GTA
General Discussion To Gateway To Airguns => Hunting Gate => : March 28, 2008, 03:11:57 PM
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It's been a good week.
Wednesday, somehow, the topic of house sparrows came up.... Oh, I remember, I was looking out the back window, watching the chickadees being chased from a feeder on the shed, 20 yds away, by the buggers. My wife and I were watching. I explained to her that they were an introduced species and were responsible for the decline of our wood*_*_*_*_*_*s, martins and other favorite native birds. Dear girl uttered the magic words....
"You should shoot them then!"
I froze for a minute, not believing my ears. We'd agreed that I was allowed to cull the squirrels that eat our shed and hunt hare when it's in season. All the "cute little birds" were excluded. If I were running for office, I'd call it a sea change. Or something else evocative and grandiose. Good news.
I snapped out of my stupor, grabbed and cocked the Diana 34. The CPHP slid snugly into the breach. The wife laughed, "Geeze I didn't expect it'd be right now!"
Make hay while the sun shines. Several drop.
Forward to today...
Step out the door, lean against the house. Snowing lightly, about 2" down. A half dozen limey sparrows are zipping from the apple tree to the near by feeders. A dozen or so junko's manage a few brief stays, but are mostly keeping to the trees behind the shed. The Bushnell Sportsman non-ao is set to 6x, enough to get a good aim at the 22yds to the apple tree. Takes a couple seconds to find an englishmn on my side of the tree, about 3/4 the way up. Bamph, Thwock..ticka..ticka... The bird simply falls, a small cloud of feathers fall. As usual, thru and thru, centre chest, the telltail tickas of the pellet carrying thru the twigs behind.
2 more fall similarly in the next 10 minutes, they fly off each shot, but keep coming back. 2 more seemed to have their shields up, clean misses. Nice thing about hunting sparrows with this gun, there never seems to be a mere injury. Hit'em and it's like using a 30mm canon for deer.
We got about 3" of snow down now, since this morning. It's march 29th. Geeze. This almost makes up for it!
J
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Wow,I thought her in Indiana the weather was screwey :p Where you at? :oGood shootin by the way,I hate`em...
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Southern New Brunswick, Canada, on the Bay of Fundy. It's a beautiful spot, but this winter's been rather more significant than usual. It's actually pretty low snow here, just an hour northeast of here, in Moncton, there's still 3-4' of snow down. Another hour north of there and it's almost double that!
For the first time in years, snowmobiles are making sense again.
Kinda nice to have a real winter again, but I'm about done with it now...
J
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Good shooting Jason! Yeah those buggers are so small and they move around a lot - I could see me missing one ore two but I usually shoot starlings that are bigger. The sparrows seem to only hang out across the street, maybe they know something :)
Nice Diana!
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Seems to me anyway,here in my part of the US,they do indeed get "on to you"
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Yup, they're starting to get a little spooky... 3 more fell last night, missed none :) One was at 35yds, where he thought he was safe, in the tree behind the shed. He flew there when I stepped out. Fooled him.
Honestly, it's just fine by me if they just wanna move somewhere else. I'll always have a few to make "examples" of, same as the squirrels. I've already noticed an explosion of other winter birds at the feeders, Junkos, chickadees, some wren or other I can't identify (looks like an english sparrow, but 2-3x the size, slightly smoother coloring). They're all welcome, and seem to know it. They don't run when I come outside...
J