GTA
General Discussion To Gateway To Airguns => Hunting Gate => : SDale December 17, 2007, 06:13:00 AM
-
Well, I got called in to work last night to replace a gearbox for a conveyor drive. After I was done I took a drive around the plant to make sure no one was there. Aaaaaah, the place was totally empty aside from me and a THOUSAND or more pidgeons. It only took me about an hour & a half to replace the gearbox, but I had to stay a mandatory 4 hours and NOTHING was scheduled to run until 6 am.
I get back to my shop, pop open my jeep & pull out my tuned Quest 800 and set up just outside the roll up door facing the pit. Turned off all the lights & settled in for the next 2 hours. Just past the pit is a steel beam about 15 feet off the ground where the pidgeons like to roost after they've finished pooping all over our tool boxes & vehicles all day. Distance, 47 yards slightly down hill. The conditions were perfect. A little over 50 degrees, absolutly NO wind and a slight fog before the rain.
Took a seat in my swiveling office chair, chambered a predator and rested the rifle on an aluminum saw horse. Pellet away! One pidgeon down. The rest of the birds froze. Sent another predator screaming to the next target. WHOP, another one bites the dust. After the fourth one most of the others got spooked & flew off. So I lit a smoke and waited......Not 5 minutes into the wait, the flock came back. For the next hour I repeated the same procedure over & over again. Tally: 31 pidgeons, 9 misses, NONE wounded.
My arm was now starting to get tired from all the cocking so I decided to scan the area for a while. After a quick scan I see the ground moving near the edge of the pit. RATS!!! Big suckers too! There was about 15 or 16 of em raiding a small pile of garbage bags. Probably full of food scraps. Took a bead on one out in the open... Pellet Away! Hit him square between the shoulder blades. Watched him tweak & twitch through the scope for a few seonds until he fell silent and motionless. Surveyed the area again. Hmmm... Seems the rats are smarter than the pidgeons. None were in sight after seeing their buddy fall to a predator.
Lets take a look back at the roost: "Whoa! Almost all the fallen quarry is gone!" I think to myself as I sweep across the ground below the beam. Then I see it!!! A cat!!! I watch through the scope as the little bugger runs over & snatches up one of the dead pidgeons. "Ahhhh, so they DO hunt!" I say to myself as I watch cat after cat taking away the dead flying rats one by one.
I took a look at the clock..."Hmmm, still 45 minutes left before quitting time." So I settled back in and dropped another 8. Done for the night. Packed everything up and got changed back in to my street clothes.
Final count: 39 Pidgeons and 1 Rat. It's great workin at a garbage dump sometimes!!!
-
Great account of your nights work Sam,
I have always loved to shoot pigeons !! and rats !!!!
But I have never been able to do it from a chair. :) I think we can call that an even40 even, 39 with, one without ! (wings)
Good account, I enjoyed every shot !
Bill
-
Nice Sam. Nothing like getting paid to hunt or pest control. Excellent story you did your company a great service.
-
Thanks Bill and Jason!
I think I did the company a service as well :D The company hires a Falconer with 2 birds for 3 months at a time to the tune of $75,000!!! The falcons tear up a few pidgeons and scare the rest away. But a week after he's gone, the pidgeons are back in full force.
I took quite a risk I think though. ANY kind of gun will get you fired where I work. That's why I scouted around for any other employees or employees cars on-site none found. But there's a couple of us that come in on off nights to rid the site of pests hehe.
-
Now that is quite a hunt !!! Can I come work with you???? :)
Fantastic hunt story, cept I had to wipe the drool away from my mouth when I was done reading the account.
Jeff
-
Not a problem Jeff!!! Come on down! There's plenty for everyone.
I don't think you'd wanna eat these pidgeons though... They eat rotted garbage all day. So they miiight taste kinda off!
-
Great story and hunt and I wanna come down too. Between the three of us we could really do some damage hehe. Fine shootin and that's how you clean the shop up. Ed
-
Hey Sam, what happened to all the big seaguls that used to hang around the garbage dumps? Maybe WM would like to hire me to for a bit less to shoot some pigions..:)
Gene
-
Like I said Ed...Come on down!!! LoL
Gene, the seagulls are still around. But only during the day time. At night, they're probably roosting near the water someplace.
As far as hiring ANYONE to shoot pidgeons... Won't happen. I've approached the GM and asked him if I can rid the place of flying rats. His answer was "No, it would be against company policy. It would also most likely hurt WM's image." So I'll just continue to do it at night, when no one's around but me & the cats :D
-
Well Sam, if I know those guys at WM, if I asked them if I could shoot those varments and pay THEM a dollar per head the policy would change and the image thing would disapear...LOL
Gene
-
You know Gene... You're absolutly RIGHT!!! LoL
Oh, by the way... The place I'm working at used to be called Oakland Scavenger. They just changed over to WM a coupla years ago.
I remember you sayin that you did a buncha transmission work for WM in the Bay Area. Did you ever deal with the Oakland Truck Center off of Hegenberger & Coloseum way?
-
Whata blast...and gettin paid to,gotta luv that
-
Sure did Sam...And a bunch of other independents as well. Used to love smelling those places when I rolled up.. hehe..
Gene
-
Yeaaaah... The smell is kinda hard to get over. Imagine working right in the thick of it!!! LoL
I used to work over at the Oakland Truck Center. I quit just after they changed over to TEC of California.
-
Good story, and getting paid to shoot - it doesn't get any better than that!
-
That's awesome! Now that's hunting! I actually know what if feels like to do this kind of hunting.
A good friend of mine used to work at a dump site and then later became the supervisor at a transfer station a few miles outside of NYC, north of the Bronx. He actually worked for the County, not a private company. He said they were always shooting rats and pigeons but mainly big rats that came out even during the day and would always try to chew their way into the transfer station. They were using pump pneumatics and .22 rimfire. At my request he invited me up one summer day. I met up with him and one of his co-workers on a Sunday and brought one of my .22LR rimfire rifles. This was in the early '90's and I only had a Crossman 760 but decided to bring a semi-automatic Marlin .22LR instead with a 3-9x32 scope because they told me the distances might be 30+yds and they were right. It was a lot of fun shooting the rats from 25-50yds away. These guys even baited them with some garbage food and a hundred+ rats came out in broad daylight. There was nothing around but the building and a lot of woods. Those guys were using a Ben Sheridan in .20 cal I think. I let them take the ones closer and I took the long shots. We did most of the shooting from inside our cars. When we walked out of the car the rats retreated. I shot a few of them while they were walking or moving. They don't stay put for long. We were up on a hill and The NY State Thruway (main highway that goes through the entire state) was about 150-200yds away down below us. Nothign around for about a 1/2mi. radius. We got there late afternoon and quit about 2hrs later after it got dark although we had plenty of lighting around the building, the rats had wised up and disappeared. My friend went out and picked up the 14 rats and put them in a black garbage bag. He then walked to the edge of the tree line and started throwing them one by one into the woods to feed the owls and a bobcat they had spotted a few days before. I have always wondered if we killed that bobcat or an owl with lead poisoning..
-
Sounds like a great time Harry!
The Transfer Station I work at used to be that way. I remember when I was a kid they used to let me go in and shoot rats, pidgeons etc. early on Sundays when my dad was at the firing range next door practicing for IPSC hehe. Live targets are ALWAYS better than steel plates!