When I woke up this morning the first thing I did was look out the window at my starling bait station. As I pulled the blinds back to take a peek I see a small flock of yellow beaks clinging to the suet cakes hanging on the tree and feeding on the suet that was falling to the ground. I quickly made my way down to the basement shop and as quietly as I could I opened the bilco doors just enough to shoot through and propped it open with a piece of wood. The starlings were really concentrating on feeding and they didn't notice the door being opened. With the door propped open enough to shoot through I went to one of my gun safes to pick a rifle. As I opened the safe I saw an old friend resting in the back of the safe, it was the first rifle I bought 4 years ago when I got addicted to this sport..... it was my Walmart GAMO Shadow .177 on which I had mounted a BSA 3x12x50 AO scope using a BKL 6 screw one piece mount. I haven't shot this rifle for quite some time so I pulled her out of the safe and loaded her up.
I returned to the bilco doors, stuck the barrel of the Shadow through the opening and took up a shooting position. I put the crosshairs on a yellow beak that was clinging to one of the suet cages and squeezed the beautiful gold trigger. The gun fired and the yellow beak fell off the suet cage and hit the ground. The flock flew off but by the time I had reloaded the Shadow 3 or 4 birds had returned and were at the suet again. I Picked out a bird that was on the ground presenting me a frontal shot and fired. The CPL hit home and the bird flopped over on the grass. As I was reloading another yellow beak landed next to the dead one. I put the scope on him and fired. He went down at the shot but then got up and started hopping his way towards the back of my yard. I was still in my pajamas but I reloaded the Shadow, quickly slipped on a pair of hunting boots and went out into the backyard to find the cripple. As I looked around for the runner I suddenly heard some noise way up in one of my oak trees. I looked up and saw 2 gray squirrels racing their way through the tree tops. As I followed them in the scope one of them suddenly stopped and looked back over his shoulder at me. The Shadow fired and the CPL slammed home, hitting the nutter square in the noggin. He clung to the branch for a few seconds and then let go, falling to the ground and hitting with a loud "thump".
I never did find the "runner" but I had 2 dead yellow beaks and a nutter
I took a couple of pics for my GTA hunting buddies, then snuck away to the side of my shed to clean the harvest without the wife catching on.
Jeff
