Need help on choose "gun" to take care of mice problems

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chrisslamar

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This is kind of a gun question, but didn't really have anyother place to ask it so i figured i'd ask it here. I live in Illinois and our winters get pretty cold, and when they do the mice like to come into my garage and foul everything up (I had a neighbor who had mice make a little nest in the air intake of his summer sports car, and when he started it up to keep the battery juiced during the winter... well lets just say it wasnt a pretty sight) So i figured i'd invest in a little BB pistol and peck the little SOBs when im having a cig. So i need help choosing one. Qualities im looking for are: Not too expensive (seeing as it's only going to be for pecking mice), fairly accurate ( don't really want random BBs flying around the garage), and fairly low to mild powered ( incase i do have a BB that didnt go where i wanted it to, it wont hurt the things that i don't want hurt).

So if y'all could either tell me i'm crazy for wanting to shoot things in my garage, or give me some ideas, that would be great.

--Chris
 
Seeing gun and mouse in the same title struck me funny.

There are shotshell handgun cartridges meant for dispensing with pests. Theya re meant for outdoors though . . . .

Not sure shooting anything in your garage is a good idea. Too much chance to hurt yourself or damage something else thats in the garage.

How about a mouse trap? Look up the "Rat Zapper" - works good. Electrifies the little buggers.

;)
 
Sticky traps work well.

Barring that, pretty much any off-the-shelf BB rifle from Walmart, etc. will work. BB pistols tend to be horribly inaccurate. You can pump a few times for lower power, or 10+ times for higher power on those sniper-distance shots across the room ;)

If you really want to splatter them, get a Daisy Powerline.

Then find something for a backstop (a block of softer wood works well for grabbing BBs), put a bit of cheese or peanut butter in front of it and get ready.
 
Crosman made a .357 Python lookalike - used a CO2 cartridge to fire pellets - eight of 'em, I think. Very accurate little beastie, and the pellets outdo the BBs for penetration.
 
Moth balls. Not the kind labeled "para" but the kind labeled "old fashioned." You certainly don't want anything labeled "odor free." You can find the old fashioned kind in WalMart near the irons and ironing boards.

Scatter loose ones in the nooks and crannies of the garage. Get an old nylon stocking or piece of cheesecloth to make a little bag for hanging mothballs someplace under the hood of the car. If you find the right spot you can leave it there rather than having to take it out whenever you get ready to start the engine.

You don't want those rascals getting comfy under the hood of your car. Aside from the mess you make when you hit them with the radiator fan is the big mess they make when they start chewing up your wiring to add it to the nest they are building on top of the transmission. Best bet it to be preventative rather than reactive... make the garage someplace they want to avoid.
 
Me and a room mate used to sit in the living room in a place back in College with our BB guns across our laps (on top of the covers on our laps because we couldn't afford to heat the place too good) and take shots at the mice as they ran around the walls. Not very effective, but gave us something to do at night. A more effective method I use now is bar bait (don't remember the brand name). Looks like a giant Kit Kat bar, works really good for me now days. I have some .38 shot shells loaded for a revolver for snakes (works good on them), but might be a bit much inside a garage due to collateral damage / richocet.
 
Take a garbage can, put it next to a counter. Go about 6 inches down, and put a line of peanut butter around the inside. The rodents will go after the peanut butter and fall to the bottom, which is full of... well, whatever liquid you choose, but water works fine.

I know a guy that used to shoot Iguanas with one of these.

http://www.airgundepot.com/walther-nighthawk-air-pistol.html

You can get it without all the fancy attachments though.
 
I had the same problem in my last house. At one point I was sitting in my living room with the air rifle across my lap waiting for this one particular mouse to go steal the dogfood again, but it was too damn quick.

Ended up using glue traps. Kinda gross, but they work very well.
 
DO NOT USE BB'S!!!!!!!!! They will bounce off anything hard and come right back atcha'. They will also break anything glass and chip paint, after all, BB's are plated STEEL balls. Use a rifle or pistol that shoots .177 cal lead pellets. 450fps-700fps is sufficient. Bacon or chicken works real good for bait. The hard part is finding a taxidermist who can do a good head mount.:D
 
We had a mice problem during the Spring. We got everything sealed up eventually (shouldnt the building have done that... 1 year old home... anyways).

We used those live traps, they say don't bait em, but I used a single cashew and they loved it. The reason we used this kind is because we didn't want to use poison because of pets, we didn't want to make a mess with more harsh traps, and because my Mother is kind of a hippy :neener:

Anyways, caught about 3-5 every night. Then do with them what you will.
 
The Pound

Put a bucket of dirt and a bowl of water in your garage. Go to the pound and pick out the mangiest flea bitten patchy fured tom cat you can find. Don't feed him. Throw Fluffy in the garage and close the door. Wait 3 weeks. Take Fluffy back to the pound and dump the bucket somewhere along the way.

Don't ask how I know this works.
 
The first thing is to make your place less attractive to mice. Figure out how they're getting in and perform the indicated with screening, flashing, or whatever else is appropriate. Secure things that they could eat and as much as you can of what they chew into nesting material. Traps, terriers and cats will help. We live in an old house in a neighborhood full of old houses. The only mice we've seen were ones that cats brought in.

It's not something you can cure. You can only reduce the problem to acceptable levels.
 
If you already own a .22 rifle you might want to try loading it with .22 short rounds. CCI makes a sub-sonic .22 short that has VERY LITTLE report and travel around 700 fps. Of course I'm making this suggestion without knowing if you are in the city limits which would prevent you from using a .22 or knowing if the conditions in your garage warrant the use either. I just know that CCI sub-sonic .22 shorts work very well on varmints out of a .22 rifle.
 
Traps are going to work far better than firearms for mouse extermination. Luckly my area right now is a killing zone for them. We got a 6 foot black snake, 3 hawks, my rat terrier, a bobcat and various traps they have to get through that has wiped out the population.

Normally if I think there is a mouse about I use peanut butter on my traps and they can't resist it. I put down the trap and had kills within 5 seconds if you place them well. I tend to avoid poison. You just result in a dead mouse rotting and stinking up the place and it might be eaten by another animal and get poisoned by its meal.

If you are fast enough to shoot a mouse in a basement area with lots of places to hide you really should start being on the competition circuit.
 
Three hawks, terriers, a bobcat and a snake with traps on top?

Limeyfellow, if you have any mice after that I suggest you just give them the house keys. They are darned near supernatural. Of course, then the obvious followup thread is "What sort of full auto .22 for zombie mice?"
 
Hmmm... I've tried a similar approach, and it's really not going to solve your mouse problem. Not because you can't shoot them; you definitely can.
I'm going to say you want a CO2 powered gun, because you don't have time for pumps or spring pistons when you're surprising fast moving rodents. Definitely go with a lead projectile. I'd say the Drozd set to 3 round burst and firing lead rounds (NOT steel BB's) would be pretty near ideal.
 
Way back when, just moved out of mom and dad's, I lived in a really crappy double-wide down by the river. Winter comes and I am living in a mouse haven. Being young, none to bright, and bored most of the time, I started making wax loads.

The following is for info reasons only! Do not do this at home! I you do, and somone gets hurt, don't come cry to me!

Buy a brick of 22lr, pull all the bullets and powder. Buy a block of hard wax. Stick the now empty but primed 22lr cars in the wax and twist. You now have a wax projectile. Not enough to cycle an auto loader but was quite fun. Only a direct hit would kill and anything solid would desintegrate the projectile.
 
I got a "Beretta" pellet/BB gun from Sports Authority that shoots .177 calibre projectiles. IIRC, it has about 500 fps muzzle velocity. It has a rifled barrel to help accuracy. You can buy pointed "varmit" pellets that won't bounce off of the mouse. I wouldn't want to hit by vehicle with one of these but I don't think that they would do terrible damage to your average garage.
 
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