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Posted: 10/15/2024 8:54:00 PM EDT
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_SL34BkLpE |
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When I was a kid I recall adults at the town dump shooting rats with .22's. Just a bunch of guys casually shooting on a Saturday afternoon. Today of course people would be horrified at even the thought of someone firing a gun within town limits. I wish I could go back to those good old days. . |
Gun control is not the answer. Gun control is the question. The answer is NO.
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So I have chickens in my little urban backyard here in the PHX metro area. Rats are already an issue here, often called "roof rats" or "citrus rats." They've been an issue for me lately so I picked up a thermal scope for my Brocock Sniper XR in .22. It's a long boy with a moderator so I bought an FX Maverick and chopped the barrel down so that the moderator barely peeks past the end of the bottle. Hella lot fun! Not this many, but on a good night I'll get 5-7. |
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I have a friend that works a dairy, got permission from his boss to go out at night and play hell with the vermin. I use an AKELA with a cheap(er) Sightmark Wraith. They’re a never ending bunch of targets, I can kill anywhere up to 30 a night and go back the next night and do it again. Attached File |
I have no useful skills, therefore I supervise.
Call sign:Radio Silence
Call sign:Radio Silence
| I’ve been taking care of a rat problem coming over from my neighbors’ yards lately. Taken out 16 so far (I think the tally is 5 with traps and 11 with the pellet gun. I tried cheap NV but it wasn’t working in my situation, open sights and a light worked best. Cheap refurb Hatsan AirTact has been good but a repeating PCP would have helped, I just can’t justify the cost. Thermal would be amazing too but same thing on the cost. |
-"The truth does not require your belief in it to function."
-Genuine science is about gathering evidence and testing the veracity of theories, not cheerleading for a particular ideology.
-Genuine science is about gathering evidence and testing the veracity of theories, not cheerleading for a particular ideology.
I have a Leshey 2 in route. Purchased a Zulus 3-12 LRF. Took this little video tonight - yep, my chickens coop has a rat problem. ZULUS RATS The Leshey 2 a compact rifle that has a 8 shot self indexing revolver action For everything but legal purposes, it is semi-automatic (it is not, because the pellets are shot from the revolver cylinder, not seated into the barrel from a magazine - which apparently is a legal distinction in some countries). If I set up right - I wonder what 8 shots could do to this string of rats. --- Well, got the last of the parts of the project in the mail today. Rifle is (de)tuned and sighted in. Need to build my backstop and a drop table for it (will use a drop table to tweak the ballistics table before I download it into the scope). Taking too long, but eRATication will start soon. |
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So I did some rat math. Roughly (based on google), Rats have about 1 month before sexual maturity, can have litters every 2 months, can have litter sizes up to 12. Assuming a 50/50 male to female ratio - a single female rat could have over 22k decedents in one year. The gen 0 female would have 1296 gen 5 grand daughters - which would have 7726 grand daughters going into reproduction the next year. If food is plentiful - they would take over the world. No wonder we had plagues. It hits almost 175 million by 2 years. They're everywhere. As satisfying as it could be, good luck eradicating them with a pellet rifle. |
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Originally Posted By mousehunter: So I did some rat math. Roughly (based on google), Rats have about 1 month before sexual maturity, can have litters every 2 months, can have litter sizes up to 12. Assuming a 50/50 male to female ratio - a single female rat could have over 22k decedents in one year. The gen 0 female would have 1296 gen 5 grand daughters - which would have 7726 grand daughters going into reproduction the next year. If food is plentiful - they would take over the world. No wonder we had plagues. It hits almost 175 million by 2 years. They're everywhere. As satisfying as it could be, good luck eradicating them with a pellet rifle. I’ve killed 22 in the last 2 months and while we see less of them we do still see them. Probably just getting smarter. |
-"The truth does not require your belief in it to function."
-Genuine science is about gathering evidence and testing the veracity of theories, not cheerleading for a particular ideology.
-Genuine science is about gathering evidence and testing the veracity of theories, not cheerleading for a particular ideology.
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Life keeps getting in the way of my rat hunting. Killed 24 last month with traps. Couple nights ago I saw at least 50 near the traps, they definitely get smarter. I think of them a lot like hogs. They learn, they reproduce to meet the food supply. Kill a bunch, and the population will expand to fit the food supply. Plus, you could kill 95% of the males, and the females will still get pregnant. All you have accomplished is killing useless eaters. You will end up with more reproductive females - and smarter rats. |
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Well, started eRATication 2025. In the previous post (I think), my max rat count with night vision was 35 (the 50 was an estimate from a higher traffic night). Tonight (well and this morning) was not nearly as much traffic (don't know where the evil bastards are hiding). I think with the 35 count, it is fairly conservative to believe I have over 100 rats. Hell, the dogs killed 6 last week and left them in the yard for me. Anyway, have shot a decent amount so far tonight. No body count yet, but the chicken coop is getting fairly littered with bodies. Will probably make one or 2 more outings before I go to bed, then clean up tomorrow and get a count. Doubt I will find 30 (there are some tunnels, so wounded rats might get underground before they die), but hoping for a 20-40 count. At this point, I am just getting stranglers - think I killed 4 on the 1am outing (started going out every 15 minutes, then 30, now am just bothering once an hour. ---- well, tired of being sober, so ended the hunt a bit after 3am - rats were back out in force for the 3am hunt. Will have another few good nights of killing the mother $#ckers. And when I get tired of rats, plenty of hogs that need killing. OMG they have made my fields look like bombing ranges. Only problem with hogs, is I still feel guilty if I don't eat them. At least rats I can dispose of without skinning them, stuffing them in sausage casing, and smoking them for 1/2 a day. Shooting a hog for me is well over 12hrs of work. --- Stolen valor picture, hope it is not too graphic (zoomed out enough so details should not be too bad).  Dogs might have contributed 2 (bodies found outside of coop and a possibly a day or 2 older), but one dog puked when I kenneled him - so they might have subtracted more. That cat used to be a great mouser - now he is just old and lazy. WAY too many problems with the Leshie, I caused them. I cut the regulator down from 120 bar to 80. Now it does not always cycle. But now the regulator is locked up (most likely blew an o-ring) and I can not turn it back up. Will need to tear down the rifle and rebuild the regulator to fix it - and don't really want to start that yet (till at least a week of hunting is done). As it was, probably 1 out of 4 shots did not cycle, so had to fold the stock and manually index the cylinder (the Leshie 2 is essentially a semi-auto revolver that uses gas to rotate the cylinder and cock the rifle). Took a while to realize doing that also reset the safety. --- Day 2. Traffic down substantially. Less than 1/2 the shots of yesterday (almost finished an Ammo pen tonight, yesterday did about 2). Dead rats are not stacking up like yesterday. I think the kill ratio at least is a bit better. Been taking a higher percentage of head shots. I think tonight's count will be roughly 10 - will see how the bodies add up tomorrow.  Total is up to 32 --- Day 3. Traffic down more, wife sabotaged hunt. I kennel the dogs so I can keep the chicken yard (a 10x10 dog kennel) door open to shoot through. Wife got tired of the dogs whining about being indoors, so she put them back in the yard (even though I told her I was hunting and even though I told her I had the chicken yard door was open (she forgot)). Figured dogs were out when they jumped out of the chicken yard and charged me as I was setting my rifle on the tripod (black labs in the dark - pretty much did not see them till they hit the tripod). So now I get to clean up dead birds tomorrow. Most of the birds were in a small coop or in the rafters - so it was not as bad as it could have been. Last guinea is dead, will figure out the chicken kill in the morning (can not really see in the coop right now). Probably less than 5 dead rats tonight. At least I think the bird count is less right now. |
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I have a decent amount of NV and thermal gear. I am really enjoying my DNT Zulus (v2, with LRF 3-12) with the air rifle. Great picture, if you are careful the LRF is great with air rifle ballistics (it is not lasing the the crosshairs, but you can pick up where it is lasing in NV mode). Record feature is nice (it does not auto record with air rifle recoil). Downside - it needs an IR illuminator (for the ranges I am shooting, the built in is working great), but rats are sensitive to IR light. They definitely act different when being illuminated by it. I also purchased a cheap 640 core thermal for this pellet rifle - but honestly am not liking it nearly as much yet. I love hunting with thermal, but the specific cheap one I got is just not a lot of love for me. It's auto adjust is random at best. This current hunt is at 10m - Not really needing ballistics or range finding. No real need to purchase a different one, can just pull one from a hog rifle I guess. But biggest issue with the thermals I have is they have a fairly tall scope over bore. --- Anyway night 3 results  Total up to 39. Night 4 has been decent - another 5-10 I guess. First 2 or 3 was before I started recording, but will try to have a compilation of hunting with the Zulu 2 LRF soon (downloading editing software, as it is not a crazy fast hunt, more like shoot one, watch TV for 30 minutes, then shoot another). --- Yesterdays total body count was 6, for a total of 45. Trouble adding confirmation picture. |
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No confirmation photo - but here is a video from the Zulu 2 from last night. 2nd to last shot was pretty funny - managed to get a slow motion replay of that one. No clue what I was thinking when I shot that one in the ass instead of the head (third or fourth shot I guess). Blurred rats were my fault, I somehow hit the focus wheel when I was opening the lens cap. Time stamps show it was quite a few hours of hunting. First several outings were not included, was not recording, but had 2 down from them. Somehow I got them out of order though.  Night 4 confirmation photo, that was way too much effort to upload. Night 5 started out with plenty of traffic, but it did not last. The rats are getting too sensitive to the illuminator. So I either need to get them to relax around it or get rid of it. I have an IR floodlight - so I might just bath them in it so I don't need to use the one on the scope, or I need to switch to the thermal. Decisions, decisions... Body count for the night will be pathetic, 2 maybe 3. Shooting video might be better - had several good shots that seemed to do nothing to the rats. --- Did not do a body count yet. No rats seen on Night 6. Edited the shooting video from last night. Guess I need to put the rifle back on paper - and maybe google a kill zone picture for rats. Several decently aimed shots with rats running off after video evidence of hits.  rat hunt day 5 body count ended up being 3 - with the dogs apparently playing with a 4th. Not sure If I should count that one, but maybe I winged it. So 49. |
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Night 7. Pulled the Zulus (digital night vision), put on a Mars Mini Thermal (640 core, 25mm lens-but it is essentially a pistol scope, so lots of compromises but it is probably one of the lightest thermals on the market). One kill so far tonight. Not nearly as clear as the Zulus, but seeing the blood on thermal does make up for some of that. In all honesty - I think my other thermals have better image quality, but they don't do video. Anyway, here is a quick video of part of tonight's hunt with the Mars Mini (will update tomorrow maybe).  night 7 short Just went out for a bit - the rats could have cared less that I was scanning them with thermal. They still don't stick around long after being shot at - but they were a lot more calm. I watched 2 that were out of my safe kill zone for almost a minute after shooting 2 others. --- well still have not edited that video to include the final 2 kills. Kill count for days 7 & 8 was 4 - so total of 52 so far. Not a bad start, but there are still plenty of rats out there. But they are FAR more suspicious now. Might need to put up a hunting blind in January. --- Day 9 ended up with 2 confirmed kills - total up to 54. Taking Christmas break now - will hunt again on the 26th maybe. --- December 31 - guess tonight is the last of the December 2025 hunt. I don't think I have taken a successful shot since day 9. Generally have seen 1-2 rats a night, but most of the time I could not get positive ID before they took off. Thermal is blurry at 10m, and given I am hunting in a dark shed - there is no daytime warming to give it much texture with thermal. Chickens have so much insulation in their feathers - the bodies are not always easy to see - and the heads, well they are a rat sized hot spot. One definite kill so far tonight. First shot was probably a kill, but did anchor shot - then hell, pellets are cheap - second anchor shot. Tonight is warmer than the last 2 nights, so perhaps I will get better thermal images. Zulus might be going back on the rifle - it is more fun and more functional. Or I might order a second Zulus and put the other on a hog rifle. We have had one very light frost, and probably a light freeze last night - so it is almost hog season. That hog gun however will be abusive - a potential scope killer. 405gr 44 magnum, just under 45/70 gov velocity - but in a 5.5lb rifle. 50/50 the inline battery mount of the Zulus will not like the recoil and the scope will shut down after a shot. |
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It's been a slow few weeks. Too busy, and lack of targets of opportunity. 1/12 finally started seeing a small but decent number of rats again (3 confirmed kills). Changed back to Zulus today - so far only 1 baby rat seen. Not sure if it was a kill or not (body hit, not head shot). Also went from super light to heavy pellets. Will see if that changes my kill ratio. Last night I was sending multiple pellets into the same rats to make sure they were dead, dead, dead. --- @$%#$% Just noticed the gate was open. I had left the dogs out for 10 minutes. Last time they killed one guinea - this time they got 7 of 9 chickens in that pen (and one of the 2 that lived is a rooster). Guess no eggs for me this spring. I think my other yard is down to 4 chickens. I usually have about 20. We are moving this year - so will see. Usually incubate 20-30 eggs, but we give most of those away (We kept 5 last year - 2 roosters, 3 hens, but now only one of each left). Guess we will need to do a run for ourselves this year. |
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Edgun Leshey in .22. I have a decent collection of nice air rifles, this is just the new toy. But I am really enjoying the Arca Swiss adapter for tripod use. Most of my hunting in this thread has been with a ball head. I ordered a gimbal head first, but it got put on back order - then the back order went to 5 months. Finally canceled it, but caught a great sale on a much more expensive head. It is nicer, but larger and more heavy. That said, the real advantage to the gimbal is mostly lost on the Leshey - the Leshey is VERY butt heavy, not remotely balanced. But that makes it feel even smaller than it already is. Hell, the suppressor on it is almost as long as the barrel. Compared to my MRod, it is a tiny rifle. Folded (it folds very easily), it fits in a Milwaukee packout. The core of the rifle is the size of a 1911 (but the air tank, regulator, and valves are in the stock - so it can not fire while folded. |
Joined:
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TX, USA
| I know uall are having fun killing rats. I do to. I wasn't killing enough. They breed too fast. I found rat birth control from contrapest in Arizona. It works but takes time to notice the difference. It is suppose to sterilize male and female. It's a white milky liquid that when they find it they love to drink it. Comes in it's own delivery system. Pricey, yes, but so is animal feed. I have been using this stuff off and on for 3 years. Between that and poison the population is down tremendously. I understand not using poison around chickens. We have them also. Corn meal, plaster of Paris and bacon grease will attract rats and kill them. POP turns into cement in their guts. |
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