowed' some of my wife's red nail polish, removed the light bulb from my Maglite and painted it. After it dried, I replaced it and flicked the switch within my darkened garage. I was pleased to see a beam of truly deep red light issue forth.

I also decided that I would go back to using Crow Magnum pellets. I knew that if the JSB had merely 'pin-cushioned' the rat, not doing enough damage on impact to drop him in his tracks, then the massive hollow point of the CM was the right solution. I went out that evening intent on zeroing the gun with the CMs, but the wind was howling that day, gusting over 30 miles per hour. No matter what I did, I could not get the pellets to group. Disappointed, I went back to the JSBs. These, at least, I was able to keep striking within a reasonable circle.

As the sun was setting, I baited again with the sun butter/Cheerio combo and settled in at the patio table. It wasn't more than five minutes later that the dark silhouette of a rat could be seen creeping towards the red-lit bait station. He was very cautious, but the lure of the high-protein concoction was just too great. At last he climbed onto the wood platform, almost directly facing me, and started licking the sun butter of the front of the station. I zeroed on his noggin and squeezed the trigger.

There was a sharp squeal, then a thump on the ground as he fell off the fence. I could hear thrashing on the darkened ground. I ran out immediately and found him back under the fence as if he had made an attempt to get back into cover. The pellet had gone in right behind his left ear and out his back on the right. I left the remainder of the bait as an enticement for further participants, and called it a night.

Ol' Blue Eyes

Sure enough, the bait was gone the next morning. So a couple days later, I decided to set up again. I tried another round of target practice with the Crow Magnums since the winds had died down a bit. I had a promising couple of first shots, but then the groups went wild again. Much to my chagrin, it was starting to look like this rifle just didn't love the CMs. That was very disappointing because I really love their knockdown power. In any case, I switched over to Beeman Field Target Specials which were spot on.

Darkness started to descend as I baited and got comfortable on the patio. This time an ambitious rat came at about 8:40pm - trying to get a jump on the crowds at the bait station! He gave me about the same head-on view as the last rat, and I didn't waste any time putting the crosshairs on him. Thunk! The rat flopped and fell off the fence, stone dead.

The early rat gets the sun butter, and express delivery of a pellet to the bean

He was a little guy, only about 11 inches nose to tail. I quickly bagged him up and returned to the patio to see if I could coax out another. Sure enough, at about 9:30 a larger rat poked his head over the back of the fence. He stretched down from above, then ended up sitting right on the bait station. I put down the binoculars and shouldered the gun. But in that time, he had scooted off and did not return. I packed it in about 45 minutes later. So I know there's another big one out there for the taking.

Now Where Were We?

2008-05-27T15:29:00.000-07:00

Let me start this post with a couple of notes. First off, I want to apologize for taking such an extended layoff since my last post. Today is January 14, 2009. It has been over six months since I posted about the rat I sniped from my perch atop the shed. Over the summer, I had a lot of ratting adventures in the yard, but I could never seem to get it together and get the stories posted. For those who had become loyal readers of this blog (all three of you!), I feel terrible that I neglected it (and you) for so long. Please forgive me.

Accept this FTD 'Pick Me Up' bouquet along with my apologies

That said, I am now trying to get caught up with the backlog of stories. I made notes and drafts of some stories as they happened, so I am rounding those out and will post them as they are finished. For organizing purposes they will be cataloged by the dates they happened as opposed to the dates when I finally got my lazy ass around to posting them. So look for new posts to show up in May/June/July/etc. of 2008. But hey, enough of my yacking. Let's boogie!

Okay, so after my rooftop sniping success, I went top shelf again one other time. In spite of my best attempts to remain silent and undetected, for some reason, the rats would not emerge. I knew they were close -- I could hear them in the bushes and I knew they were being drawn to the sunflower seed butter. But even after waiting for well over an hour, not one showed his head while I waited. About 45 minutes into my wait, the batteries on my twin flashlights started to fade. I had deliberately not put in fresh batteries because I wanted the light to be slightly subdued. But by the one hour mark, the light had dwindled to the point that I could no longer see the target area. So I decided to call it a night.

Climbing down from the shed roof, I walked around the perimeter of the yard, scanning the blackberries with my flashlight. In at least five different spots in the yard, I heard shuffling in the bushes when I drew near. It seemed as if every 25 feet or so, there was another rat to be heard back amidst the vines. I got the unsettling feeling that I was surrounded. It was nearly midnight, and I was dead tired -- which made it an even more surreal experience. I went back over to the walkway/gap between the garage and shed to check one last time on my bait station when I heard more shuffling. A moment later I saw a medium-sized roof rat climbing over the stump of an old rose vine at the base of the brambles along the side fence. I had my gun, but the rat disappeared before I could even consider lining it up. Baiting back in this tight, confined area just wasn't conducive to continued success. Clearly I needed to find a new means of taking the fight to the enemy.

The next day, I moved the bait station to a new spot along the fence on the opposite (south) side of the back yard. This placement was closer to the bird feeders. It was also close to (even more) blackberry and rose bushes from which I had heard activity that night. I baited it that night with sun butter and a few Cheerios to see if the rats would find it. Sure enough, in the morning it was picked clean.

My amateur diagram of the yard with key features noted

The new bait station placement was preferable in a lot of ways. It allowed me to shoot from a comfortable sitting position on the patio. Also, it was at a distance of around 17 yards which allowed me to use the scoped R1 again. And that distance also meant that I could wait without having to fear every tiny noise or movement I made. I would have to be quiet, sure, but not a statue.

I placed lemons on the bait station to use as stand-ins for rodents to get in some target practice. I wanted to find the most accurate pellet for the job, and also wanted to make sure my scope was zeroed for that specific pellet and this new distance. I found that my new .20 JSB Exacts were going more or less where I wanted them so I set up that night for the shootout. In the shed, I had some old bamboo tiki torch holders, so I took the torch part out, drove the stake into the lawn and placed one of my red-tinted flashlights on top, pointing at the bait station. I turned it on at dusk, took my place at the patio table, and waited for darkness -- and rats -- to descend.

It was right at 9pm (the 'witching hour' for most rats around my place) when I spotted a rat emerge from the vegetation about five feet to the left of the bait station. The top rail of the fence was a perfect highway to the sun butter, but the rat hesitated. He seemed shy of the red light. I had replaced the batteries, so it was shining particularly brightly. In fact, the light looked almost more white than red. The rat started along the fence rail but quickly balked as he got closer to the brightest area centered on the bait station. Instead of continuing on, he jumped up onto the top of the fence and disappeared into the darkness of some branches that overhung into the neighbor's yard.

It was about fifteen minutes later when I spotted him again. This time he must have been on an unseen branch or vine because he was supporting himself on the other side of the fence, peeking over like the neighbor from Home Improvement.

Is that you, Wilson?

He finally worked up the nerve to stretch down from above/behind the bait station and start eating the goods I had smeared on the base of it. He was now perpendicular to me -- his head pointing down and his tail up -- but I had a perfect look at him. I raised the rifle and brought him into scope view. I centered on his head and squeezed the trigger - thunk! Through the scope I saw him leap off the fence and onto the ground, then I heard some thrashing in the bushes below. I was certain I'd hit him, but I didn't want to break cover. I was going to take all comers this night. So I waited about ten minutes for another rat to show before my curiosity got the better of me and I went out to retrieve the carcass. When I got out there, it was gone.

I searched high and low in the darkness, but could find no sign of him, not even a drop of blood was to be seen. I could clearly see where the pellet had gone into the wood of the bait station, and it looked like my shot went where I wanted it -- maybe a tad higher than intended, but it definitely looked like a trajectory that would have put it through the rat. In fact, I could even see small traces of rat hair sticking out of the hole in the wood. But no blood. Could I have somehow just barely grazed him? I doubted it, but the lack of blood or a body was hard to refute. Of course it was entirely possible that I could have wounded him gravely, but that he had enough life in him to sneak back into the thicket before expiring -- that's happened before. Another search in the daylight of the following morning did not reveal anything new. All I was left with was a tiny tuft of hair and uncertainty.

And like that... he's gone

However, the daylight did reveal that either he, or another rat had come back in the night and polished off the bait. So one way or another, there is more action to be had.

Fire from the Sky

2008-05-12T23:02:00.000-07:00

When I left off in my last post, I had observed the first rat activity of the Spring -- a sizable roof rat that had taken up residence in the blackberries on the side of the yard. And I had hatched a crazy plan to bag him with a shot from the roof of the shed. You can get caught up on the story here.

It was a Thursday evening when I first sat on the roof of the shed, gathering intelligence on the rat's habits, and his preferred dining hour. I took Friday night off (but still baited with Cheerios and sun butter), with my plan to go rooftop-sniper-style on Saturday night.

Well, as the old saying goes, "It never rains but it pours". On Saturday morning, I went out back to enjoy the lovely day. As I started to take a seat at the patio table, I looked out and saw the large form of a rat slithering about beneath the bird feeders on the cherry-plum tree. I immediately recognized it as a fat Norway rat, which meant it was a different rat than the one by the shed. So as quickly as I could, I crept back into the house and broke out my R1. Just recently I had received a new shipment of .20 caliber pellets (Crosman Premiers, JSB Exacts, H&N Round Balls, and JSB Predators) and had only fired each type about 10 times in the R1. But from the limited shooting, I had been impressed with the accuracy of the Crosman Premiers (CPs) as well as the JSB Exacts. So I loaded a CP into the rifle and crept back out to the patio table.

My view from the table

The rat was a bold one. He was munching fallen sunflower seeds which I had just that morning refilled the feeders with. He would come out along the wooden rail and just hang out while he scavenged. If something spooked him -- like a scrub jay swooping in to scare the sparrows and finches off the feeders -- he would dash back into the ivy cover, but otherwise he was content to just be out.

So propping my elbows on the table, I lined him up in the Simmons scope. He was about 16 yards away, and hard to see down in the little dirt depression that ran adjacent to the wooden rail. I could see where he was, but couldn't make out the detail of where his head was -- the grass was in the way.

Just then, a neighbor behind us fired up his lawnmower, and the sound of the engine caused the rat to raise his head up. His body was essentially facing me, but his head was now turned slightly to his right (my left) looking over to where the mower roared. I put the crosshair in his ear and squeezed the trigger. Thunk! went the rifle, and I saw the rat roll over, wriggling his tail and kicking his hind legs into the air. By the time I got out there, he had expired.

He was easily the match of the biggest rat I've gotten. A hefty bugger with a thick tail, and kind of a long snout for a Norway. The pellet had gone in just behind his left ear and had traveled three-quarters of the way through his body before exiting just to the left of his spine.

I reckoned this was the perfect way to start the day that (as I planned) would culminate in the thumping of that big ol' roof rat.

Another 16-incher for the trophy room

Later that afternoon, I brought out my open-sighted Gamo .177 to make sure I was still spot on with the zero for the 10-12 foot distance from the shed roof. When I printed these patterns on my targets, I knew I was ready for the party.

So Saturday evening came and I began to set up. I spread out a blanket and a couple of old pillows on the roof of the shed trying to make my sniper's nest as comfortable as possible. I set up the twin red-filtered flashlights in the same manner as on Thursday and brought up my rifle, already loaded with a Crow Magnum pellet. But an hour and a half went by with me sitting up on that roof and nary a sign of the stinking rat. One thing I noticed was that the moon was noticeably brighter even though it was only two nights later than the last time I'd been up. I wondered if that made the rat shy about coming out (due to it being lighter out for any potential nighttime predators) or if the moonlight was showing me off to the rat. Most likely it was neither. I guess I had gotten a little lazy after the amazing success of Thursday's recon mission, so I wasn't as still or silent as I needed to be. It was at this point that I really regretted not having had my rifle with me that first night when I had so many perfect looks. Tired of freezing my ass off, I climbed down at about 10:30pm and packed it in. You win this round, rat.

Sunday morning showed that even though he was shy while I waited for him, at some point in the evening (or morning) he did come out and eat the bait. So Sunday night I baited again with the Cheerio/sun butter combo. I didn't plan to go rooftop again, I just wanted to test whether he would take the bait at or around 9pm, or if in fact he was now shy because of the brightening moon. I went out just after 9pm with a flashlight and tried to do a stealthy approach. Shining the light on the bait station I saw that some bait was already gone! And I heard a shuffling in the blackberries from the startled rat. Now I knew that it was only my incompetence on Saturday night (not the moon) that had kept him away, and that realization pissed me off.

The impenetrable blackberry jungle

I immediately went into the house, got my gun, loaded it and stamped over to the back end of the shed with my left hand both supporting the rifle and holding the flashlight at once. I heard more scrambling in the hedge, and this time the sounds were getting louder - the rat was coming right at me. I frantically scanned the brambles with my flashlight and gun, straining to catch sight of the beast as it drew nearer and nearer. It had all the suspense of that scene in Aliens when Ripley and the Marines are trapped in that room, looking at the motion tracker, watching the blips as the creatures close in on them.

They mostly come at night. Mostly

Well, I never did get a glimpse of the bastard, and soon the sounds of movement were gone. But my blood was still running hot. So I went into the house, put on warmer clothes and climbed back up on the shed, this time taking care to be as silent as possible. Prior to climbing up, I placed the flashlight pointing towards the bait station, this time mounting it on a convenient spot in a crook of the rain gutter drain.

After my failure the previous night, my strategy was to keep a low profile and try to remain as invisible as possible. So I silently climbed the ladder, crawled onto the other side of the roof -- the side that slanted away from the bait station -- placed the two pillows on the shingles and laid belly down on the roof with my head, arms and rifle over the roof's peak, looking down onto the bait station. Then I settled in for a long wait, determined to stay until the vermin surrendered again to that sweet, sweet sun butter.

The view from my sniper's nest

I quickly found that this was not a comfortable position. Within ten minutes, my hands were getting tingly, numb and cold. I had to slowly and quietly move them down to my sides to get the feeling back in them. I was now laying with my left ear on the pillow, not even looking at the bait station. I figured if anything were going to happen, I would hear the devil moving through the vines long before I would see him. But without my arms over the top of the roof supporting me, I had slipped down slightly, and now my feet were dangling off the eave, pointing down to the ground. But I was determined to stay put.

I was rewarded about 30 minutes later when I heard the soft sounds of something slipping through the branches again, below and to my right. I slowly raised myself back up, this time placing my elbows on the peak of the roof, supporting the weight of my head and shoulders. About ten minutes later, I could dimly make out a slightly darker form on the gate, just outside the red light cast on the bait station. I kept blinking to make sure I was actually seeing what I thought I was seeing, but I remained totally motionless. I moment later, the rat stretched out further into the light and grabbed a Cheerio just to the right of the bait station. When he ran back into the bushes to eat it, I took the opportunity to bring my gun to hand and line up the open sights. He was back again, and this time he climbed onto the bait station to lap up some sun butter that I had smeared on the front edge of it. His head was now facing towards me, his mouth and snout pointing down. I pushed off the safety, put the front blade in the notch of the rear sight, placed it right on top of his head and squeezed the trigger. Thwack! The rat seized up and turned to show his profile, convulsing slightly but otherwise staying put on the bait station. A few seconds later, his back legs started to involuntarily spasm and he knocked himself off the gate and down to the ground (out of my view) with a satisfying thump.

You can see the exit wound on his mid-right side

I quickly (but carefully) made my way off the shed over to where he'd fallen. And there he lay, dead as can be. The pellet had gone right into his cranium, and exited out his right side. It was easily the biggest roof rat I'd ever seen. He measured 16 inches from stem to stern, exactly the same as the Norway. And he was thick, too. A week or so on the high-protein sun butter and Cheerio diet had done him well. Until tonight.

The ol' bait station is getting messy

I disposed of the carcass, and packed up all my stuff. I left the rest of the sun butter and Cheerios on the bait station just to see if this big guy had buddies. When I checked the station in the morning, sure enough all the bait was gone. So there's at least one more out there in the bushes, waiting his turn in the sniper's sights. Now I just need to work up the energy to go through the rigmarole again. But you can bet I will, and when I do, you'll be reading about it here.

Springtime was Made for Spring Guns

2008-05-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

It's been a long layoff since my last post, and even longer since my last rat story, so I'm just going to apologize up front -- no doubt I will be long-winded.

When Spring rolled in this year, I was anticipating an onslaught of the rodent kind. But to date, things have been mausoleum quiet around the yard. It seems as though the colony of Norways that took up residence around the back of the yard last Summer were successfully culled. Nary a rodent form has been spotted scurrying under the bird feeders gathering seeds. And it has been even longer since I've see any sign of roof rats climbing in the brambles or hanging from the feeders.

So 'All quiet' has been the rule this Spring. That was until a couple weeks ago. One morning I went over on the side of the house (where the gate entrance in the fence leads into the back yard) to survey how much the blackberry vines had overgrown from the winter rains.

When I went to open the gate, I heard something shuffling back inside the dense growth. It didn't seem like a bird, but I couldn't see anything to confirm that it wasn't just a wrentit like the one that had taken up residence back in that area at one time last year. A couple of days later, when I approached the gate again -- this time from the back yard side -- I heard the rustling again, and this time saw a shape with a tail scurrying down a vine back in the vegetation. My heart told me "rat" but I didn't see enough of it to say with certainty that it wasn't a large lizard (lizards and even garter snakes have been spotted also inhabiting the brambles). So I decide to set out some stale Cheerios as bait up on the upper cross beam of the fence next to gate latch (but tucked back in under the vegetation to avoid visual detection from a bird passing overhead). I knew that if the Cheerios disappeared, it wouldn't be the work of a reptile.

Sure enough, when I checked on it the next day, the cereal was gone.
Rat on!

I immediately began thinking of ways that I could dispatch the little beast, preferably with a lead pellet to the brainpan. I considered placing a trap on the fence, but quickly dismissed it. I wanted to dispense a dose air rifle justice, dammit. It has been quite a long time since I last used my tool of choice to drop a rat, so I wasn't going to let this opportunity slide. I mean come on, this is a blog about pest control and air guns, not traps!

But the confined space between the blackberry and rose vines and the house and shed was going to make shooting nearly impossible, particularly with the vines overgrown as they were. They were aggressively climbing onto the roof of the shed making a tunnel at the far end -- you literally had to duck half-over just to make it under them. This was a problem in its own right that needed to be addressed, irrespective of the rat situation. So last weekend I broke out the clippers and got to work. I hacked and hewed for the better part of the day Sunday, taking out every vine that had exceeded its boundary, beating back the vegetation to open up the small path once again. For the first time in six months, sunlight touched the ground between the bushes and the shed. I wiped the sweat and blood from my thorn-scratched face and toasted my labors with a cold one.

It's Miller time

Now that this chore was done, I had to figure out where I could get a clear shot at the bait area. There were several issues to contend with. First off, no matter where the shot was going to come from, I was going to end up with pellet holes in the gate, which I did not like the thought of. Second, due to the placement of the shed, brambles and narrow opening, the angle was such that the only realistic shots at the target area were going to have to come at a range of less than six yards. Unfortunately, the scopes on both my rifles cannot focus under 10 yards. Finally, the logical spot to set up was some six yards away at the opening of the path -- on the back corner of the shed and right next to the blackberry bushes. This was problematic because if a rat had to travel through the bushes to get to the gate area, and if I were seated on that spot, it was going to pass within three feet of me. Not only was it unlikely that I could go undetected in that eventuality, but the idea of sitting right next the bushes in the dark of night where all manner of creepy and crawly things traverse gives me the heeby-jeebies. Okay, so I'm a wimp.

John Rambo ate things that'd make a billy goat puke. Me? I'm afraid to sit too close to the hedge

It wasn't long before solutions to all three problems came to me. First, I had this wooden feeder for squirrels that I had picked up cheap last Fall. I had always intended to use it as a bait station for rats but had not yet had the opportunity. I placed it on the top cross plank of the gate and secured it with a thick rubber band holding it to one of the fence boards. It fit perfectly. Now I could use the bait station as the backstop for any shooting, and not worry about the wood on the fence being damaged. Check!

As for my scopes not being able to focus under ten yards, it was while I perused Pyramyd Air for a new scope I couldn't afford that it dawned on me -- I didn't need to use a scope at all! It was one of those V-8 moments where I literally thumped myself on the noggin at the thought. At that close range, there was no need for magnification anyway, so just removing the scope and using open sites was all I needed to do. Check! Third and finally, I had stumbled upon the solution to my shooting spot conundrum while I was trimming the vines. In order to get them off the top of the shed, I had used a ladder and climbed up on the shed roof. While I was up there, I realized I had a perfect view of the target spot. All I would need to do is camp out up there quietly with my unscoped rifle and take the even closer 3-4 yard shot. Check!

When I got home that night, I brought my .177 caliber Gamo Hunter 440 out of the closet and removed the BSA scope. I had to use the Gamo .177 because it was the only of my two rifles to still have its open sights. Then yesterday, after work but before the sun set, I sat out back and measured out the 12-foot range and placed a clean paper target on my pellet trap. It only took about five minutes of shooting and adjusting the sights until the Crow magnum hollow point pellets were tearing one ragged hole in the bullseye. Once the gun was sighted in, I put it away in the closet so I could do a little reconnaissance.

I wanted to do a dry run so I knew what time the rat was coming to the bait station. I didn't want a long, uncomfortable wait up there on the roof when I actually had my rifle in hand. So that night I baited the wooden station with more Cheerios and some sunflower seed butter (peanut butter substitute), and climbed back up on the roof of the shed. I placed two flashlights on a towel at the edge of the shed's roof, shining red-tinted light onto the platform where I hoped the rat would soon appear. From this vantage point, the upper cross beam of the gate (and the bait station) were about twelve feet away and roughly three feet below me. It was about 8:45pm -- the sun had set and the sky was darkening. So I got as comfortable as I could and began my silent vigil.

The roof of the shed

It wasn't long before I began to hear small sounds of movement coming from the wall of blackberry bushes below and to my right. Soon the sounds were coming from the fence area to the right of the gate. It was just before 9:15 when a whiskered nose and two beady eyes appeared out of the vegetation next to the gate latch. He stepped out a moment later. It was odd - he had this funny habit of coming out on the 2x4 cross beam and hanging his head down low over the edge of the wood. He would stretch his neck down so far, at first I thought he was going to jump down onto the ground. He would do this for 10-15 seconds at a time. It was only after watching him do this several times that it dawned on me what he was probably doing. He was listening for sounds of a person on the other side of the shed. At that hour, I am occasionally out in the back yard, so most likely he was listening for me!

That was as close as I've been to a wild rat that wasn't already bleeding from one of my pellets. It was incredible how close I was and that he could not detect me. Even though he was well-illuminated, he seemed completely unaware of that fact. If I needed any more evidence that rats can't easily see red light, here it was. After his momentary pause, he proceeded to climb out of the plants and make his way over to the bait station. At first he was very cautious and would stretch out, grab a Cheerio and immediately pull himself back into cover. But on subsequent visits he would linger a little longer, finally coming out and resting on the bait station for lengths of time. In fact, he gave me so many looks at perfect shots, I started to lament that I had left the rifle in the house. I also noted how large he was -- maybe 13 or 14 inches head to tail. But he was a roof rat without a doubt - large ears, big beady eyes, pointy snout and a really long tail. In the past I have sometimes struggled to identify roof vs Norway rats, but there was no ambiguity here.

Over the course of 30 minutes, he carried off all the cereal and licked clean all the dollops of sun butter. When the food was gone, as quietly as I could I grabbed my flashlights and made my way off the shed roof. I plan to go up again in the next couple nights for the final showdown.

The battle plans have been drawn up for Operation Overhead

The next chapter will cover the final stalking and dispatching of the vermin. Stay tuned...

From Humble Origins to Humble Pie: the facts on my 'Crosman' BB gun

2008-01-31T17:57:00.000-08:00

A big thank you to everyone who followed my three-part saga on My Humble Origins. Shortly after posting the second installment of the tale, a reader asked me this simple question about my BB gun:

"What is the Brand/model of your '$5 Garage Sale Special'?"

I suddenly realized that since I had bought it at a garage sale so many years ago, and hadn't shot it since the original rat incident, I wasn't really certain about the specifics. Which is so silly, I mean how could I not know exactly what it is, especially when I'm writing about it on an air gun blog!? I bought the gun all those years ago because of its resemblance to a Crosman air rifle I had when I was a kid. So without ever bothering to investigate further (or at least without remembering if I had ever done so), I naively assumed this gun was a Crosman as well. So I went home that night to look at the gun again.

It took me about 5 minutes of looking before I found (in plain site, of course) the brand and model of the gun. It's not even a Crosman! It's a Daisy model 840 -- what is currently called the Grizzly. So much for the fact-checking department on this blog.

A little further research revealed this model of gun has been in production since the late 70's. The reader who asked the original question found it listed in the 6th Edition of the Blue Book of Airguns:

"Model 840 - BB/.175, or .177 cal., SSP, Mfg. 1978-89."

As for their grading system, which would be hard to describe (for me anyway), in a nutshell:
100% (all original, "perfect condition in every respect") $75
95% (all original, near new condition, very little use, very minor dings/scratches...) $60
90% (all original, perfect working condition, some minor wear) $40
below that, it is listed as "NA" for estimated values. The less rust, scratches, dings the better.

Fascinating! Given it's condition, I think my gun falls firmly into the "NA" category, but it was really cool to finally learn more about it. My online hunt also led me to a print ad (which was for sale on Ebay) for my exact gun.

This ad from 1978 features the great Johnny Unitas

And the revelations kept rolling in. Unlike the Crosman I had mistaken it for, my gun is not a multi-pump at all! Rather, the 840 is a single-pump. And apparently, when you pump it a second time, all you are doing is taking most of the air from your 1st pump back out of the gun. So every time I was pumping it to 10, it was essentially shooting with almost no air. Man do I feel like a real dope. No wonder the rat was barely phased by that BB -- I probably could have thrown it faster than that gun was propelling it.

As you'd expect in a youth BB gun, it was never intended to be a powerful rifle. The Daisy ad says it will shoot a BB at 320 feet per second - which is a meager muzzle energy of 1.16 foot pounds. That is far, far below the level needed to humanely dispatch a rat, especially at distance. Now I know better.

Once the weather clears up, I need to take the 840 out back and try it again with the single pump it was intended for, just to see how it performs. After all the bad things I said about it, I owe it that much at least.

My Humble Origins: Episode III - The Pellet Strikes Back

2008-01-22T22:37:00.000-08:00

When Episode II ended, I had just replaced my ineffectual BB gun with a new Gamo Hunter 440 air rifle in .177 caliber in order to deal with a pesky rat that was pilfering birdseed in my backyard. Now all that remained was to mount and zero the scope, and get in a little target practice so I could count on dispatching the rat quickly, cleanly and humanely.

Luke used to bullseye womp rats in his T-16 back home

You can read the first two episodes here:
Episode I
Episode II

Being an absolute beginner with spring-piston air rifles, I was afraid to zero the rifle and practice with it in my back yard for fear of it being too loud to do stealthily. I can hear you now... "Moron," you say, "you bought the rifle for the sole intent of killing pests in your back yard -- now you say you're afraid to shoot it IN the back yard!?" Well, says I, there's a big difference between taking shot after shot to zero a gun, and taking a single shot out of the blue to kill a rat. The first will eventually draw the attention of any neighbor who happens to be in their own back yard. The second will likely go undetected.

I looked into rifle ranges, but there were few nearby, and they did not seem to allow pellet guns. So I called my dad (who lives about 90 miles away) and asked him if he knew of any place in the area that might be suitable. My dad grew up in the Sacramento Valley of California, and lived in a time when undeveloped areas were in abundance. In those days, you could drive 15 minutes out of town and find a place to zero a deer rifle. Times have certainly changed, but he was sure we could find a place without having to drive too far.

So my dad and I met the next weekend and headed north to find a place to shoot. We eventually wound up in an area called Camp Far West near the reservoir of the same name. We stopped at a bait shop near the lake to inquire about a place to shoot and were told that there was a public outdoor shooting range just a bit up the road. Exactly what we were looking for!

Fifteen minutes later we were parking in an open spot right at the shooting line. The loud report of large caliber rifles and pistols was plain to be heard. Stepping out of the pickup, we surveyed the scene. There was no range master, just a collection of about 30 folks on the line, firing every description of ordnance at an assortment of improvised targets -- from hand-drawn bullseyes on scraps of plywood to shards of demolished ice chests and the remains of major appliances. It was clear that no serious attempt had ever been made by shooters to clean up after themselves. The target area was littered with the detritus of everything that had ever been shot out there. The ground around us was literally covered with spent shells and casings. If the range had a name, I don't recall it. But it looked about two steps removed from the Apocalypse.

A fair representation of "the shooting range at the end of the world"

At the next cease fire, as the motley assemblage of shooters ran out to inspect their destructive powers, I paced off 10 yards and set down my Gamo Cone Pellet trap. Yes, I felt just as ridiculous as you'd expect while doing this. With my air rifle and pellet trap, I was a Cub Scout amidst seasoned mercenaries.

The Gamo Cone Pellet Trap - perfect for high velocity pellets and public humiliation

When shooting resumed, I loaded in a Beeman H&N Match wadcutter and began zeroing the rifle. The Gamo was nowhere near as loud as I'd worried -- and not only because there were .30-06s going off to compare it to. There was a subtle recoil, though it was not unpleasant. But the scope needed lots of adjusting. The gun was shooting really low and left (barrel droop, anyone?). In fact the pellets were ricocheting off the ground, kicking up earth and striking the base of the trap. I kept cranking the turrets of the BSA 4x32 scope to bring the point of impact closer to alignment with the center of the target. It took a LOT of cranking at that close range.

A beauty shot of my Gamo Hunter 440. That's not the original 4x32 scope by the way

Meanwhile, the chaos continued all around us. A couple of gents in their late 30's a few places to our left had a table set out with an armory of weapons. My dad directed my attention to them as they filled a large plastic tube with what looked like black powder. I shuddered to think what they had planned with that little treat, but I didn't have to wait long to find out. At the next cease fire, they ran out and placed the tube inside the blown-out shell of an old TV set they had been shooting at about 40 yards away. They then proceeded to take turns aiming their pistols at it and taking shots. My dad and I watched nervously as they hammered away, oddly unsuccessful at finding their mark. When one of their missed shots caused the canister to fall down out of sight inside the TV, the so-called marksmen groaned their disappointment and I resumed my .177 caliber tea party.

Now that my shots were landing on the 5 1/2" square paper target, I had moved the trap out to 20 yards. I put a couple more clicks on the elevation turret and -- KABOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!! There was a thunderous explosion on the range. I looked out to the TV and it was gone. Literally gone. Small fragments of it were now landing around us. I covered my head and gave my dad the "holy shit" look and was unnerved to see it in his eyes as well. Everything came to a momentary standstill on the range as the two gents exchanged high-fives. There was some nervous chuckling from others around us. I think we were all just glad to still be alive.

Shock and awe at the rifle range

On our right, a recently-arrived family with a young teenage boy were laying out some rifles on a folding table they had just set up. As the range resumed their shooting after the fireworks, I loaded up another pellet and -- BOOM! a bullet went whizzing into the ground in front of us. The boy had gone to pick up one of the rifles from the table and had inadvertently pulled the trigger, nearly striking the leg of a man who happened to be between us and them. The kid had made the exactly wrong assumption that the rifle wasn't loaded. His parents were suitably apologetic and stern with the young man, and he was clearly shaken up and started crying. My dad and I looked at each other and decided immediately that we were well past high-time to get the hell out of there.

We hastily called a cease fire -- much to the chagrin of the other shooters as it was only a few minutes since the last cease fire. I suspect their annoyance was only magnified when they saw it was me running out to collect my dainty pellet trap. I closed my rifle into its case and we beat a hasty retreat out of that God-forsaken mark on the map. We left so fast, we were a mile down the road before I realized I'd left an open tin of pellets on the hood of the truck.

Camp Far West Reservoir - go for the fishing, stay for the unsupervised shooting

We ended up finding a secluded (and unsanctioned) spot off the main road where I finished zeroing my rifle under the quiet boughs of some sprawling oaks. We kicked ourselves realizing that's what we should have done to begin with. So with a spot-on air rifle and a few new gray hairs, I finally headed home to face my quarry.

It was not long before the rat showed her face again. Within a few days of the range exploits, while I was scanning the back yard through the kitchen window, I saw that big Norway rat back out under the feeder.

She was right alongside the wooden rail, directly under the feeder

The time for which I had so laboriously prepared was upon me. I went into the closet and took out the case that held the Gamo, laid it open and lifted out the rifle. I crept to the sliding glass door and slowly pushed it open wide enough to accommodate my rifle. I broke the barrel and inserted the same Beeman H&N wadcutter I had zeroed with. I had selected the wadcutter because I figured the broad head would bring a real wallop at the 20-yard range I was shooting. And having zeroed with it, I knew I could group it well enough for this target. I snapped the barrel shut and edged the muzzle out through the open sliding door. I leaned my left shoulder against the door frame, brought my cheek to the rifle and my eye to the scope.

The rat grew 4 times larger, but at 20 yards still felt like a small target. She was facing directly towards me as she scoured the ground for seeds. I placed the crosshair right between her eyes, snicked off the safety and started to pull through the squishy first stage of the trigger. I could feel my heart pounding and the blood throbbed in my head. I took a deep breath, let it halfway out and squeezed the trigger. The rifle let out a 'thunk' and the spring buzzed inside. Out in the yard, I saw the rat do a flip and start to squirm in the grass. I ran into the garage and grabbed an aluminum baseball bat thinking I might need to finish off the poor devil. By the time I got out to the scene, the rat was making its last gasp. A second later she was dead.

The pellet had gone in at the right cheek and had anchored her right on the spot. All told, she had expired within 20 seconds of the shot. Still, I felt that slight twinge of guilt at having killed her. But the feeling faded as I considered the accuracy of my shot and the delivery on the goal of one shot, one kill. It was a job well done, and I was pleased. I double-bagged the carcass and sent her off to the rubbish bin. Then I went inside to collect accolades from my wife. And although she was squeamish about the entire idea of it, she delivered props in abundance.

More satisfying than destroying the Death Star

Well, that's story of how this adventure began for me. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. I know I had fun recalling those days (and marveling that I survived them with all limbs intact). Cheers!

My Humble Origins: Episode II – A New Hope (Comes in .177 Caliber)

2008-01-01T22:34:00.000-08:00

Happy 2008 to all! But before we get into the New Year, let's jump back into our tale of the past...

At the close of Episode I, we were in the late summer of 2005. I had just discovered a large Norway rat in the back yard, and had been frustrated in my attempt to dispatch it with a broke-down Crosman BB gun. I had acquired the Crosman for five bucks about a dozen years earlier at a garage sale. It was chipped and rusting, poorly maintained, only vaguely accurate and completely underpowered. But other than that it was a great gun.

But I was going to Tosche Station to pick up a new pellet gun

In case you missed it, you can read Episode I here.

After the BB gun debacle, I started to ponder other options. Quite coincidentally, we had just arranged for an exterminator to come spray the house for ants, spiders and such. So on his first visit, I asked him if he could get rid of the rats for me. He seemed strangely reticent about doing so. He said that if we put out poison or traps it could result in driving the rats into the house (huh?), and until we were able to seal up every possible point of entry into or under the house, he did not recommend taking any action. He told me he could manage the placement and removal of traps but I thought the price for the service was hefty. Frankly I had neither the inclination to go crawling around under the house on fix-it missions nor did I like the idea of paying someone to do something I felt I could probably do on my own. So I determined to be my own man of action.

Sure I had lost the first battle, but in this war, I was determined to become a more intelligent soldier. I started doing research online about rats and reliable ways to rid myself of them. There seemed to be three basic means of controlling the pests: 1) baiting them with poison, 2) setting out a battery of traps, or, 3) shooting them. Since shooting had been my first instinct, I was immediately inclined to further investigate option #3. I must be honest; the idea of developing and using my marksmanship skills was appealing not just from a functional but also from a sporting point of view. But I was primarily interested in what would be the most effective and there were pros and cons to all three methods.

Poison can be effective to a point, but rats are intelligent and will figure out what poison looks and smells like after one or two of their brethren have been affected (or if they themselves ingest less than a lethal dose). Also, poison can work very slowly and painfully, and as much as I wanted the rats dead, I did not want them to suffer if it could be avoided. Lastly, since I would be baiting outside, I didn't want any collateral damage either from the wrong creatures inadvertently taking the bait or from dying rats being eaten by other wildlife (or the neighbor's cat!).

Traps can also be effective if you are able to regularly switch up their placement and the type of bait you use to keep the rats from figuring out that they equal danger. But most traps are really intended for indoor use. If left out in the open, they carry the same risk of collateral damage that poison does.

The classic Victor wooden rat trap is still the choice of most trappers

Now it's true -- shooting will never completely eliminate a colony of rats, because you are restricted to taking only those that happen in front of your sights. But you can stack the odds in your favor if you have a food or water source to which you know the rats will be drawn. In this way you can at least do a fair job of keeping their numbers down and not letting them become a real nuisance. And for me, the most attractive benefit of shooting is, if you shoot responsibly, you will never kill anything that you do not absolutely intend to kill.

My online research led me, inevitably, to a site called Ratkill.com. There I found a community of folks who were united in the common cause of ridding their local habitats of rats. I learned quite a bit about others’ methods of control, and started to see that the use of guns, particularly air guns, was quite common for the task. Feeling significantly less marginalized, I was inspired to begin seeking out a new tool.

Ratkill.com - not for the faint of heart

As I studied the subject of air-gunning, I learned a substantial amount rather quickly from the knowledgeable folks online at Straightshooters and Pyramyd Air, particularly from the fountain of wisdom known as B.B. Pelletier (Tom Gaylord's alter-ego). I read reviews of air guns to find out what people liked, and what they didn't. I learned about different calibers and power plants, pellet velocities and shapes, as well as muzzle energy and what was required to reliably kill a rat. And I began to digest information on the extraordinary variety of guns that are available – it really is quite dizzying, especially for the beginner.

I was very interested in the German-built guns offered by Beeman/Weihrauch, but couldn't imagine spending that kind of money for a pellet gun (or more specifically, justifying to my wife spending that kind of money for a pellet gun!). I was also intrigued by the Diana guns from RWS, the Hunter series from Gamo, as well as the multi-pump rifles from Benjamin Sheridan. Based on B.B. Pelletier's strong accolades, I was nearly persuaded to go with either a Benjamin 397/392 or a Sheridan Blue/Silver Streak. But ultimately I began leaning towards a break-barrel style spring gun so the Benjamin Sheridans took a back seat. I also knew I wanted to get the maximum accuracy I could wring out of a gun, so I investigated gun + scope combo packages as well.

Eventually I went on a few reconnaissance missions to sporting goods stores and gun shops in the area (which as you can imagine in the San Francisco Bay Area are few and far between) looking at their woefully limited stock of adult air rifles. What air rifles I did find were all in .177 caliber -- I honestly don't remember coming across any other calibers in all my searches (except for one Sheridan Blue Streak I found which only comes in .20 caliber). I guess that most consumers are obsessed with velocity (I know I certainly was in the beginning), and since .177 pellets are the lightest and tend to travel the fastest, retailers only stock that caliber rifle. And there were very few high-end air rifles in stores. I do recall finding a Beeman R1 (it was buried in a back room in the single-most disorganized and messy gun shop I have ever seen). The gun itself was brand new and in perfect condition, but even if I had the money to spend, the $600 price tag was impossible to rationalize for a beginner's gun.

Shortly after that, I stumbled upon a Gamo 440 Hunter Combo with a 4x32 scope at Big 5 Sporting Goods. I liked the look and feel of the rifle -- it had a nicely-shaped beech stock, black rubber butt-plate with a clean white spacer, and laser-cut checkering on the grip. In .177 caliber, it was advertised to shoot a pellet at 1000 feet per second. Given what I had learned, I knew it was adequately powered to handle rats at my backyard ranges. It also had received mostly positive reviews, the bulk of the gripes coming over the notoriously squishy trigger. The 440 I found at Big 5 was the last one they had in stock, and the scope it was combined with had a few minor dings on its surface, so the salesman agreed to knock a substantial amount off the price. At that point I felt like I was getting a bargain on a gun that was in my consideration set, so I went ahead and made the buy.

The Spanish-made Gamo 440 -- affordable accuracy

Now that I had my gun, I needed to mount and zero the scope and get enough practice with it to feel confident I could hit and kill a rat with one shot. But having never fired an air rifle like this, I was entirely uncertain how loud it would be. From what I had read, a spring gun was substantially louder than a BB gun. Also there was this pesky thing called dieseling which some new guns were prone to (basically dieseling is the inadvertent igniting of residual oil or grease inside the gun). I had no idea how loud this might be. Would it be as loud as a firearm? With neighbors on all sides, and being in an area that we'll just say is about as far from NRA Headquarters as you can get in America, I was terrified of taking the many shots I knew I would need to zero the rifle and practice with it in the backyard.

So now I had the right tool, but I needed to find some time and a place to take the gun and get it ready to do the job for which it was procured. This would prove to be an adventure in itself -- one that would endanger my very own life and limb.

Stay tuned for the third and final installment of the saga in which a beginning air-gunner with a new rifle must pass a trial of fire (and shrapnel) before facing his scaly-tailed opponent in a final Thunderdome-style confrontation...

Two men enter, one man leaves

My Humble Origins: Episode I - The Rodent Menace

2007-12-25T21:34:00.000-08:00

Let me start off by wishing a Merry Christmas to all. Like a gift from ol' Saint Nick, things have been wonderfully quiet in the back yard. So for this post, I thought I'd reminisce about how my air gun pest control adventures all started. Please bear with me as I wax nostalgic for a post or two.

Now clear your mind as I set the Way Back Machine. Our next stop is the Summer of 2005...
War raged on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here in America, Intelligent Design (which, ironically, evolved from Creationism) was creeping into public schools and grabbing headlines. Meanwhile, in metroplexes across the country, whiny Anakin Skywalker was improbably transforming into James Earl Jones.

Darth Crybaby

That summer found my wife and I in a new house in the California Bay Area having recently moved from New York. We had been amateur birders in Manhattan's Central Park, so we were interested in getting to know the variety of birds around our new home. To that end I had placed a bird feeder in the cherry-plum tree at the back of the yard and the wife and I enjoyed watching the goldfinches, chickadees, wrentits and the occasional woodpecker that came to partake. Gone were the hectic days of NYC, the crowds of shoving people, the hot, humid subways. The West Coast days were long, warm and golden. Life was good.

But the halcyon days were soon to be disturbed. One afternoon I was horrified to see a large rat -- like some refugee from the tracks of the C train -- running out from the ivy at the back of the yard and helping herself to the birdseed that had fallen from the feeder. Ugh. I was happy to keep the neighborhood and migrating birds fat and happy, but I'd be damned if I was going to nourish a generation of rats around my home. This demanded action.

Rattus norvegicus

In addition to being big, the rat (later determined to be a Norway rat) was as bold as could be. She would come out in broad daylight, sometimes accompanied by a smaller companion. She seemed perfectly comfortable to be out even when my wife and I were 15 yards away. She'd come loping out, hugging the side of this 4 inch high wooden rail which marked where the original owners' vegetable garden had once grown. She would then camp out next to the rail directly under the bird feeder and help herself to what seeds the birds knocked down. Occasionally she'd hop over the rail to gather whatever morsels had fallen on that side before shuffling back into the ivy. She did this off and on for 20 minutes.

The cherry-plum tree, feeders and wooden rail

So I marched into the house, went into the closet and got out my thoroughly beat up Crosman BB gun. I pumped it 10 times (the max you are supposed to pump it) and sat about 20 yards away waiting for the rat to return. When she did, I lined her up as best I could. The gun's rear sight was broken, but from some target practice I'd done, I had a fair idea of where the BBs were going. My heart beating a mile a minute, I let fly the BB. I watched it travel downrange and smack the rat in the ribcage. It's never a good sign when your projectile is moving slowly enough that you can watch it fly, but she jumped up about a foot in the air and immediately scampered into the ivy at the back of the yard.

My $5 garage sale special
Now my heart was red-lining. I wasn't sure if my shot was lethal, but I felt certain the rat had been sufficiently persuaded to avoid the birdseed in the future. I remember feeling a mixture of exhilaration and guilt (was it dying or suffering?).
Five minutes later I added 'disappointment' to the list when I saw the rat come right back out there again. So much for the persuasive power of my tired old BB gun.

Now I was really pissed off. I muttered a few choice words at the rat, and saved a few for the gun as well. But I figured that if I could close the distance, I could increase the oomph on my shot. So I crept over to another part of the yard where I could get a closer shot from a better angle. This time I pumped the crummy gun up to 12, and at the next opportunity took another shot. Exact same results. It was at this point that I had my Chief Brody revelation.

We're gonna need a bigger boat

Stay tuned for part two of the saga in which we will see how a moron with a piece of junk, garage-sale BB gun began to transform himself into a passable air-gunner...

The Wide World of Wratting

2007-11-20T17:27:00.000-08:00

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports... the thrill of victory...

and the agony of defeat...

It's been a little slow in the back yard lately, so my Jim McKay intro is simply a way to say that in this entry I'll be bringing you some of the rat control happenings from the larger world.

Folks, I have a real treat for you today. I found the video below on YouTube and just had to point to it. This is some incredible footage of high-octane ratting. This makes my backyard adventures look like an evening spent at the library. Now let's send it down to Howard Cosell for the tale of the tape...

The shooter in the video is using an Air Arms s410K Pre-charged Pneumatic (PCP) which uses a 10-shot rotary magazine and has variable power that can push .22 caliber pellets out of the muzzle at over 900 feet/second. That's around 30 foot-pounds of muzzle energy! And from the look of things it must be whisper quiet - not one rat appears to get spooked. He also has a Yukon Digital Night Vision Ranger 5x42 scope which he has somehow affixed to the back of his normal rifle scope. He is using an output from the Ranger into some recording device to capture the video. And he's set the whole thing to Killswitch Engage's cover of Dio's Holy Diver. You gotta love it!

Be forewarned - this video is graphic and not for the faint of heart

Wow. The kill at 2:40 alone is worth the price of admission -- the bindi dot shot to the grape that anchors the rat on the spot, his tail shooting out stiff before going limp and the half-beat pause before the blood spills out and down onto the sack he's resting on. That's just pure poetry.

But there is a lot here to be proud of - not least of which, a damned accurate rifle. That's about a thousand dollars worth of fine English-made air rifle, never mind the scope, the digital night vision and the rest of the A/V assemblage. On top of everything else, he has a seemingly unlimited supply of Norway rats. I've never seen anything like it outside a horror flick. I sincerely hope this isn't anywhere near a human habitation. And there are several more posts from this guy on YouTube, so feel free to explore.

The Air Arms s410 rifle in walnut (top) and beech (bottom) stock

A closer look at the 10-shot magazine in the loading port

I have asked the guy if he can post video or images of his gun/scope/night vision set up so I can better understand how he connects everything. I'll let you know if he does so.

The Yukon Digital Ranger 5x42 Night Vision Scope

The latest toy I'll covet but never actually own

Trench Warfare

2007-10-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

Fall is here in all its glory. Autumn near the northern California coast is nothing like what we used to have in the Northeast, but it is very pleasant just the same. October is usually a month where we enjoy an extended Indian Summer. This year has been no exception.

But about a month ago, I was unpleasantly surprised to find a series of conical mounds rising out of the lawn in the back yard. In fact, I actually watched some of them being raised. The dirt would be pushed out in a little core from the center of the mound, like an erupting volcano, then fall off to add more dirt to the rising sides. Some research online told me that it was the tell-tale sign of a mole. So each day, I would take a shovel out and redistribute the dirt to other needy areas of the yard. Then usually by the next day, there would be more dirt there or at a new location.

I wanted to stop the mole before he ruined the lawn

I camped out one night early on with my rifle and a flashlight casting red-tinted light over the active mound. At one point, I saw a subtly moving silhouette at the top of the mound, raised my rifle and centered it in my scope. In the darkness, it was hard to see what exactly the creature was. Just before I took the shot, I realized that it was actually just a large clump of dirt standing vertically as it was being pushed up out of the ground. That's when I did more research and realized that moles seldom go above ground. I knew that my rifle would not be the likely solution.

So one afternoon I was out back, taking a break from some wood chopping I had been doing when I saw the dirt being pushed up out of a nearly flat spot in the grass. So I swiftly grabbed the axe, strode to the spot and with a hefty swing, buried the entire head of the axe deep under the surface of the grass. There was no blood on it when I pulled it out, and the chances that I would have happened to strike the mole were one in a thousand. What I do know is that the mole activity only occurred once more after that, and hasn't resumed since. Go figure.

If I could have gotten this view, I'd have definitely killed him

Then yesterday, I saw new digging at a different spot in the yard. Under the tree where I place my bird feeders at the back of the yard I saw a little hole, flush with the ground, and some fresh dirt spread around it. I didn't know what had made it, but I knew it was not a mole. I went outside late last night to see if I could spot the culprit with my binoculars and the flashlight, but had no luck.

He couldn't have picked a less fortunate spot - right under the shooting tree!

Then this morning, as I watched a bunch of sparrows out enjoying some seeds on the ground, I saw that there was fresh dirt out there. So I walked out to get a closer look. The birds all flew away at my approach, but sure enough, there in the hole was a little brown furry head poking out! It definitely wasn't a mole, but I couldn't tell if it was a gopher or a vole. As quick and as low to the ground as I could, I slunk back into the house to get my rifle.

I loaded it with a .20 Field Target Special (FTS), snuck out and sat myself in one of the patio chairs about 15 yards away. I went with the FTS instead of the Crow Magnum this time because I felt I could pinpoint the shot a little more reliably with it. I thought that level of precision might be needed on a small target that was quickly darting in and out of his hole. I placed my left elbow on the arm of the chair to brace and steady the rifle, and brought the opening of the hole into scope view. Once the birds came back and were again enjoying seeds all around the hole, I watched the rodent pop his head back out. He did this several times, coming out and pushing a little dirt onto the growing pile at the back of the hole. The next time he came out, he turned to the right, giving me a profile of his little head. It wasn't a clear shot, there was intervening grass that slightly obscured him, but I could tell where his head was. He paused just long enough and I squeezed the trigger.

The birds all scattered, and there was no sign of anything above ground. I walked over and there he was. He had dropped himself back down into the hole but his head was plain to be seen. And he was as dead as can be.

Taking a dirt nap

I used a couple of sticks as forceps and pulled the little digger out of his hole. An investigation revealed that the pellet had gone in right behind his ear...

...and had come out opposite at his cheek. The Beeman Field Target Special does not mess around. That pellet could not have flown any more true.

A case of terminal lead poisoning

Having never seen one up close, I was uncertain, but believed it was a gopher rather than a vole. From my previous research online, I knew that voles were much more mouse-like in appearance than this little guy was. After disposing of him, a quick online search proved that this was indeed a pocket gopher, most likely the Botta's Pocket Gopher (Thomomys bottae) which is the common variety in California.

After the frustration of the mole debacle, it was satisfying indeed to have dispatched this little varmint before any major damage could be done to the lawn or the tree.

In the words of the immortal Carl Spackler, "Au revoir, gopher"

The curious incident of the mouse in the nighttime

2007-09-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

With Fall looming, things have gotten very quiet in the back yard. There hasn't been any recent daylight activity under the bird feeders, which is where I get most of my shooting opportunities. So two nights ago I decided to see if anyone was home. I put a dab of peanut butter on a wood plank and set it out in the grass near the blackberry bushes where I've heard some rustling in the past. I placed the plank a couple of feet away from the brambles and got ready.

PB on a shingle

I cut a piece of flexible red-tinted plastic (from a bag of red potatoes) and taped it over the end of my flashlight. Conventional wisdom amongst those that dispatch rodents at night is that red light tends not to spook them. Apparently they don't process red light the same as light of other wavelengths, so they either can't tell where the light is coming from, or don't see it as light from an unnatural source.

I use the lantern to prop up my flashlight and keep it trained on the target area. I've been using this set-up (without the red plastic) since the first time I shot at night. It works great

With the light trained over on the plank, I waited with a .20 caliber Crow Magnum pellet loaded up in the ol' Beeman R1. Minutes later, I watched a tiny little rodent make her way out to the plank and start helping herself to some of the peanut butter. If it was a rat, it was one of the smallest I'd ever seen. Even at 12 yards, she was small enough to be a really challenging target. I didn't take a shot right away, however, because I was hoping the PB would coax out a more impressive specimen. So I waited for about an hour, all the while watching the little one run out and partake six or seven more times.

It was at this point that I became aware of something else stirring on the other side of the yard. I heard a soft noise over at the wooden fence opposite my bait station. It's amazing how heightened your senses become when you are outside at night in a stalking situation like that. You are so 'at attention', the smallest sounds seem amplified. Using a second flashlight which I had also covered with red plastic, I searched for the source of the noise. Sure enough, there was an opossum the size of a small cat meandering across the grass. I have no beef with opossums, so I'd never try to shoot one. I certainly don't view them as a pest like I do with rats.

As I watched him, I was amazed that despite at one point being only 15 feet away, the opossum seemed completely unable to see me while I had that red light on him. He just went about his business as if I weren't there. At one point I deliberately made a small noise to see if it was just indifference, or if he truly couldn't see me. When I made the noise, he stopped dead and looked back in my direction. Then he ran a few feet away and looked back again. All the while, I had the red light shining right on him. He absolutely could not see me and didn't seem to be aware that light was illuminating him. It seems the red-light legends were true!

Well that opossum made his way right across the yard, straight over to my bait -- they must have an incredible sense of smell. He lapped up every trace of the peanut butter from the plank in about 30 seconds and then disappeared back into the brambles in the back corner of the yard. With my bait gone, and no sign to be seen of an adult rat, I packed it in for the night.

This isn't the opossum in question, but I thought a visual reference was in order. Kinda looks like a giant rat

Perhaps it was frustration at watching my bait get pilfered, but over 24 hours, I decided that I was going to take out that little rodent if she came back again. So last night, I duplicated the entire set-up -- placed more peanut butter, trained the red flashlight and sat waiting again with my loaded R1.

About ten minutes into my new vigil, I saw through my binoculars that the little rodent was back there in the brambles, and was sniffing out the PB. A few minutes later, she was back out at the plank, thanking whatever rodent gods she prayed to for a second night of manna dropped seemingly from the heavens. Seeing her again, I was more convinced than ever that she was a mouse.

She was so tiny, that she was essentially invisible moving through the grass until she reached the wood plank. But because she was so small, and because the PB was dolloped in the center of the wood, she had to climb entirely on it to get at the creamy goodness. I let her have one helping and watched her scoot back to the safety of the brambles. A second later, she made another run out onto the plank, giving me a perfect (albeit tiny) broadside view. She was so small, I just put the cross hair dead center on her and let fly. I heard the pellet rip through the grass and leaves, and I lost sight of her. As small as she was, I thought I might have completely missed her.

Blown away - literally

A closer look confirmed that the pellet had indeed caught her right through the middle. The force of that .20 caliber hollow point on that tiny body knocked her back a foot and a half from where she'd been on the plank and opened her belly wide.

She was so small and delicate, I'm now almost certain she was a mouse. Her coloration, with the brown on top and clean white on the belly seems like it's a classic mouse pattern. But I was confused. If there are in fact rats back in those brambles, I would be really surprised that they would co-habitate with a mouse. I figured a mouse would get eaten, or at least bullied away by rats. Maybe there aren't any rats in residence right now. Regardless, there was one less rodent in the yard this morning.

Clean up on aisle three

Harvest Time

2007-07-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

Blackberries are ripening all over the back yard. Soon I'll go out and pick a few pounds worth for my wife to make jam. I've been going out periodically to grab a few of the ripe ones to enjoy myself. A couple of evenings ago, I was over on the side of the back yard grabbing a few berries when I heard a rustling back in the brambles not more than a couple feet in. It sounded like something was struggling to get through the sharp tangles. My first instinct was that it was a bird -- there are many that frequent the yard and they love the berries as much as me. But after a few seconds, when nothing flew out of the bushes, I had a strong suspicion it was a rat.

It has been a few weeks since I last saw a rat in the yard. Several weeks ago I capped a roof rat who was nonchalantly enjoying seeds under the bird feeders in the middle of the day. I put a .20 hollow point pellet right in his snout. It traveled in through his face and exited through his back about halfway down the length of his body. My wife was out of town and had the camera with her so I couldn't get any good pics. I actually took a few shots with my cell phone camera -- but they are terrible quality.

A quick side trip in the Way-Back Machine:
The scene from three weeks ago

These pics suck, even for a cell phone camera

The pellet punched a clean hole right next to his nose...

...went through his head, neck and chest and then out his back

A couple of days after that I popped another roof rat -- this one in the boiler room, but she had enough juice in her after the shot to escape back into the ivy where I couldn't find her. That's the peril of gut-shooting a rat -- they don't die instantly and can sometimes motor off. That pisses me off so much. It's only happened a couple of times but it drives me nuts -- I want the rats dead but I don't want them to suffer. I think I'll do a separate post to elaborate on this and my other feelings when I shoot. At any rate, the end result was a rat that was going to expire, but without a chance for me dispose of it (or to get photos for that matter).

At any rate, the movement in the brambles told me that there was more action to be had. But there had been no conspicuous action under the feeders, so I figured the rats had gotten too wary to come out during the day. I decided to try a little baiting to see if they were out there at night. We had some really nice (and stinky) cheese left over from when some friends visited us recently. So I cut off a bit of the rind and set it out under the feeders before sunset. I had no intention of stalking the rats and trying to hunt them, I just wanted to see if they were out there. I checked the cheese with binoculars and flashlight before turning in at around 11:30pm, and it was still in place. When I checked again at around 6am the next morning, it was gone. I repeated the process for three nights -- all with the same result. The last night of this was last night (Friday).

So this afternoon (Saturday), I was looking out the window and saw the unmistakable form of a rat under the feeder. And this was no roof rat. This was a big Norway. So out came the Beeman R1. I watched from inside the house for a few minutes to watch his pattern, so I knew where my best chance to get a clear shot would be. He was concentrating around the base of the tree -- and man was he big. Maybe I was used to seeing those last couple of roof rats, but he looked like a chihuahua! When I had the gun on him, he filled up the sight in my scope (set at around 7x). I also noticed that there was a second, slightly smaller rat that was shuffling around as well. But the biggun was what I kept my focus on.

I decided to try a shot from the sliding glass doorway since it was already open. I silently slid the screen door open about a foot and put the gun out, resting the back of my left shoulder against the door frame. There he was, just to the left of the tree, scavenging amidst a few birds and in no apparent hurry. When I brought my eye to the scope, however, I saw that the rat was just behind a sparrow on one side and a towhee on the other. There was a slight window between each bird but it wasn't worth taking the shot and accidentally clipping one of the birds. So I waited for a better presentation. That came moments later when he ventured out again, this time in front of the tree.

With nary a bird in sight, I flicked off the safety and put the crosshair between his head and chest (my strategy being that if I missed slightly one way, I'd put it in his grape, and if I missed slightly the other, I'd put it through his heart/lungs. In this instance, the pellet flew straight and went right through his neck. He rolled straight over onto his back and kicked weakly a few times. He was dead within ten seconds.

The R1 comes through again -- he died right where he was hit

I can't say enough about the knockdown power of the Crow Magnum. I've seen how it tears up the lemons I sometimes use as targets. Round nose pellets (particularly the exceptional Beeman Field Target Specials) are extremely accurate, but they penetrate so well they tend to 'pin-cushion' the target without imparting most of their energy. The CMs can still pass through the target, but the broad face (and forward expansion cup) really bring a lot of blunt force and leave it in the target where it does terrific damage.

The pellet severed his jugular and who knows what else

Boy was he big! Seeing him up close confirmed that this was one of the biggest I've yet shot. He had large feet and a thick scaly tail. I brought out the tape measure to see the tale of the tape. He was just over 16 inches long from stem to stern, and quite robust. If there were such a thing as a trophy rat, he would have qualified.

His head+body was just over eight inches -- his tail another eight

Putting him in the bag I could feel his heft. This was bigger than the last two Norways I got back in May. The very first rat I shot (Summer 2006) was a big Norway. But I'm not sure she was as big as (and certainly not bigger than) this rat.

How much to have him taxidermied?

After disposing of him, I kept a watchful eye out that way for the rest of the day, but the smaller rat never appeared again while I was looking. I'll wait a week or two then use the baiting technique again since it seems to have gotten the rats comfortable with coming out into the shooting range. I have a friend that wants to come over for a night shoot, so I'll bait for a few nights again with some stinky cheese right before he comes to increase the likelihood that we'll get some action. I can't wait to see his reaction when that first rat comes shambling out of the night with beady eyes reflecting the beam from the flashlight. Hopefully it'll be one of these big Norways. Then it will be his turn to tell a tale.

I wonder if he has a big brother

Norway Rats vs. Roof Rats

2007-06-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

Pest rats in California come in two varieties - Roof and Norway. Around my house, they are 'dead' and 'deader'

I was recently skimming through some of my old kill't rat photos when something that had been in the back of my mind for a while finally took shape.

After spending more time looking at the photos and doing a bit of web research, I now think that the rats I had been identifying as 'adult' Roof rats (Rattus rattus) are actually Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus). Have a look at the following side-by-sides and see if you agree that these are two different species: the first is the one I now believe is a Norway, the second I still think is a Roof. The most commonly-referenced distinguishing characteristic is the tail. The tail of the Roof rat is longer than the body and head combined, while the Norway rat's tail is shorter than the body plus head.

Norway Rat?

Note the long body and lighter color. The tail seems on the long-side for a Norway, but is likely just short of the length of the body+head

In the mug shot, you can see the smaller, "Norwegian" ear-to-head ratio

Roof rat?

Smaller overall, longer tail than head+body, more grayish color

The ear (what's left of it) is larger in proportion to the head

I had always thought it strange that the coloring was so much lighter and browner on the big'uns, but just chalked it up to variation. Plus, I had read somewhere a while ago that Norways and Roof rats tended not to be found sharing the same territory (see quote below). And since I knew I definitely had Roof rats -- they are very agile climbers and have been seen (and shot) in my tree -- I assumed that they were the only ones I had.

Basically, I did a lot of assuming -- and I know what happens when I assume.

Have a look at the details/specs on the following site (Anne's Rat Page). Heck, while you're there, take the quiz:

http://www.ratbehavior.org/QuizNorwayRatRoofRat.htm

As mentioned, Roof rats (a.k.a., black rats, ship rats) are excellent climbers, often living in nests above ground. Norway rats (a.k.a., brown rats, sewer rats) more often tend to be burrowers. Regarding overlapping populations, I found this quote on the Internet (source is unclear):

"The present distribution of the Norway and roof rats appears related to two factors, competition between the two species and the reaction of both to different climates. When the aggressive Norway rat and the roof rat compete for the same areas, the Norway rat frequently becomes dominant, and the roof rat soon disappears. Only under special conditions do both species live in the same area. In one eastern seaport, roof rats live in the top of grain elevators and Norway rats live in the bottom. This is probably because roof rats are better climbers than Norways. It is generally only in such situations as these that roof rats are found living in Norway rat territory."
-- http://www.angelfire.com/tx/mariorios/norway.html

So based on my new assumptions, I now see my backyard as a melting pot of rodentia, where rats of all races and creeds come to live. It's my job to welcome each and every one of them with a .20 caliber handshake.

Tales from the Way Back Machine

2007-06-15T16:13:00.000-07:00

Close your eyes. Clear your mind. Allow me to take you back to the Summer of 2006...

(Cue "The Time of the Season" by The Zombies, slo-mo footage of chopper blades over a Vietnamese jungle, and -- wait. It was '06, not '66. Never mind.)

It was the first Summer with my Gamo Hunter 440 in .177 caliber, which I had already used to dispatch a handful of rats that were brave (and foolish) enough to come out during the day. I had a 4x fixed power scope on the rifle at that point, with a 32mm objective lens. It wasn't great in low light situations, but it worked well in the day for shooting at my range (17-22 yards). So after many target sessions, and the occasional pest control shooting, I had grown very confident with the gun. I felt that what I put the crosshair on, I was going to hit.

The original rat thumper

As mentioned, my shooting had always been confined to daylight hours. But there was activity going on at the feeders even after the lights when out. I found that out one night when I went out back to watch for the space shuttle re-entry with my binoculars. As I stood out in the middle of my lawn, I heard some scuttling at the feeders which were about 20 feet away. Since my eyes were adjusted to the dark, I was able to put the field glasses on the feeder and see a couple of rats pilfering seeds right from the source. Up to that point I had naively assumed that the rats were confining themselves to what food dropped to the ground. But these were roof rats -- exceptional climbers -- and making their way through the tree to the feeders was no problem at all.

So more than a little ticked off, I camped out the next night with a flashlight trained on the feeder. Even with the illumination, it was a dim sight picture through that small scope. But I could see enough.

At right about 9 o'clock I was jolted out of my quiet surveillance by the sight of a dark brown shape in the branches of the tree. Those little bastards had come back for more free dinner. They seemed wary of (but not deterred by) the light. The first rat ventured down onto the feeder, but kept himself behind it with the feeder shielding him from the light (and my gun). Occasionally, he would peer around from behind the feeder on the right side with just about 3/4 of his head appearing in the light -- clearly he was curious about what this spotlight business was. The next time he did this, I put the scope on what I could see of his head, snicked off the safety and took the shot. I heard the pellet go into the vegetation at the back of the yard, and I couldn't see the rat any longer. As tricky as the shot was, I still had strong a feeling that I'd gotten him.

I didn't want to spook the second rat, so I stayed put, hoping he'd come back. As quietly as I could, I loaded up another .177 Crow Magnum pellet and continued the stakeout.

The always reliable Crow Magnum hollow point pellet

Within ten minutes, I caught a glimpse of some shadowy movement above the feeder. I then watched rat #2 dip down and grab some seeds -- this time from the front of the feeder. In fact, he balanced himself directly on one of the perches that the birds use, giving me a perfect profile. But I was leery of taking the shot for fear of the pellet over penetrating and damaging the feeder. So I kept watching him as he took the seeds and moved back up to a branch about a foot above the feeder, where the illumination from the flashlight was much less bright. From what I could dimly make out, he seemed to be happily eating his loot up there. So again, I lined him up as best I could, pushed off the safety and squeezed the trigger. Another sound of the pellet passing through leaves and branches, and no sign of the little bugger.

I was certain I had missed this time. After another ten minute vigil, I realized he'd been spooked and wasn't coming back this night. So I went out to retrieve the one I felt sure I'd hit. Much to my surprise, there were the lifeless bodies of both rats laying in the grass directly under the spots they'd dropped from.

Surveying the carcass of the one I shot off the feeder I saw that I had indeed put the pellet right in his crankcase (really that was all I could have hit without somehow passing through the feeder). The force of the pellet into his melon had somehow knocked a perfect half of his brain out of his skull, and it lay neatly some few inches away from his body. It was really bizarre and a bit unsettling. I wish I had gotten pics to document it, but at the time, it didn't even occur to me.

I have always been particularly proud of that shot -- nighttime, sliver of a target, and using that 4x scope. I put that pellet exactly in the one spot I could have to hit the target and miss the feeder, and he was dead before he hit the ground.

The second rat had gone down without a twitch due to a well-placed heart/lung shot. I disposed of both rats and packed it in for the night.

The scene of the night's action, shot during the day

After that night, I curtailed my elevated shooting because I realized that my backdrop was questionable at that height with a neighbor directly behind me. The sound of those pellets going through the rats and into the vegetation was enough to convince me of that. It was at that point that I started occasionally baiting on the ground to try to lure targets back down to safer shooting. But that's a future "Tale from the Way Back Machine". Excelsior!

Memorial Day Mayhem

2007-05-28T23:49:00.000-07:00

The action continued in the back yard today. After the twin killing on Saturday, I figured it would be quiet for a while. The rats had other plans.

On Saturday I killed two good-sized rats (over a foot-long each, head to tail), and watched a scrub jay carry off a mouse-sized third. Today I was out watering plants in the back when I spotted a juvenile helping himself to sunflower seeds next to the rail under the feeder. I broke out the R1 and took a seat about 20 yards away. As I was waiting for the rat to come back out, I noticed that the blue jay was also watching from his perch in the tree above. Clearly he was hoping for another steak dinner, but this rat (juvenile though he was) was much larger than the little guy he’d gotten before. So when the rat ran back out for another helping of seeds, the jay hung back. No worries blue jay, I’ll get this one.

The rat was running out of the ivy at the back of the yard towards my position, so my shot was almost exactly head-on. But my line of sight was partially obscured by the intervening grass, so I had to do a little bit of guesswork by aiming slightly low (through the grass in front of him). I squeezed the trigger and let fly the .20 Crow Magnum pellet. There was a thump, and I could see that there was some movement, but the rat was still in roughly the same spot, so I knew I must have hit him with a critical shot. Walking up to the spot, I saw what had happened. The pellet had gone just over his head and hit him through the spine. His hind legs were no longer functioning but he was not yet dead. He had turned around and was very slowly trying to make his way back into cover alongside the rail. He had made it about 6 inches before fading but I could see that he was still breathing. So I loaded up another pellet and put him down like Gene Hackman went down in Unforgiven.

See you in hell, William Munny

After disposing of the carcass and putting the gun away, I went back to finish watering and sure enough there was another juvenile doing the exact same shtick as the first. So I got the gun back out, went back to my shooting position and waited for her next approach. I had to guess again for exact placement, but this time the pellet flew true and the little lass went down without a fuss. In fact, it killed her so quickly, she still had a sunflower seed jammed in her mouth!

Lights out

After that, it was genuinely quiet, and I was able to enjoy the rest of my Memorial Day without further interruption. I had time to smoke a rack of baby back ribs over some applewood chips, and sip a couple of cold ones. I hope everyone else’s holiday was as enjoyable.

The Double Dip

2007-05-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

Since my last post about a month ago, it had been a near shutout in terms of rat sightings. As you may recall, I had dropped a juvenile rat that day, leaving her with a rather oversized pierced ear. In the subsequent weeks, I saw one rat -- a good-sized bugger -- but he dissappeared almost the instant I was able to get him in the sights of my R1 .20 caliber air rifle. I thought he'd come right back out, but frustratingly, he never showed his whiskers again.

Then about a week ago, I noticed several good-sized piles of fresh dirt hidden under the ivy at the back of the yard, in the vicinity of where I know the rats to hole up (near the bird feeders). I have never seen excavation like that in the yard before, so I was unsure if it was related to rats or some other vermin (actually, I'm still not 100% sure it was from rats, but I'd have to guess it is). Regardless, the signs of life were encouraging, and put me back on alert.

Then this morning came, overcast and cool here near the coast in northern California. Watching the birds at the feeders, I noticed the tell-tale sight of a rat scurrying swiftly from the spot under the feeder back into the ivy. And even from the half glimpse, I could see he was a full-sized adult. So I broke out the R1, snuck out into the back yard and sat waiting about 20 yards away. Having regretted not taking a quicker shot on that last rat a few weeks back during the half-beat I had him lined up, I resolved to take the shot right away if I got it. So as soon as he ventured out again and paused next to the little wood railing, I put the crosshair on his shoulder, flicked off the safety and took the shot. I heard the distinctive sound of the Crow Magnum pellet connecting, and when there was no subsequent scurrying, I knew the pellet had dropped him on the spot. A closer inspection showed the rat had flipped over on his back. The pellet had gone in just over the shoulder and exited just opposite and there was a little dab of blood under him in the grass. I moved him and snapped a few pics before disposing of the carcass. He was easily twice the size (maybe more) of the last rat I killed. A worthy notch for the stock of the R1.

Rat #1 - for scale, glove is 9 1/2 inches from the cuff to tip of the longest finger

It was after breakfast when I looked out again and saw (to my surprise) that there was another rat streaking from under the tree. So I got the rifle back out and got set up again. This time the rat (another adult) was coming around from behind the tree and eating seeds near the trunk rather than over by the wooden rail. That meant she was able to be lower in the grass where there is a depression covered by dirt. From my shooting angle, it meant that I had a very poor sight of her when she was down in that dirt area -- the grass growing around the edge of it acted as a natural screen. I could catch intermittent glimpses of the very top of her, but she was completely hidden from view for much of the time. Then I would see her haul ass back into the ivy. So I waited to get a sight of her where I could determine where her head was, aimed a little low into the level of the grass, and squeezed the trigger. Another thump, and I saw a leg and a tail twitch up out of the grass. This time I took the camera out to the actual spot where she died and got pics. She was as large as the first. The pellet must have gone in through her right ear. There were no other signs of entry and a trail of blood was slowly dropping from that ear onto the dirt. When I turned her over, she had blood coming out of her other ear, and a little from her nose. And her left eye had been blown out of its socket. It was a gruesome sight, but that .20 hollow-point pellet got into her brainpan and anchored her on the spot.

Hit them in the ear and they'll listen - Rat #2

The chalk outlines - #1 and #2

There is an epilogue to this tale. Later this afternoon, I was out in the backyard and saw a scrub jay (they are mean SOBs) swoop down under the tree and go back into the ivy. There was a high-pitched squealing, and then the blue jay jumped back out. He had a tiny little rat by the scruff of the neck in his beak! He shook it a few times to stun it and then flew off with it. I could not believe it. Still can’t. But it confirms that the two I killed today must have been the parents of a relatively new litter. Without the folks around to bring food, the little one must have ventured out and paid the price at the beak of a scrub jay. A strange end to an eventful day. Thanks for reading!

First Rat of the Season

2007-04-21T21:07:00.000-07:00

This is my first post here, so it may be a little long-winded as I introduce myself and my circumstance. I hope some of you will bear with me and hear my tale. I've been in my house for a year and a half now, and almost from the beginning realized there were rats in the back yard (though thankfully, not in the house, attic, garage, etc.) Roof rats are what we have here, and there is generally a steady (although not overwhelming) supply of them that appear under -- or sometimes on -- the birdfeeders at the back of the yard. They must nest back inside the short retaining wall that runs along part of the yard, covered by ivy and blackberry bushes -- perfect rat terrain. And my newly placed bird feeders must have been just what they were looking for.

I bought a new scoped Gamo 440 Hunter in .177 about a year ago, and have used it to dispatch eight or nine rats, some at night, and some bold ones in the full light of day. I enjoyed the hobby of air gunning so much, I recently upgraded to a second-hand scoped Beeman R1 in .20 -- it's a beautiful (and big!) rifle.

The new Beeman R1 .20 air rifle -- pure shooting pleasure

So after a long winter with no action (well, as long as a winter can be in northern California), I spotted two juvenile rats in late March. They were so quick, and crafty, that I could never get off a shot. They would dart out, grab some food and dart back. If they were ever stationary, it was when they were low in a depression in the grass, or in some way placed just well enough as to not give me a decent shot. I shoot very conservatively, only wanting to take a shot that I am sure will kill quickly, and it was like the rats knew it. Many were the curses I laid down on those lucky little SOBs.

Anyway, after about a week, they dissappeared and I never saw them again, or anything else until this morning. A new little rat, even smaller than the mysterious pair was out scavenging under the feeders. She was quick, but she also had the unfortunate (for her) habit of sitting stationary for a few seconds up on the little rail of wood that borders the back corner of the yard under the feeders.

The feeders, tree and 'rail'

So I broke out the R1, snuck out into the back yard through the garage, sat myself at the patio table and loaded a Crow Magnum pellet. The rat would only come out when the feeders were packed with birds, as this provided a means for seeds to get knocked down to the ground, as well as an early warning system for any potential danger. As soon as the birds were back, so was she. She paused on the rail in her customary spot, and I pushed off the safety, leaned my elbows on the table, lined her head up in the crosshair and squeezed the trigger. I heard a thump as the pellet hit the wood of the retaining wall behind her, and when I got my sight picture back, the rat was not to be seen. I went out to the spot to investigate and there she lay, immediately on the other side of the wooden rail, exactly where the force of the pellet had knocked her.

I put on gloves and used plastic bags to transport her to a more picture friendly spot and got some pics. I was amazed to see that the pellet had punched a nearly perfect hole through her ear on its way to entering just over her right shoulder blade. The pellet passed almost the full length of the body and exited through the side of the lower abdomen near the left hind leg.

Will the style catch on?

It's the first time I've given a rat a pierced ear, but she wasn't around long enough to adorn it. Well, that's my tale. I hope some folks enjoyed it.