Starling Nuisance

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I shoot a Weihrauch HW30S in .177 caliber. This is the same air gun as the Beeman R7. The distance of my telephone wire Starling shot was checked by laser rangefinder to be 26 yards this morning. And that does not include the elevation for the high wire shot. This bird shooting is a lot of fun. I have also pegged a Starling with a pellet on top of the roof, so this is quite a potent shooter. The Weihrauchs are high quality German made guns, all steel and wood, no plastic or rubber parts as with the Chinese or Spanish guns.
 
Mr. Ashcraft: any idea how AviTrol might be tailored to a starling colony, ether by feeder configuration or feed type, so as not to poison any and every bird type within miles? this would be useful, if it could be done without killing desired songbirds (starling ARE a nuisance bird here in TX, just don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were).
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Not sure, but out of the 100 lbs of dead birds in my yard, exactly ONE wasn't a starling (some type of sparrow). I'm sure you have to have an EPA license to use it, but most farmers and ranchers have the license, which requires a couple of days of class time.

Our local fertilizer dealer, an old high school buddy, told me it looks like corn and costs about $50 a pound. I could find out more, but if you have a local fertilizer/pesticide/herbicide dealer who mainly sells to farmers, they could fill you in.
You will go bankrupt buying shotgun shells before you shoot enough to make a difference.
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Yes. When they migrate around November, you'll see massive clouds of them stretching for miles. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes or more for the flock to fly by.
 
I used to shoot them a lot when I was a kid (mostly with a pellet gun), they can get pretty spooky after a while. I used to stick dead ones on big nails and use them as decoys, I know, kind of gross.

At a birthday party once, four other boys and I tipped a feeding trough over, spread dried corn out about 10 yds away and then took the choke tubes out of our shotguns. We waited until the ground was moving with the little suckers and let 'em have on the count of three; 75 dead birds in one volley.

In other words; do you know any 9-15 year olds with itchy trigger fingers? They would probably provide the all day watch over the garden.
 
Well, I went out yesterday to see if I could thin them out a little bit...turns out there's a likely mix of starlings, crows, and blackbirds going after her feeders and garden, completely scaring away the finches and cardinals. Honestly, I've never seen birds go through seed like that. Their appetites are unbelievable. Unfortunately, I couldn't do the job she wanted me to do because her cats were outside all day and she didn't want the gunfire to scare them off...women :banghead:
 
Cats are pretty smart and will slink off given gunfire. Given that scenario and the requirement to still make dead birds, get thee a lawn chair and a good .177 piston rifle.
I'd use the simple dome points.
 
Yall are talking all out war on these birds. I just used an old red rider bb gun as a kid. Still use one today. Kills them just fine still.

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2
 
If they did to your car what they do to mine, you'd be talking war too :D
 
Did you ever get a choke tube back in the gun? You shoulda been arrested for cruelty to firearms.
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We were between 10-12yrs old, I'm sure if the choke-tube police would have caught us we would only have been looking at community service.
 
i prefer my 12ga with 7 1/2 shot. i like to take them out of the air if possible but will not hesitate to shoot them off of a branch or the ground. lots of fun filled afternoons as a kid blastin away at starlings!
 
You can't kill enough to really reduce the population, but you can kill enough of them to convince the others to keep away at least for awhile. They're pretty smart.

Basically you can make them move somewhere else.

Airguns work pretty well for that task.
 
No shooting in the town limits.

Livin in the burbs ya gotta be discreet. Toss some old bread out into a corner of the yard then wait for them to come in. My good old crosman .177 pump air gun still does the job and it gives my german shorthair something to fetch in the off season. I get a few euro collared doves to come in that way, too.

NOw, if only those nasty magpies were open season too....
I hate those b******s. :cuss:
 
1. Plant mulberry trees... May distract them a bit, but your car will be painted purple.

2. Invest in a carbide cannon... Neighbors will absolutely LOVE you...

3. As already mentioned, an airgun and a case of beer.
 
Starlings can be cool.

Just sayin'. I don't like that they displace native species anyplace they're introduced, or a lot of other things I've seen and heard about them, but that is a pretty cool video of a flock of starlings.
 
We have a lot of starlings in our neighborhood, sometimes 30 to 50 in a flock. What filthy birds! So, I get my old Rem. .22 rifle out and snipe them with CB longs, sure does the trick, most times the DRT, pick them up and dump into trash. There have been times my aim was just a touch off, I hit them, then they fly off, but so many cats in the neighborhood, I know they clean them up. The CB longs are less noise than a pellet gun, I keep my eyes sharp on this sniping routine, don't know about total eradication, but it helps keep them thinned anyway.
 
Starling shooting and relaxing

My wife feeds the birds and we love all of them except the starlings and grackles. Sometimes I sit on my patio with a good book, a cool beverage, a few snacks, and my pellet rifle or my old Remington 67A and some CB shorts. My record is about 20 birds in an afternoon. The starlings and blackbirds stay away for a couple of days. The other birds seem to figure out that they are not the target. Lots of fun.
 
Ya, we get em by the tens of thousands here too. I can't stand those little suckers. Good luck trying to get the problem under control. Poison is about the most effective method, but it's gonna kill every other bird that comes in contact with it. But poison didn't work at controlling the over whelming dove infestation in Brazil. They still ended up taking over in the US, so like I said, good luck.

GS
 
When we were kids, I had a .22 Benjamin, and my buddy had a .177 crossman. We'd spread a cup or two of his dad's pigeon feed in the back yard and set up a couple lawn chairs 50 feet or so away. We found that if you shoot a starling at the base of the neck when his back is to you, his wings will shoot out and he'll sorta hunch over and be all spread out like he's hiding something. Drives the others wild, and we could shoot 15-20 at a whack sometimes before the rest got suspicious and we'd have to gather 'em up and start a fresh batch of bodies...
 
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