Rock Squirels & Pack Rats

[Centennial]

I spot them from a distance with binoculars then shoot with a Henry lever 22 or Rossi 62.
Problem is sometimes it takes along time for them to show themselves.
It's fun, good practice, it doesn't shoot up a lot of ammo, and they are destructive creatures getting into just about anywhere of a vehicle or house. One time one squirre got into the crawl apace and bit the PC wire in two in one chomp, one second online, next second we were not.

Does anyone have favorite methods of calling them or baiting them to come out?

[Pete44ru]

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I think more than a .22RF would be needed for Ratzilla - like a small bear trap........



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[Griff]

Squirrels are around my place all the time... SWMBO has issued orders about their eradication... Es Verboten! And in her defense, we've not suffered any issues with them. Well... except for the nest above my lighting fixture in the reloadin' shop out in the barn!! One is back, but... no nest has reappeared, yet!

[J35]

If i lived where rodents were creating problems for me I would have two or three OUTSIDE cats.

Your post brings back a lot of memories, in my early teens I spent many a day perched up in the rocks with a 22 rimfire, waiting on ground squirrels and pack rats to show themselves, most of my friends at that time didn't have the patience , after two or three hours they were ready to go, so I went solo, or made sure they had their own transportation.

-----J

[FWiedner]

I think I've told this tale before;

A while back I had a friend up in Anna had just leased two brand new Mercedes for his 'business'. Had a rat or two crawl up under the bonnet and chew the hell out of the fiber-optic wiring harness. On both cars. Rats love fiber-optic cable.

Insurance wasn't going to cover it. The one exclusion for animal damage in the policy was for 'rodentia'.

My friend's wife used to feed forest critters out on the back porch. Racoons and squirrels and such, whatever wandered out of the tree-line. That being the case, my friend made the argument to his insurance agent that since these creatures that caused the damage to the cars ate from the community trough, that there were in fact, domestic pets.

Darned if he didn't get it fixed.

[2571]

It's just amazing how people will explain their insurance frauds on the 'net. >:)

[RIHMFIRE]

whoa....that rodent is huge.....

[Pete44ru]

whoa....that rodent is huge.....

Yep - the body measured 15", sans tail.

It's been in the news, from Sweden this week.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26764929


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[Centennial]

Pete44ru; That is a trophy rat. If he'd shot it with a ML it would of been Boone & Crocket.

335nut; Your right I usually sit by myself, sometimes on a stack of hay bales is best.
have outside cats and we have way less problems then others around here.

When we first bought this house (built 1880's) I found pristine rat traps nailed to the attic floor joists still set

I've tried a gopher call that sounds like a sqeakey door, and some other calls.
I'm thinking put a wood stake in the ground and bait it with peanut butter smeared on it.

[92&94]

That thing is as big as a nutria.

The dog I had until last year was h*ll on ground rodents. New one has the idea but not the drive. I like the new dog, but he's more of my wife's dog than mine, one of those slightly timid dogs that relates to women more than men.

She doesn't want another though, so I guess I'll have to get some outdoor cats. They only last 3 or 4 years around here before something eats them.

[AJMD429]

We used to have a 'trash dump' outside town, and you just drove in, picked a place to dump your trash, then I guess every month or so someone bulldozed it into a big pile and what wouldn't burn got buried.

Anyway, we loved going there with our 22's and shooting rats. Most fun was if we found a toilet or sink 'cuz they shattered when you shot them.

[geobru]

We used to have a 'trash dump' outside town, and you just drove in, picked a place to dump your trash, then I guess every month or so someone bulldozed it into a big pile and what wouldn't burn got buried.

Anyway, we loved going there with our 22's and shooting rats. Most fun was if we found a toilet or sink 'cuz they shattered when you shot them.

Yep, those were the days! There used to be a dump outside of Morton, when you pulled into it at night, the garbage was moving with the rats crawling all over it. Probably a good reason NOT to have open dumps any more! Sure was fun though with a 22 auto and a flashlight!

[J35]

We used to have a 'trash dump' outside town, and you just drove in, picked a place to dump your trash, then I guess every month or so someone bulldozed it into a big pile and what wouldn't burn got buried.

Anyway, we loved going there with our 22's and shooting rats. Most fun was if we found a toilet or sink 'cuz they shattered when you shot them.

This thread stir's up a lot of memories .

After my JR year of High school I spent the summer on a ranch just outside of Bend Oregon it was owned by Elmer Kilby, He ranched cattle, dry land farmed corn and hay for winter feed and raised and broke teams of Draft horses for logging and in his spare time ran a pack of bear and lion hounds.

After breakfast the first morning Elmer handed me a 22 rifle and a brick of shell's, it seems his place was plagued by a little ground squirrel they called Grey Digger's. For two weeks every morning until noon my job was to murder Grey diggers, it was fun for the first few mornings. He had a old white hound that would follow me and gobble up the dead squirrels and pretty soon he couldn't move he would be so full and he was so greedy he would lay there and bawl because he wanted more, Elmer had a grandson there about 7 years old he would go with me some mornings with his BB gun and he would fill a five gallon bucket with just his BB gun.

In Southern AZ about the only rats we had were Pack rats and Kangaroo rats.

In High school The auto shop teacher made a few of us boys mad. So we went out in the desert and caught around two hundred Kangaroo rats by hand with gloves and a spotlight, I had a old chevy truck with a camper shell and we just put the rats in there for safe keeping, anyways I backed up in the teacher's front yard and dropped the tail gate about two in the morning.

After high school I lived in Poquoson VA, a small fishing town, they had a town dump that was open 24 -7. One of the fellow's I fished gill nets with asked me if I wanted to shoot rats that night at the dump, i said sure but I left my guns in AZ, he said no problem. What I witnessed that night reminded me of something you would see in a horror movie , there were so many wharf rats that you could not see the garbage , the piles were moving. We shot for a couple hours straight with are "bullet guns" that's what the locals called a 22 rifle.

Across Back River in Hampton VA there was a old dairy farm that the city had grown up around it and it had closed. A fellow leased the farm for a riding stable that boarded horses and maintained a hack line. I spent a lot of time there because it was a excellent place to meet girls and i liked the atmosphere it reminded me of home. This farm was over ran with wharf rats the old dairy barn and all the out buildings were infested beyond belief.

I bought a second hand Sears Mod 200 12 ga and cut the barrel to 18 1/2", taped a small narrow beamed flashlight under the barrel and loaded a bunch of 1oz #9, if I seen a rat in the light i just pulled the trigger, no aiming involved. The main barn was huge you could drive a 2 1/2 ton truck into the loft. All the horses were stabled on the other side of the farm. I use to fill a 30 gal trash can with rats a couple nights a week for over two years, I think I killed just enough to keep the population healthy.

-----J

[Centennial]

We use to shoot rats & squirrels at the dump also. Back in the 1970's. With 22's and shotguns. Corner convenience store 22's were 25cents a box for shorts and 35 cents for LR, and kids could buy them. If the police came by and said "What are you doing? We'd tell them we're shooting rats. Sometimes they'd sit and watch, drive away or tell us to go home. But we never got in trouble or did any harm. Now I hate to think what would happen.

[Sixgun]

We use to shoot rats & squirrels at the dump also. Back in the 1970's. With 22's and shotguns. Corner convenience store 22's were 25cents a box for shorts and 35 cents for LR, and kids could buy them. If the police came by and said "What are you doing? We'd tell them we're shooting rats. Sometimes they'd sit and watch, drive away or tell us to go home. But we never got in trouble or did any harm. Now I hate to think what would happen.

Centennial,
Funny thing, I also experienced what you wrote....great times ......but the scary thing is that not a whole lot of time has passed between then and now. What's it going to be like in 30 more years?

[Centennial]

I tied a clear plastic jucie bottle with some chicken scratch and peanut butter thrown in. Cut the opening bigger and tied it to a tree branch. Measures 50 yards from a fence post and got sighted in from there with the 22's. We'll see what happens.......