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Rats


craig1982
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In one of my threads I raised the topic of shooting rats at close range. Last week I went and bought a HW99s with open sights so I had a better chance of get shots away on the close range scaly tails. I usually go out about 16:00hrs until dusk. Last night I got about a dozen at a maximum range of 12 feet. I also set up my night vision camera and let it run for 24 hours. The 32Meg card was full after 13 hours as rat after rat was videoed by the camera. Considering the field of view is only about 10 foot wide and there is 50 yards of hedge why these rats live, there must be hundred's of them out in the dark of night. May have to look at some night vision equipment.

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The Camera is a Bushnell wild life job. Does very good night video with Infa Red led light source. Put it the garden last night an captured a couple hedgehogs roaming about. Not sure about night vision I would most probably mount it on my S10 FAC. Sitting in the landrover with it resting on the window is the ideal set up, are these DIY style night vision set ups any good ?

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If using homemade addon nv , your scope needs low mag and pref side paralax to adjust to get a good site picture from scope to nv .

You need an ir torch as well i bought a nv made by nvuk off someone last winter and never used it , comes complette with camera to put on scope. A screen that plugs into camera , battery and charger plus an ir torch with mount for scope . I paid £100 id like that back if anyone interestted in it

 

Great for ratting and rabbits

 

Bry

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Went out for a couple of hours last night, put a red led torch on my HW100 by 18:30 the hedge row and muck heap was alive with red eyes looking back at me. Shot about 18 in half an hour. It was bloody freezing sat on a bucket in the open. When the ground dries up a bit I will be able to get the land rover up next to the area to shoot out of the window. Too much chance of getting stuck at the present.

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  • 2 weeks later...

If I'm sitting out in the open I use my HW.177 as it's light and very easy to move about. Quite often I hit a rat which manages to either fall back down its hole or manages to crawl away. With the S10 FAC and Bisley Magnums, 99% of the time the rat just stays where it was shot, no jumping about. I find the S10 too heavy when sitting in the open with nothing to rest the stock on.

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I would be interested in where most guy's shoot the number of rats they do. I have 4 or 5 permissions in North Yorkshire.

1. Farm / Disused pig farm, loads of rats this time last year. As soon as the pigs went the rat numbers quickly declined. Also the farmer uses loads of poison around the place. Now mainly feral pigeons in the barns and crows around the fields.

2. Farm / Pig farm / Grain mill. Rats on the muck as highlighted.  Wood pigeons and crows out in the fields,  Feral pigeons in the storage silos. Very few rats around the pig sheds as the farmer uses a pest control company to poison the rat population.

3. Farm / Pig farm. Plenty of Feral pigeons in the pig sheds. but again very few rats as the farmer uses poison to keep the rats at bay.

4 Farm / Disused pig farm. Again plenty of Feral pigeons around the old pig sheds, the farmer swears blind there are no rats on his farm and to be honest I have never seen one or signs of them.

5. Open barn and 3 pig sheds. Quite a few rats a year ago, but the adjoining farmer complained about the number of rats in the open barn. The barns was tidied up and poison was used to quickly reduce the rat population.

In total the land must cover 2000 acres +

 

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Nowhere at the minute, but where I used to shoot most was in and around cattle sheds and there food troughs, they were pretty much living and eating in the same place, was there shooting collard doves plus any rats. Another spot was a muck heap come dumping ground, it got burned every now and again but good sport in-between.

you must have no sense of smell the amount of time your shooting around pigs.

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