Rats at night.

spotstalkshoot

spotstalkshoot

Well-known member
Twice I have stopped at a friends hog compost pile. Plenty of rats live there. I shot some with NV on a pellet rifle. Last Friday I stopped with my AR/thermal. The 223 with 50 gr SX wasn't much fun. They are a gray mist when shot at 30-35 yards. I need to get a .22 PCP and run my NV on it. This is a work in progress and I'm hoping to add more locations for some evenings fun and perhaps future bait pails.
 
When I was a kid, there was an old dump about a mile from the edge of town. Dad would take me out there at night with a spotlight and a .22 rifle. We would pull up about 40-50 yards away, kill the truck's headlights, and wait for ten minutes. Dad would turn on the spotlight, and rat eyes would glow like little reflectors. I could usually shoot several before they took cover. Wait another ten minutes and repeat. Simpler times.
 
Growing up, everyone around here had deer hounds including my grandparents' neighbor. When I went to my grandparents' during the summer I would always take my pellet gun. I'd sneak up to the pens and just wait for the big ol' rats to come out of their holes. He had automatic feeders so there was always plenty of food around which meant plenty of rats.
 
Hot summer nights, a good flashlight and my air-rifle, aaaah, the memories of when I was a kid, living in Chicago.


Rats were numerous in the area. We lived above a flower shop, with no back yard, just a concrete pathway alongside the shops storage garage where they had their garbage cans, and a few times a month, my Dad and I would sit quietly in the dark on the staircase landing, waiting for movement down below (outside, of course). I had my Diana break-barrel .177 air rifle. When we saw movement, I got lined up and my Dad would turn the 6V flashlight on, and I would shoot. Being a break-barrel, I would get one shot at a time.

To a 10yo, it seemed like forever before another one came out, but in reality, it was about the time it took my Dad to smoke one cigarette. Three or four cigarettes, and he called it a night.
 
Ahh, the dump and a 22. Many memories of rats and crows as a youngster. 204AR posted a couple vids a few years back shooting mice/rats with thermal that I still get a good chuckle when I think about them.
 
I used to have a mini mag flashlight mounted on my Daisy 880 for shooting rats. It worked great. 22 CBs work good too, but not as accurate. That was a lot of fun a long time ago. These days some subsonics in a suppressed 22 would be killer using a red light or night optic.
 
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