During the last couple of weeks I've started noticing lots of starlings and grackles around-- except in my yard :~(
Well, it looks as though that's changed as I pulled into the driveway coming home from dinner with the folks this evening. I saw 4-5 grackles feeding in the lawn a little ways from the house. They didn't fly away, though they did look up as I passed by them and up into the garage. After closing the garage door, I hurried upstairs and grabbed my B26-2 from her recliner chair, loaded a handy .177 Tomahawk into the breech (I love how smooth this thing cocks), closed her up, flipped open the front and rear caps on the Leapers 4-16x50 scope, zoomed it up to ~8x, set the AO for, oh... let's say about 40 yards, and thumbed the safety to the right. I eased the sliding glass door to the deck open and did a low creep out to the railing. Quietly sliding the B26 across my forearm which was steadied on top of the railing, I set the crosshairs on the nearest black iridescent head...
Let me pause here to interject that I've been doing a little more offhand practicing now that it's gotten warmer and have been plinking at the bottom of a metal Christmas tree stand propped up on a fencepost out near the pond about 45 yards from the front door. The bright red bottom is easy for me to see and you can sure tell when you hit it. I'm now able to hit it off-hand pretty much every time with the B26, as well as my Powerline 1000S, TF89 and even my QB57. I've still got a long ways to go in the accuracy dept., but shooting consistently at that distance offhand at an 8" dia. target has given me a little more confidence in my choice of when to pull the trigger, considering that I have trouble keeping the crosshairs in place for any length of time. Now, back to our story...
... where was I? Oh yeah, crosshairs... An easy squeeze of the trigger caused all of the grackles to fly-- except for one. He took one last step and fell on his beak. I did a rough distance check pacing off as I approached the bird, and came up with 38 paces-- I figured maybe 35 yards, but I'll check tomorrow. Here's a pic or two of the unfortunate beast. I hope this is the start of a fruitful season of pest elimination (is it really a pest if you want them around as targets?!?) LOL!
Bryan
