Air guns

[Capt Worley PE]

Stick with a .177 pellet. Easier to come across.
They make a lot of nice compressed air rifles nowadays. However, finding a spring action air rifle with some oomph behind it is often the much cheaper route.

I concur with this. I can tell you from experience that todays pump guns will not do anything but pi$$ a rat off. My spring gun (sniper gun, according to my BIL) will shoot the wadcutter .177s through both sides of a water filled can. I imagine the varmint rounds would be even more destructive.

Plus, all the neighbors here is a muted 'thut' when it fires.

 

[Chucktown PE]

Stick with a .177 pellet. Easier to come across.
They make a lot of nice compressed air rifles nowadays. However, finding a spring action air rifle with some oomph behind it is often the much cheaper route.

I concur with this. I can tell you from experience that todays pump guns will not do anything but pi$$ a rat off. My spring gun (sniper gun, according to my BIL) will shoot the wadcutter .177s through both sides of a water filled can. I imagine the varmint rounds would be even more destructive.

Plus, all the neighbors here is a muted 'thut' when it fires.

A Benjamin air rifle with 10 pumps and a flat tipped pellet with F a rat up in a big way.

 

[jeb6294]

When I was a kid we went to Colorado for vacation one year. Every morning the we'd saddle up some horses and take the pellet guns out to hunt prairie dogs. I don't remember what kind they were, but they were pump and they shot pointy .177 cal pellets. They would literally blow a prairie dog in half. We'd collect all the bodies and then the dads would use them for bait when they went coyote hunting at night.

 

[z06dustin]

^Is that an air rifle????

No, 9mm carbine.

 

[Dleg]

^Totally illegal here, then.

Hey C-Town, after browsing some forums I found this company in CA (Mac 1) that's been servicing Crosman/Benjamin guns for decades and sells modified "Steroid" Benjamins that can be pumped 14 times (gets over 900 fps) and have several other modifications designed to improve performance, such as lengthened pump handles, trigger improvements, Williams peep sights, etc. Looks kind of cool.

I found out my brother in law (next door) has a Benjamin (.22 cal) already, so we are going to do some rat hunting tonight so I can try it out. He's already got quite a claim on the rat population on our "farm", and has staked out the pig pens as his prime hunting grounds (FIL currently has 2 large hogs and 4 or 5 young ones).

I visited two local shops that carry airguns and was surprised at the decent selection. Prices are a little high, but not terrible considering how much it would cost me to mail something anyway. The only drawback is that the palce with the best selection apparently doesn't move them very quickly - a couple of the guns had rust on the barrels. Hmm....

 

[Chucktown PE]

^Totally illegal here, then.
Hey C-Town, after browsing some forums I found this company in CA (Mac 1) that's been servicing Crosman/Benjamin guns for decades and sells modified "Steroid" Benjamins that can be pumped 14 times (gets over 900 fps) and have several other modifications designed to improve performance, such as lengthened pump handles, trigger improvements, Williams peep sights, etc. Looks kind of cool.

I found out my brother in law (next door) has a Benjamin (.22 cal) already, so we are going to do some rat hunting tonight so I can try it out. He's already got quite a claim on the rat population on our "farm", and has staked out the pig pens as his prime hunting grounds (FIL currently has 2 large hogs and 4 or 5 young ones).

I visited two local shops that carry airguns and was surprised at the decent selection. Prices are a little high, but not terrible considering how much it would cost me to mail something anyway. The only drawback is that the palce with the best selection apparently doesn't move them very quickly - a couple of the guns had rust on the barrels. Hmm....

Dleg, you definitely don't need to modify a Benjamin for rats. I can't tell you how many squirrels I killed out of 30 ft tall pine trees with mine but it's a lot. Plus, with a rat, as long as you wound them pretty good they're not going to live for long. You might look at a scope but it'll be hard to see them at night.

Good luck with your rat hunting extravaganza. I wish you well. Save the neck for me.

 

[Dleg]

I know I don't need a modification. But I'm an engineer and I can't resist that kind of thing. I am having to physically restrain myself from spending more on something exciting like the Benjamin Marauder - pre-charged pneumatic, bolt-action repeater, with a barrel shroud that essentially silences it. Mmmmmmm......

My BIL told me that his Benjamin knocks the rats dead immediately. He was kind of excited, actually, that I was considering a cheapo Crosman CO2-powered .177 rifle they are selling locally, because, in his words, then the rat might be able to run off and die somewhere else, instead of right there, so we wouldn't have to handle the carcass.

 

[Chucktown PE]

That site is awesome. I love this paragraph:

LUBRICATION: EVERY TIME YOU TAKE IT OUT TO USE IT YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THE LEVER PIVOTS ARE MOIST WITH SECRET SAUCE.

:blink:

That site is riddled with sexual inuendo.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Dleg, those spring guns are 1200 fps stock. Remember energy=.5 mv^2.

 

[Dleg]

^I know. I'd rather have something in the 600-800 fps range. Just a tad safer (and quieter) in my neighborhood, yet still lethal enough for the rats.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

I was using BBs instead of pellets, so maybe that was the reason, but my 600fps rifle didn't do anything to the rats but make 'em mad. But these rats were cat sized.

Pump gun wasn't much quieter than the spring gun, either.

 

[Chucktown PE]

So how'd it go Dleg?

 

[Dleg]

Nothing to report yet.

 

[Dexman1349]

This brings back memories of using prarie dogs to help sight in my 30-06 rifle. Setup on the roof of a friends house, we'd spend an entire afternoon picking those bastards off at ~100 yards. Virtually no clean-up because they'd splatter when hit. For some reason beyond my understanding, the splatter of one prarie dog would become the bait for the second. Just need a rake to push some dirt over the mess when done.

My first thought was a .22 rifle, but as I read above it appears that one of those would be not worth the hassle.

Can't really contribute to the air-rifle discussion as my family only trusted us (my brother and I) with real guns after we turned 14.