Little back story. My neighbors have an old shed that is full of rats and I have a lot of woods and tall thick grass behind my house so I have always had rats around my house but fortunately not in my house. I first tried to trap them but they were just stealing the bait so I poisoned but that's no fun so I decided to set up a bait station and shoot them with my gamo for fun. I go outside for the last 30 min of light almost every day and kill about 5 rats a week that come through a hole I made in my fence to eat at the bait station. My shooting location is about 15 yards away and they never see what's coming. It's actually good practice bc the Gamo has a horrible trigger and you really have to focus on trigger pull to hit a small target. I've prob killed 30 rats since I made this bait site 2 months ago. Like I said it's a lot of fun to kill these disgusting little creatures.

Ratting is fun and useful. I enjoy ratting with my terrier.

Fun, fun

...as teen kids we used to go out to an old dump. We'd set out some bait and wait....every minute or two we'd turn on the car headlights and go to town with .22's Great memories.......

I've got a six-month old half cur, half redbone coonhound who loves to hunt rats and mice! He'll hunt just about anything, but he especially loves rats. I'm getting a rat terrier in a few weeks and look forward to hunting them together.

I like to do that myself. Cold beer and patience . . .

I've hunted them with a blowgun at our local jetty. It was a hoot!

Ah blowguns and ratting can be like a big game hunt!

I remember a particularly smart vegetation rat that got in my house one year.
Couldn't shoot in the house so I tried everything else.
That sucker managed to bypass every trap I set and laughed at the poison.

This went on for over a month until I couldn't stand it anymore.
He went for the cat food bag every night so I laid up on the couch under a blanket and waited.
I placed some cat food on the floor and put a piece of plywood behind it.
I waited and waited and finally he showed up.
He was very cautious and slowly approached the cat food.
I was using a 4' blowgun with 5" wire darts with the hard plastic bead stuck on them.
When he stood up on his hind legs for a second I pinned his butt to the plywood.
I took him and the plywood outside and dispatched him.

Always wondered if anybody else had thought about taxidermy on a hard-fought prize like that?

that's hilarious. I once used a kids play house for a rat blind I'll see if I can find a pic haha.

Got the green light for nighttime rat hunting

I like your sniper hide, go to town on em.
This is about the worst year for rats and mice I have seen in better than 20 years. They are in every barn or feed shed I have. I have over a dozen barn cats and they are on the job 24/7 and we are still loosing the battle. My dog has an impressive rat kill ratio but could use some backup. Driving through any of my pastures there are so many rats running across roads and trails it's like the Pied Piper has got to be close. I just got through loading and hauling a bunch of brushpiles that I raked up from grubbing a CRP field and under every one of those brushpiles there was always at least one MAGNUM rat. My wife thought I had lost my mind when I chased one of them down in my Cat tracked skid steer and squished the little bugger. I was doing some serious di-dos in the skid steer to catch up with him.

I believe those could be classified as Boone and Crockett caliber rats!

shoot these are small I've killed some huge rats. I think these are the females but I got a big one I've only seen 2 times at night that's on my hit list

there is a neighbor here that insists
on leaving out bird seed and food for
stray animals 24/7.
unfortunately all it does is draw rats
and varmints.
my rat traps are the regular wood victor.
i drill one corner and attach a length
of mechanic's wire so they can't drag it
away somewhere. also put 2 small wire nails
up through the bottom for extra hold as teeth.
peanut butter for bait. for the possums a
#160 conibear is what i use with a 5 gallon
plastic bucket with a hole cut for a cubby.
i bait with old baloney. my record is 13
straight in 13 sets

I have about as much fun watching dogs hunt ears as I do other hunting. I just like watching dogs work.

Is hunting rats worthy of the varmint section

Where else would you post about them, they aren't big game, but lots of fun to shoot. Go get em.

Nice Sapper!!!

"Hey, hold my beer and watch this!!" (I wish I was there drinking a beer and killing rats with you!!)

When I was a kid, my dad used to take me and my brother down to the town dump for target practice. We would shoot rats with our .22's, and just before deer season, we'd bring our .30-30's. Dad used to say that a rat was about the same size as a deer's heart, so if we could hit a rat, we were ready to hunt deer. Every now and then, Dad would bring out his 8mm Mauser. I would pick out a rat at 100 yards away with his binoculars, and call the target. Dad would unleash that cannon of his, and a rat would become a large red splatter. Great fun!

it really is fun just wish I had more targets haha

THAT'S EPIC!!!!

I have to admit that I have used my popup blinds for starling and EHS removal on my Purple Martin racks.
Even built a pellet gun specially for the purpose....

I use to hunt rats with a BB gun in the feed barn. Some good times.

I spent more money on my PCP pellet rifle than a real rifle and probably killed more rats than any other animals with it.

I thought about upgrading from the Gamo but I'm getting 1/2 inch or smaller groups at 15-20 yds so really don't see a reason to upgrade at this point.

fried rat, rat sausage, rat jerky...

Now you need to convince your son that the play house needs to be painted camo.