Your article brings back memories of me and my cousins shooting rats and ground hogs in my grandfather's corn field. We use BB guns .177 pellet guns, and .22 rifles with shorts. Those rats even jumped off the corn stalks when hit!!
JC-Shooting Rats
Your article brings back memories of me and my cousins shooting rats and ground hogs in my grandfather's corn field. We use BB guns .177 pellet guns, and .22 rifles with shorts. Those rats even jumped off the corn stalks when hit!!
Here in the Klamath Basin shooting of "rats" is considered a spring ritual. The rats, Belding Ground Squirrels, wreck havoc on the farmer's alfalfa fields.
Tim
I had a family of rats move into the back corner our backyard one winter under a poolside deck. We had a bird feeder also which was closer to the house which I am sure they got into at night. They also liked the berries from our yo-pon shrub which they ate early in the morning.
Rats are evidently near sighted because if I saw one sitting up munching berries in the morning I could sneak out our patio door and rest my pellet gun on on our patio table without disturbing them.
The distance was about 45 feet and I did not let any get back to the family and tell the others what was going on. There are indeed good jumpers. I got 7 over a period of about 2 weeks before they were gone
Tim, don't "we call them, sage rats".Originally Posted by Panman
Actually that's little inside joke between my buddy and me.
Duckster - Most of the guys I know just call them squeaks because of the noise they make. Back in Utah they called them Potguts.
Tim
Nice trip down memory lane JC. That and Lady Fisher's use of the word "doozy" brought back some great memories. (Some of you "geezers" or is it "old geezers", may remember a TV show called Hazel where the word was used continuously).
Shooting rats at the local dump was a recurring activity for me. And jump they did!
Rick
Hit 'em with a 223 and they don't jump at all.
"The reason you have a good vision is you're standing on the shoulders of giants." ~ Andy Batcho
Rick - Do you know where that term "doozy" came from? It was from a Duesenberg car ad! That goes back a wee bit........
When I was a youngster, we used to have rat killin's (ala Jerry Clower!) all the time out at the corn crib next to the barn. We used BB guns, .22 rifles, and our homemade blowguns. Like JC, we also used to shoot rats at a dump; not the city dump, but at a dump a distillery used to have behind the plant on the banks of the Ohio River near Owensboro, KY. We also used to fish the river in the vicinity of the discharge of the distillery. Way back then, the distillery used to pump their used mash into the river, attracting nearly every catfish, buffalo, carp and gizzard shad in that part of the river. I once caught a 39 pound bigmouth buffalo there on cooked macaroni! That was years ago, well before I was made aware of any type of fishing other than baitfishing. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, JC!
Hi fellow rat shooters.
I too recycle rats with my 22.
YES...
Recycle is what happens.
Never wasted a rat yet.
Have you,
ever noticed their, that is a rat's whiskers.
I clip them off
and Recycle them into the Worlds best tails on my dun type dry flies.
The fur,
also recycled
this is removed while the rat is in a deep sleep.
and reused..
no,
recycled into a fantastic dubbing material for wet and nymphs.
Most ratus ratus creatures
the fur is in three colours on each strand, mainly and this fur wets up so fast you will be amazed, which as you would know aids sinking of the dubbed fly.
ps, my wife thinks I am a bit strange as do my kids,
then I think,
whats wrong with them,
they know nothing about recycling,
at all.
pps, how many of you recyclers out their of Mr Ratus have been wasting your fresh rats ?
Kind regards,
UB
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