It rained all day here today and by 1 pm I got tired of sitting in the house doing nothing, so I decided to head to the duck farm and see what kind of starling shooting I could get in this kind of weather. I grabbed my tuned Flying Dragon .177 QB78-D, a container of CPL's and headed out into the rain.
When I got to the farm it was still raining but as I drove up to the barn I planned on hiding in I was amazed to see huge flocks of starlings perched on the barn roof. There had to be a couple thousand birds, it was amazing. I set up a sniping position inside the barn, right next to a large window. I hung some camo netting over the window to conceal me, set up my backpack seat, loaded a CPL and got ready. Didn't have to wait long.
Within 5 minutes about 50 starlings landed on the old telephone pole 18 yards away, perching on the top of the pole and on the steel support wires. I picked out a bird, put the crosshairs right on his feathered chest and pulled the trigger. The QB78-D barked, I saw a puff of feathers in the scope and the starling fell backwards off the wire and fell to the ground stone dead.
During the next hour I had great shooting. It took the birds a little while to relax and come back and land on the pole after each shot, but they kept coming back. Long story short,,,,, I got 21 shots at starlings and nailed 20 of em. It was really great, every time I hit one I'd see this puff of feathers and see the bird shudder from the impact. The shooting would've continued at that pace except for the fact that all of a sudden some really severe, and I mean severe, thunderstorms rolled into the area and the birds disappeared. I also decided to make my exit and packed up and headed back to the truck.
I gotta tell ya,,, the power and accuracy of Mikes tuned QB78-D continues to impress me. I didn't get to take any pics of my kills, it was just raining to hard to set up a "photo op", but I can tell you they were handsome looking starlings :)
Jeff
