Posted on 02/24/2015 8:32:17 AM PST by w1n1
For many of us, our first experiences with shooting included BB guns and pellet guns. These air pellet rifles are like nothing we’ve used before!
Check out the video on this pellet rifle hitting its target from 90 plus yards. Spoiler if you're a "Birdman" fan you may not like this. :)
Mission Control: Buckaroo, The White House wants to know is everything ok with the alien space craft from Planet 10 or should we just go ahead and destroy Russia?
Buckaroo Banzai: Tell him yes on one and no on two.
Mission Control: Which one was yes, go ahead and destroy Russia... or number 2?
[[Perhaps not as far as it appears.
Lewis & Clark Girandoni Air Rifle]]
that is one heck of an air rifle, I want one- no, 2, one for each hand-
The Fish and Wildlife Service would give you a big fine if you did the same to crows and squirrels as they are regulated. Even pigeons are regulated if you can believe that.
I have a huge bird feeding system and get European Starlings attacking it all the time. I have to shoot them off or else they will invite their buddies. If you’ve driven out in the country and seen clouds of 1000s of black birds billowing in and out those are European Starlings. And that is what happens if they bring their buddies, you could potentially have a huge swarm on your feeders and then the only way to control them is take the food down for a few weeks.
How obvious should it be? A completely inoffensive animal is shot and killed for nothing. I find that disgusting - shouldn’t you?
TFTP!
I’ve been having to shoot some starlings lately too.
I don’t care about Fish and Wildlife Service if it isn’t the Georgia Department kind. Even then, they have to catch you at it.
[[Girardoni Air Rifle Used by Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Girardoni Air Rifle was an airgun designed by Tyrolian inventor Bartholomäus Girardoni circa 1779. One of the rifle’s more famous associations is its use on the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore and map the western part of North America in the early 1800]]
From the video “Able to put a hole through a 1 inch pine board at over 100 yards”
That’s some serious firepower for an air rifle- especially from a ‘.40 caliber’ ball
lol.
My vehicles are inside so the birds don’t get ‘em.
But I do hate the migrating grackles that try to take over the yard.
I have killed various scavenging animals and some birds too...last winter during a bad stretch I was trying to keep some little feral cats alive and was putting food out for ‘em.
I won’t name the birds that were trying to hog the kibble but I knocked a few off them off the fencepost with my little 10/22...then the cats ate THEM until the raccoons started coming, and one day...one day I pulled into the yard and I thought it was a MAN standing down there by the food dish.
Got out of the vehicle and a bald eagle lifted off the fencepost, big as a piece of the sky, with one of the bird carcasses in his beak!
But that’s nature. Lots of suffering, lots of killing. The carnage never stops. And anytime you try to intervene there are consequences. Thos little white cats didn’t make it, so far as I could tell.
Never ate a coyote. Hope I never have to. Had to kill a couple out in Idaho and the big golden eagles came for them. Amazing.
Starlings are competing with the feral cats in my front yard. Their days are numbered.
[[Had to kill a couple out in Idaho and the big golden eagles came for them. Amazing.]]
You aint just kidding, look up “Golden Eagle Kills Wolf’ on youtube- there are some absolutely incredible videos of eagles hinting and killing wolves- these birds are absolutely fearless warriors- was dumbfounded when I stumbled across those videos- I never knew goldens were such predators
I shoot both crows and squirrels with a pellet rifle. Don’t think I ever killed one. They just seem to stay away for a while which is good enough. For the (nosiy and messy) snowy egrets a plastic owl works wonders.
I’ve shot sage rats at 200+ yds.because that’s how far away they were. They weren’t noisy or bothering me, and I didn’t eat them. I was trying to exterminate them from the alfalfa field. They cause tremendous economic damage to forage plus the mound dust in the animals feed harms the animals lungs.
Birds spread disease around animal barns and grain facilities.
If they are killed 90’ away from where they do the damage they will not make it back to the point where they can spread the disease or other damage.
Food is not made in the grocery store and you read too much into peoples motives.
I have loved me some feral cats.
We caught and ‘fixed’ about a dozen of ‘em during our years in Idaho, until we finally caught & spayed the mama of all of them, whom we always called (naturally) Mama, and that put a stop to them as long as we were there.
Her last offspring, a little black cat with a white star on his chest and a four-inch Manx tail, was the final kitty we caught in the live-trap, a week or so after we had caught Mama.
Up until him all the other cats wanted nothing other than to be released, and scram back into the prairie grass. The little black guy-—we called him Hop-—spent his obligatory recovery night (post-surgery) in the mudroom in the little wooden recovery cage I had built, as recommended by the vets.
But when we opened the cage, and the door outside, he took a quick look around and ran INSIDE the house, where it was warm, where it smelled good, where he decided to take up residence with us.
We still have him, six years later. And the people who bought the house from us still have the FIRST of Mama’s offspring, Harley, living under the porch, where we had a heater pad for her, where she took her meals twice a day-—she and her nutless boyfriend Macy lol.
Harley turned NINE this past fall, which is a long time for a feral cat to hang on...she was a great smart wild cat, never let anybody touch her after the vet, is exceedingly wary to this day. We knocked a bunch off the sale price of the house in order that a friend of ours would buy the place, in exchange for a promise that they would take care of Harley, which they have faithfully done.
I was forced to use an air rifle on pigeons around my home because they became so prolific as a result of a neighbor who refused to quit feeding them.
They are unsanitary and one hell of a nuisance. In addition, I had to also use an air rifle on a bird that had "claimed" the front yard as its territory [long after we had moved in] and would attack anyone or anything that crossed into it.
Including a nesting pair that had been in one of our bushes for years...in taking it out, I helped to protect my family, dogs, friends, neighbors and the nesting pair.
There's no "sadism" or "fun" in doing so...it was out of necessity...some birds are just pests...like rats with wings.
I take no pleasure in killing them and it looks like the only "fun" involved in this video is the sense of satisfaction in making a clean shot/kill.
I was looking at live traps today. The one I feed is an orange tabby. It's a beauty. This is an urban area. I can turn her in to a no kill rescue and get her adopted and out of this single digit weather. I can't care for her because of absences.
Thanks for proving my point! That was a grain silo where corn or wheat is stored, the birds get in and eat and chit on it. You’d love the way they get rid of rat’s and I won’t bother you with what I do to coyotes, you’d pass out.
I've seen a lot of death as many of you have too, so seeing some poor innocent bird shot off a telephone line for no other reason than demonstrating an air rifle's capabilities repelled me. I am not a liberal or antihunting or even a tree hugger. I just don't kill things without needing to.
LOL!
I’m glad me and my friends were not told that; we spent all our range time at the dump shooting rats; was great fun and very competitive; we didn’t get out of there many times until after dark.
I’ve never ate a rat; but if back then my mother would have cooked it; I would have ate it; she made everything taste great.
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