Well, I got called in to work last night to replace a gearbox for a conveyor drive. After I was done I took a drive around the plant to make sure no one was there. Aaaaaah, the place was totally empty aside from me and a THOUSAND or more pidgeons. It only took me about an hour & a half to replace the gearbox, but I had to stay a mandatory 4 hours and NOTHING was scheduled to run until 6 am.
I get back to my shop, pop open my jeep & pull out my tuned Quest 800 and set up just outside the roll up door facing the pit. Turned off all the lights & settled in for the next 2 hours. Just past the pit is a steel beam about 15 feet off the ground where the pidgeons like to roost after they've finished pooping all over our tool boxes & vehicles all day. Distance, 47 yards slightly down hill. The conditions were perfect. A little over 50 degrees, absolutly NO wind and a slight fog before the rain.
Took a seat in my swiveling office chair, chambered a predator and rested the rifle on an aluminum saw horse. Pellet away! One pidgeon down. The rest of the birds froze. Sent another predator screaming to the next target. WHOP, another one bites the dust. After the fourth one most of the others got spooked & flew off. So I lit a smoke and waited......Not 5 minutes into the wait, the flock came back. For the next hour I repeated the same procedure over & over again. Tally: 31 pidgeons, 9 misses, NONE wounded.
My arm was now starting to get tired from all the cocking so I decided to scan the area for a while. After a quick scan I see the ground moving near the edge of the pit. RATS!!! Big suckers too! There was about 15 or 16 of em raiding a small pile of garbage bags. Probably full of food scraps. Took a bead on one out in the open... Pellet Away! Hit him square between the shoulder blades. Watched him tweak & twitch through the scope for a few seonds until he fell silent and motionless. Surveyed the area again. Hmmm... Seems the rats are smarter than the pidgeons. None were in sight after seeing their buddy fall to a predator.
Lets take a look back at the roost: "Whoa! Almost all the fallen quarry is gone!" I think to myself as I sweep across the ground below the beam. Then I see it!!! A cat!!! I watch through the scope as the little bugger runs over & snatches up one of the dead pidgeons. "Ahhhh, so they DO hunt!" I say to myself as I watch cat after cat taking away the dead flying rats one by one.
I took a look at the clock..."Hmmm, still 45 minutes left before quitting time." So I settled back in and dropped another 8. Done for the night. Packed everything up and got changed back in to my street clothes.
Final count: 39 Pidgeons and 1 Rat. It's great workin at a garbage dump sometimes!!!
