After my doctors appointment this morning I raced home to get my gear and head to the duck farm to do some pest shooting. However, as I pulled into my driveway the rain started coming down and I figured that was the end of my pest control shooting for the day.
After lunch I looked outside and low and behold the sun came out. Grabbed my B26-2 .177, a film cannister of Tomahawk pellets and headed to the duck farm.
When I got there I noticed huge flocks of starlings attacking the feeders all over the farm. The other good thing is that the owners didn't have that dang air cannon on so the birds weren't as spooky as they are when that cannon is blasting away every few minutes.
I set up in between two old broken down trucks that were surrounded by a couple of trees. This location was halfway between a main roosting tree and several large grain feeders. The birds would land in the trees near the trucks in groups to survey the areas before swooping down on the feeders to gorge themselves. The birds couldn't see me in between the trucks unless they looked straight down. I was pretty sure I had a good ambush location.
Within 5 minutes of getting into position the shooting started. For almost 2 hours I had good shooting. The hardest part, once a small flock landed in the trees, was waiting for a clear shot through the tangle of tree branches. I can't tell you how many birds I shot at and missed because I was trying to snake a pellet between tiny little branches. But I did manage to nail 21 birds with one shot kills. Those tomahawks really work well and my B26-2 absolutely loves them. I also nailed a large rabbit that was enjoying the duck feed. Any critter that's eating duck grain is fair game and he made his last mistake.
I took some pics of the critters of course, and I also took a couple of pics of my hiding place between the trucks. The hiding place pics are from my camera phone so they didn't come out to great, but it gives you an ok picture of my starling "killing field"..
I'm going to try and get in another couple of hours of starling shooting tomorrow if the weather cooperates.
Oh I forgot to add this, during a break in the shooting I went out from the trucks to pick up the dead starlings. As I walked towards a starling lying on the ground about 20 feet away all of a sudden this small hawk, not sure what kind but plan on looking it up, swooped down from nowhere and pounced on the bird. The hawk stood there for about a minute ripping feathers off with it's beak and feeding, but then it got spooked by my presence and flew off with the dead starling clutched firmly in it's talons. It was so cool !!
Jeff
