House Sparrow Hunting

It's been a good week.

Wednesday, somehow, the topic of house sparrows came up....  Oh, I remember, I was looking out the back window, watching the chickadees being chased from a feeder on the shed, 20 yds away, by the buggers.  My wife and I were watching.  I explained to her that they were an introduced species and were responsible for the decline of our wood*_*_*_*_*_*s, martins and other favorite native birds.  Dear girl uttered the magic words....

"You should shoot them then!"

I froze for a minute, not believing my ears.  We'd agreed that I was allowed to cull the squirrels that eat our shed and hunt hare when it's in season.  All the "cute little birds" were excluded.  If I were running for office, I'd call it a sea change.  Or something else evocative and grandiose.  Good news.

I snapped out of my stupor, grabbed and cocked the Diana 34.  The CPHP slid snugly into the breach.  The wife laughed, "Geeze I didn't expect it'd be right now!"

Make hay while the sun shines.  Several drop.

Forward to today...

Step out the door, lean against the house.  Snowing lightly, about 2" down.  A half dozen limey sparrows are zipping from the apple tree to the near by feeders.  A dozen or so junko's manage a few brief stays, but are mostly keeping to the trees behind the shed.  The Bushnell Sportsman non-ao is set to 6x, enough to get a good aim at the 22yds to the apple tree.  Takes a couple seconds to find an englishmn on my side of the tree, about 3/4 the way up.  Bamph, Thwock..ticka..ticka...  The bird simply falls, a small cloud of feathers fall.  As usual, thru and thru, centre chest, the telltail tickas of the pellet carrying thru the twigs behind.

2 more fall similarly in the next 10 minutes, they fly off each shot, but keep coming back.  2 more seemed to have their shields up, clean misses.  Nice thing about hunting sparrows with this gun, there never seems to be a mere injury.  Hit'em and it's like using a 30mm canon for deer.

We got about 3" of snow down now, since this morning.  It's march 29th.  Geeze.  This almost makes up for it!

J

[tat2dman]

Wow,I thought her in Indiana the weather was screwey :p Where you at? :oGood shootin by the way,I hate`em...

Southern New Brunswick, Canada, on the Bay of Fundy.  It's a beautiful spot, but this winter's been rather more significant than usual.  It's actually pretty low snow here, just an hour northeast of here, in Moncton, there's still 3-4' of snow down.  Another hour north of there and it's almost double that!

For the first time in years, snowmobiles are making sense again.

Kinda nice to have a real winter again, but I'm about done with it now...

J

[only1harry]

Good shooting Jason!  Yeah those buggers are so small and they move around a lot - I could see me missing one ore two but I usually shoot starlings that are bigger.  The sparrows seem to only hang out across the street, maybe they know something :)  
Nice Diana!

[tat2dman]

Seems to me anyway,here in my part of the US,they do indeed get "on to you"

Yup, they're starting to get a little spooky...  3 more fell last night, missed none :)  One was at 35yds, where he thought he was safe, in the tree behind the shed.  He flew there when I stepped out.  Fooled him.

Honestly, it's just fine by me if they just wanna move somewhere else.  I'll always have a few to make "examples" of, same as the squirrels.  I've already noticed an explosion of other winter birds at the feeders, Junkos, chickadees, some wren or other I can't identify (looks like an english sparrow, but 2-3x the size, slightly smoother coloring).  They're all welcome, and seem to know it.  They don't run when I come outside...

J