This morning I met WadeS at his house at 7am. Terry, a coworker, also met us and went along. We ate breakfast on the way and got to the 93,000 acre farm/feedlot/dairy about 8:30 to commence the bird assault. WadeS had his trusty .22 Mendoza, and I had my newly HPA-converted .22 Hammerli 850 shooting about 850fps and Terry brought his rather new .22 RWS-54 with JSB Exacts, a "killer" combo. WadeS and I shared shooting my 850 all day on one fill from 3200# down to 1900# when we left.
We first set up shop at the potato piles and got a few kills there before the birds got wise and skittish. WadeS and I were behind a pallet blind while Terry climbed to the top of a mountain of old tires overlooking the food piles. The starlings kept landing on the end where Terry had a great shooting location and great camo. He shot a bunch of starlings and a crow there in about an hour. We then went to the sheds and got 6-7 pigeons. The farm owners had done a bunch of clean up and closed the doors so few birds were roosting there anymore.
We ended up riding around in the Massive-Cab shooting pigeons off railings, roofs, etc. They aren't very smart. We would spot a group of them in the distance and slowly drive up on them and shoot out the windows. Sometimes they would all fly but sometimes they wouldn't, allowing multiple kills. Even if they flew, they would circle a few times and land back at/near the same spot. We had a laser rangefinder and would call out distances on the further ones. Many of them fell into sewage lagoons, irrigation ditches, etc, never to be found. Many others got the "WHOP" but flew off. Tough birds.
On the way out we found this 20'x20' shed the pigeons were roosting in and parked the truck diagonal to it 44 yards away. With the windows rolled down, they just kept circling and landing. We ended up getting 8-10 off the roof there. That will be one of our first stops next time.
It sure is nice shooting a PCP or other type of recoilless AR.
Anyway, here is the pic of the birds we actually retrieved. 1 sparrow, 1 crow, 9 starlings and 32 pigeons. There were 2 or 3 times more actually dead or mortally wounded.
Doug
