Does anyone else "hunt" starlings?

LeviSS

LeviSS

New member
It's one of my favorite Spring past times. They build nests in everything and I don't really care for them. It's fun to try to sneak out of the door and get them. They wise up pretty quick and get farily difficult to sneak up on once a few of their buddies get whacked.

Does anyone else share my hobby?
 
I've killed a million and a half starlings at least. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Just kiddin Im not sure how many I've killed but its alot of them.My personal best is when I killed 3 with 1 shot with my .17HMR last year.I've killed a ton of them with a pellet or bb gun though.Just find where their nesting and set there and wait.They'll eventually come back and set there long enough to take a shot at them.Even if you miss it seems like they forget a little while later and come back and you get to repeat the process again.
They love old barns or places where cattle are I've learned throughout my starling killing career.
My mom used to work at a feed lot so I would go out there and shoot mice,rats,pigeons,starlings and sparrows with my pellet gun all day,well at least until she got done workin.It was great though. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif
 
Starlings are an Introduced species. Them and European house sparrows are two that can be killed. If you have an e caller foxpros starling distress 1 is real deadly on them. Seems to work in the spring and early summer. I think it is a young starling screaming. I spray painted a dove decoy and lay it by the foxpro. They will land by it and look at. I have had five or six at a time come in. When I first got it, I played it through the screen door just to test it and them things were trying to come in the door. They are fairly smart, much like a crow. After one escapes from being shot at it seems to come from where the shot came from the next time. I sit on the back porch and they will land on the power line going from the house to the garage and look into the window and not pay attention to the sound. I am in a little town, so I use the air rifle.
 
Quote:
Does the HMR blow them up pretty good? I always use a .22LR.


Oh yeah it looks like they swallowed a cherry bomb or somethin when they get hit. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
When I got those 3 lines up last year I couldnt beleive it when I squeezed the trigger and automatically saw feathers and bird parts go in every which direction.I was using CCI Hollowpoints and it went through the first one leaving a pretty good sized hole in it.The second one it blew in half and I only found the third ones head.He was at the back of the line.I told the kid that was with me that I was gonna hit them all,I just didnt really beleive myself. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
I hit another one from 200 yards with my .17HMR that was feeding in some short grass.It was very calm out which it almost never is here.So I decided to try and kill it from that far.I layed down and rested my gun on the side of a prairie dog mound.Held over its head and POOF!!!!saw feathers go everywhere. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Quote:
It's one of my favorite Spring past times. They build nests in everything and I don't really care for them. It's fun to try to sneak out of the door and get them. They wise up pretty quick and get farily difficult to sneak up on once a few of their buddies get whacked.

Does anyone else share my hobby?



I'll be shooting them every chance I get. They are very hard to get close to (35-50 yards) in the country. In town, where they aren't typically shot at, they could care less, so that gives you an idea how smart they are.

They wreck havoc on the native bird populations by raiding their nests and eating the eggs. The native birds are defenseless against them, as they are VERY aggressive, and travel in groups.

There is a yearly airgun starling killing contest conducted nationwide, with a prize at the end of the year. I'll have to use my .45 air rifle until I can come up with the scratch for a .25 air rifle which is more suited to the task.

Shooting them with the .45 is going to be fun, though hehehe! POOOF!
 
When I was a boy growing up, I used to sneak around trying to get a shot with a shotgun. I would catch them in trees and try to line up as many as I could to see how many I could possibly get with one shot. Nine was the most I ever did.

They are fun with rifles too. Top rifle is a Remington 541-S 22 long rifle, and the bottom
one is a Marlin 22 mag. The mag is bad news on starlings with 33 gr. Rem. V-Max.
mangled1.jpg
 
In Illinois,

Starlings and European(English)house sparrows are the only birds legal. Cowbirds are considered songbirds and are protected. It's a $500-1000 fine to shoot a songbird!

A .177cal airgun is great for starlings and sparrows... the light weight hyper velocity pellets do them in just fine! When I was a kid, a Daisy BB gun was the ticket. Now a BB gun is more dangerous than most high power pellet guns due to ricochets. IMHO

Nikonut /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif
 
it fun to take the plug out of the rem 1187 and put in the IC tubes and flock shoot them it #9 shot/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif if they are flying tight enough, you can drop half the flock with all 5 rounds /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif. growing up, the starlings and house sparrows would leave the yard when the back door opened /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-006.gif

theres nothing funner to do in the summer months then to go to a feedlot and shoot starlings, house sparrows and pigeons /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif
 
When I was a kid and we got out of school for the summer, we would go to the neighborhood store and buy old bread. Then we would build a blind and put bread every where.Then climb into the blind with the old daisy and a 10 cent tube of BBs. The more we shot the more decoys we had out " dead starlings" and the more we would shoot. I believe that is what started my love for hunting.I still love to shoot them today only with a little more high tech rifle.
 
Here in Orygun we have them like the plague!

They often fly in huge flocks and descend upon the farmer's fields.

In the northwest corner of the state we have lots of berry farmers and the Starlings really do a number on the berries and cherrys.

Around the 2nd week of July they start attacking the Blueberry fields and until recently the farmers would gladly let you come shoot them. Of course this is around some pretty built up areas, so we're talking about wing shooting with shotguns.

I've always considered this "Poor man's Dove shooting"!

I use it as my shotgun warmup prior to Dove season.

About 10 years ago shooting Starlings around here was really crazy. Some berry growers would even put up signs saying "Starling shooters welcome".

However in the last couple of years, something has come up that's really put the damper on the shoots over berry fields.

Apparently because of the packers occasionally finding some Lead shot in amongst their berry deliverys, they've installed metal detectors IN their processing lines, and when a sensor goes off, it dumps about 1/2 bushel of berries where it detects them.

This affects how much the farmers get paid, so all of a sudden shooting over the berry fields has stopped, even amongst farmers who often would go out and shoot them themselves.

So, how much shooting is this?

An example would be a few years ago, on a good day, my girlfriend and I went out at 7:30 in the morning and started shooting.

We had a case ("flat"-10 boxes=250 shells) of 20 ga. between us.

By 9:00 a.m. we were OUT! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smiliesmack.gif

We had to head back to a sporting goods store and pick up another case and pretty much finished that one off by 10.

Our shooting was good, hitting ~7/10, so there were LOTS of dead Starlings all over the ground.

That farmer who would go shoot them himself, told me, "Heck, that's nothing. You should have been here last Sunday afternoon. My son-in-law and I went through 12 cases of 12 ga shells!

Sadly, as mentioned, much of this berry field shooting has now ended. Not only that, but for whatever reason they haven't been invading the berry fields as much as they did before. Don't know what's up with that?

But they're still out there, and we can still go shoot them when they descend upon grass fields, or maybe out on the edge of a Cherry orchard?

I don't know where to hit 'em next, but I'll figure it out! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
every year about time school lets out my cousin comes up from kansas city for the summer. And we hit up the garage sales in the spring and buy old aluminum arrows and put on some of those stump buster tips that catch grass and we sit in the hay fields with bread throw out by the edge and shoot those buggers all day long lol its a blast and amazing practice with a bow. I cant wait they are starting to build up numbers them and squirrels so come opening day of squirrel season its arrows knocked every man for himself .
 
Haven't been starling shooting in 40 years. Admittedly you all have my interest level up again.

My Dad was a big starling shooter with a M39 Marlin and that was a long time ago. Maybe I need a M39 myself.
 
We used to do it back in Jr High. We would go out to a buddy's dad's hog house in the winter time where the starlings would congregate for heat and food. We would do it at night with flashlights and kill piles of them using BB guns and pellet guns. Its a wonder we all still have our eyes as the BB's would richocete terribly off the steel roof, and half the time you had a hog trying to chew your leg off at the same time. High times for redneck kids! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

If I recall correctly, the FFA used to pay kids a bounty for starlings. They would bring in starling heads by the 5 gal buckets full. We never bothered with that since the hogs were in a feeding frenzy when they hit the floor.
 
here in CA starlings and house sparrow are not protected. I don't hunt them but if i'm not seeing any game when upland hunting I sometimes will blast a sparrow if I flush one.

however here in CA its illegal to shoot any kind of bird with a rifle. They are fast as heck makes them a challenge with the shotgun.
 


Write your reply...
Back
Top