22 Just Ain't Hackin' It!

I have Hens. Hens beget rats. Where hens are, rats soon follow. I don't want to get rid of my hens, so the rats seem to just appear, one right after the other.

I also live in the city of Portland. I can see the fireworks downtown from my front porch It is illegal to fire a firearm in the city of Portland, so I have had to come up with some creative ways to dispatch the critters.

Now, its illegal here to release a pest in another location, so moving a critter to a park is out of the question. If you can't fire a gun to dispatch the critter, and you can't move it elsewhere, it seemed to me that the poor guy would soon be destined to a long torturous death either by suffocation, drowning or freezing.

I made the decision for *myself* that a projectile to the head would be the least prolonged death, so I went out and bought a nice air-rifle capable of sufficiently moving a pellet at velocity. I catch the rats in a cage (try a hard-boiled egg cut in half, shell-on as bait or the ends of salami.) Then I go outside, line up the air-rifle with the skull , and at full pumps to the rifle, pull the trigger. Then I do it another time for good measure.

The only other way I saw that made sense was Dry Ice in a bucket, animal trap placed below it, then set the lid on the bucket without closing (lets the bucket "burp" out the displaced oxygen.) They will suffocate, but not before falling asleep.

For larger critters, use a garbage pail with a liner, and point the trap down opening first to allow you to just dump the dead critter when you are done.

Yeah, yeah, I am a bleeding heart.

Now raccoons I used to have on my front porch. The liked to come up and harrass my cats (now deceased.) Since I am in the city, and my car is parked in front of my house, I don't ahve a decent backstop other than my car. Not good for a KZ. I tried a rubber band gun as a method of dissuasion. While that was FUN FUN FUN, as a method of disuassion, it was a dismal failure. The raccoon we referred to as "Cheeky Bast***" after his willingness to come up on the porch when adults and children were present merely laughed at our silly bits of rubber popping him between the eyes.

What finally got them to go to another place for their fun was ammonia. Cheeky was fine with all our scare tactics until the day he took a squirt of ammonia on his keister the first night of the Great Rodent War (our name for the conflict, not the raccoons.) The second night he had the chutzpa to his at my puny red squirtgun...until it tagged him on the forehead. Something about that smell made him decide that any other place would be a better place. we have yet to see him or his brothers again, although they still haunt my neighbor's house, I have yet to see or hear them in my yard or on my porch since.

Now, projecting this ammonia across the yard could be a challenge...ammonia filled balloons in a slingshot? paintballs filled with ammonia?

For pests and vermin the plan is to acquire more Aguila 60gr Sub-sonic Super Sniper ammo and run them through a 1 in 9 twist barrel on a Ruger 10-22.

HEAD SHOTS!

Perhaps look into a Hammonds game getter...

I got one for my 45-70 and it if not just fun to shoot it flings a 180gr ball at less than 400fps. You can easily see them in flight using the#2 power loads. My 45-70 is 16" and pretty quiet using the getter. Google it if interested. He makes them in about any centerfire caliber (he made mine in 457 wild west magnum of all things...). I accidently used roundballs that were too large for the included die and found they elongate nicely making a more slug shaped projectile rather than just a slightly shaved roundball. At 25 yards accuracy is easily minute of coon or 'yote. Penetration with a #2 (low power) power load is 1/2 way through a treated 2x8 at 30'. Figuring 400fps & 180 grain that is about 60#' of energy. Not too bad for a bullet you can see flinging through the air...

I have a box of CCI CB shorts that are just the ticket for me if I need something unobtrusively quiet. They are listed at 710fps with a 29 gr bullet. In my Marlin 29M Mountie with it's 20" barrel they make an airgun style ffffffft sound and do not sound like a normal 22 at all. It will stop a raging cottontail right now even with a chest shot and cycle perfectly in the lever action. Reasonably accurate and a box will last a long time or maybe not if you have lots of furry problems.

Patty

Go to the zoo and ask for a bag of dry lion dung. If it keeps skunks, coons, and rabbits out of my yard here in the suburbia it will do wonders for your pest prob. just sprinkle it around the fence line.