Is hunting rats worthy of the varmint section

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.

That is funny. One of our guys saw a rat run across camp the other night and under our container cabin. A month ago we could not find my daughters shoes when we woke in the morning. I even blamed my friend for stealing them. Lol. Anyway, we find them under the container chewed up! We dispatched both of the shoe stealers with the gamo. My daughter walks over carrying one by its tail while I was cooking dinner. Quite funny.

that is a Boone and Crockett rat haha

My elderly parents' Cadillac was totaled by the insurance company due to UNGODLY rat damage to the wiring harness!

Just got another one. Hit it a little further back than I wanted but the Gamo match pellet did the job.

My folks owned a dairy when I was a kid and I bet I shot 1,000 rats in the feed room. Talk about fun!

Nice. When I was a kid our deer camp was called the Hootchie. Basically a dirt floored tin shack built around an old freight trailer and miltiary communications box and it had a bunch of old homemade benches. Big pack rat lived under one of them. Empty beer cans etc that got left out at night he'd have rounded up and under his bench by the next morning usually.

Caught these feasting on our tangerine tree. Yap, it's a ton of backyard fun.

That one will still make a nice wall mount.

Another one got a little greedy

Haven't seen a rat in about a week. Either I've killed them all, the smart ones that are left are staying away from bait, or maybe the neighbor is poisoning them other than that I'm not sure why I'm not seeing them anymore. I was killing at least 1 almost everyday that I sat in the back yard looking for them.

Well finally another rat showed up. I somehow missed on the first shot but it came back a few minutes later. All I could see was the head sticking through the hole and I took the shot. This sucker was bouncing around like a piece of popcorn lol prob flopped around for 5-10 seconds leaving blood all over then I shot it again. Wish I could have got that on video it was hilarious.



First shot literally in one ear exited right behind the other.

Back before Farmers Branch and Coppell expanded towards each other and enclosed all the open land on both sides of the Trinity River north of what's now LBJ Frwy west of I-35...the cotton patch farmer south of Belt Line owned the land on both side of the river....and let us bait the east side with loafs of Day Old bread...this was where I learned how to shoot at game at distance with a 243 off the hood of my car...then the Follow Me bets got started at a $1 a shot with the loose crowd of guys. The big arsed Norway River Rats were more than plentiful. and the 243's 75gr HP's would make a red mist of 'em so there was no arguing over you'd made the shot or not.

The rules were set by the lead shooter like a poker player calling the Wild Card or the Game on that hand ...if he shot offhand everybody else did too who had ponied up on the pot, if every body hit a rat shooting like the lead shooter had, then that bet was started over with a new Lead shooter but the previous pot was added to the new pot until somebody missed and the next shooter made the shot and won the pot...was really a good idea to follow a rookie yadda yadda. If you were good enough you could win enough to take the BH to Dinner, or go home empty handed...back when I was slingin' freight on a Teamsters dock @ $4.25 ab hour with my Night Shift $0.33 bonus, working my way thru college. Tons of fun for sure. Distances were 100+-200 yards across the river. FWIW the FB POPO's frowned bigtime on the rifle fire, but the FB City Limits back then in the very early '70's was only about a half mile west of I-35.and Coppell barely existed.
Ron

I love this thread.
My daughters first hunting experience was shooting rats that would come out of the feed shed in the evening. She was probably 8 years old and, learned a lot about shooting.

it will def improve your shooting aiming at a small target. I like to think of them as miniature hogs fun to shoot and great target practice

Thanksgiving day rat

So I'm sitting in the backyard full as can be from thanksgiving day lunch and I see a rat run along my fence and go under my shed. So I set up a small bait pile where he went under and then set up in the probe 15 yds away. I laid there for 20 min before he came to the bait and I put a pellet right through his eye.

....great way to relax after a big lunch....

Back when the earth was flat and I was a kid,, family ranched north of Bowie. We had a cake/feed house that was full of rats, I rigged a flashlight to the bottom of a 22 revolver, set so the shot pattern hit in the bright center, and wired in a toggle switch. Sit in the dark, listenn for the scratching noise, flip on the light and shooot when you seee the glow of their eyes. Prob;em was, it was summer and the dead rats began to stink up the place, so I wound up having to move all these 100# bags of range cubes and scoop up the dead rats to get my pistol back.

I've shot quite a few rats over the years, never thought about baiting them and building a stand, looks like I will have a new hobby shortly!

RATS and SQUIRRELS....all must die!

I have a little MT. Cur that had rather chase rats than squirrels. He would have fun at your house.

So, i have to ask since i have trapped 22 this last year, and most just in the last couple of months, i see a lot of you using the air rifles , i know they have some knock down power and will go thru wood, are you using these in town with neighbors back to back or primarily out where you have some room? thought about using mine but after seeing the power it would make me nervous of ricochets.

Most cities and towns are likely to have ordinance that prohibit discharge of air guns within city limits. However, below is the TX State Law that does allow it, if you meet the criteria:

Sec. 229.002. REGULATION OF DISCHARGE OF WEAPON. A municipality may not apply a regulation relating to the discharge of firearms or other weapons in the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the municipality or in an area annexed by the municipality after September 1, 1981, if the firearm or other weapon is:
(1) a shotgun, air rifle or pistol, BB gun, or bow and arrow discharged:
(A) on a tract of land of 10 acres or more and more than 150 feet from a residence or occupied building located on another property; and
(B) in a manner not reasonably expected to cause a projectile to cross the boundary of the tract; or
(2) a center fire or rim fire rifle or pistol of any caliber discharged:
(A) on a tract of land of 50 acres or more and more than 300 feet from a residence or occupied building located on another property; and
(B) in a manner not reasonably expected to cause a projectile to cross the boundary of the tract.

Haven't taken many pics this yr but I've killed about 30 rats and mice with the gamo and another 20 or so with traps. Got a lot of woods and tall grass behind the house and I feel like for everyone I kill 10 more take it's place but it gives me something to do if I'm bored in the evenings.

Blood splatter from a head shot tonight

As I was typing a mouse creeped through the hole in the fence to get some peanut butter but he got .17 lead poisoning instead

Man that match grade pellet really does a number when you put it in the right spot

My brother and I would work our tails off moving hay in the loft just to get a few seconds of pellet shooting. We had a fox terrier that would rack up a bigger kill count that my brother and I put together. When you live on a farm entertainment came in many forms, as long as it did not require money or electricity.

Just got another one. Heart shot

Good shooting. What model Gamo do you have

I'd have to look later on but I know it was one of the cheaper ones. I had issues with accuracy consistency so I bought a one piece mount and a descent scope now I can am pretty much in a 1/4 inch circle every time at 15 yards which is the distance I'm shooting the rats and mice at.

Another one bites the dust

its a Gamo whisper .17 cal

Every once in a while MidwayUSA will have a closeout on an air rifle. Just recently they had the Crosman Redtail 0.22 cal for $65 marked down from $119-$149. It is overkill (21 ft-lbs at muzzle) for mice/rats and out of the box is louder than my Marlin 81DL firing 22LR!

One of my best shot so far. In one ear out the other.

AWSOME SHOOTING! Apply for sniper school yet?

haha no chance.

Shhhhh he is sleeping

Just got another one

I have been doing the same thing, LOVE the free trigger time. They are getting into my chicken coop and feeding on the grain. We started putting it where I can see it from the back porch. I have a Beeman .177 cal.. Like you I like to hit em right behind the ear, they just flop over, then the chickens pick em up and chase each other all over the pen. Great laughs.

I've hit a few that start doing acrobatics LOL. Some jump up and flip about 4-5 times pretty hilarious.

Gamo match just did a number on the little fella

And one more just now

Is there a airgun / pellet rifle shop in Houston?

Academy, BPS, Walmart. Not top of the line but they'll do the job.

Academy is an authorized GAMO dealer


Academy Sports & Outdoors
1414 Loop 336 W.
Conroe, TX 77304
936-523-4500

This night was the first evening I didn't see a single rat guess I better give them a break so I can have more targets to shoot

This thread has been an outstanding read lol. Nice work Sapper

for your viewing pleasure

If the other half sees another one outside of our house I might be paying Sapper to give take care of our problem


I keep telling her when you live this close to the lake and a bunch of woods you're going to have critters, she ought to be happy they're outside and not in.

I throw corn over my privacy fence everyday for the deer but no doubt it attracts other critters from the woods behind my house. I don't mind rats outside as long as then never make my house their home. Gives me something to shoot yr around haha.

Took a peak out the back door at the bait sight and what do I see

Shot was a tad high but lots of damage

Shot a second big rat right before dark. He instantly flipped over and just laid there I went to take a look and he flipped over and ran under the fence into the tall grass. There was a lot of blood so I'm sure he is dead but those big rats are tough.

Another bites the dust

They just can't resist this cheap dollar store peanut butter

I guess big brother wanted a piece of the action too

The rats have been epic this year. I was bush hogging Monday and down to the last 10 ft strip the rats started panicking and would make a break out of the tall grass. I did a few doughnuts mowing them down.

Got a bigger one today

Ya gonna do a full mount or just a european mount?

I thinking if I get a real big one I will freeze it I case I kill a real big rattle snake and can do a mount haha

High shoulder works well on rats too. I've lost count of how many rats and mice I've shot this spring and summer but I know it's a lot.