I got a few minutes in late this evening right before dark and decided to go to my hide and wait for any critters that might show up.
I was there about 10 minutes when I noticed something moving back in the bushes.
I had my centerpoint 3x9-32 cranked up to about 7 so I can see better for those long distance shots of 70 feet, which is the distance from my hide to the bait. aka (cheap catfood).
Sure enough it was another field rat like the one I shot saturday evening.
Now I must explain my set up for you to understand how hard this shooting rats really is.
Where I live, we have alot of our neighbor, ergo nearly all of them have dogs.
And they let this run loose all the time.
So if I have my bait out in the open, I end up feeding all the dogs in the neighborhood.
This could get quite expensive.
Plus I don't shoot dogs so its a no win situation.
What I have done is converted our old chicken pen (8ft x 6ft chainlink dog run) into a bait prison, so to speak.
I put my bait in a bowl inside the pen and mount my game camera on the inside pointing down at an angle to get the shots.
This setup allows anything from possums, skunks and some feral cats to get inside the wire and eat without the dogs gobbling it all up.
For the bigger critters like big feral cats and coons, I put a small flat tuna fish can next to the inside of the wire so they can reach in and pull the food out through the wire.
That way they get to eat and it keeps this coming back for more.
So when I'm shooting at the field rats in the pen you have to remember I'm 70 feet away shooting "through" a chain link fence.
This makes for some interesting shot angles.
So far so good though.
I've only missed one shot at a rat. The rest have all bought a ticket outta town.
I think I've figured out why these rats are so big.
The big bird feeder I built back in December has caused a good bit of seeds to fall and hit the ground from all the birds feeding and I think the rats have
been feeding on that.
These boys are plump!!!!!
Anyway, I shot the one on the right after about 10 minutes from getting in my hide and believe it or not, I shot the one on the left about 3 minutes after that.
You'd think that if a dead body was laying next to a free meal and you heard a loud pop less than 3 minutes ago that something must be up, right?
Well this second fellow must have been too hungry to care.
Long story short, I dropped him within 4 inches of the first one.
Heres a quick pic I grabbed with my cell before going in for supper.
Enjoy, and happy hunting boys.
Ray
