Red Grause Good for Airsoft Sniper

An air rifle is particularly suited for killing rats. With sensible utilize of backstops — most ofttimes physical walls in a farmyard scenario — an airgun for rat command can be safely and effectively used in places where yous wouldn't dream of firing a shotgun or rimfire rifle. In fact, although the limited ability of legal limit (sub-12ft/lb) air rifles is often regarded as a drawback, lower power levels and the consistent reduction in take chances of ricochet can often be a huge reward — especially when carrying out pest command in confined spaces or shut to livestock.

Rats breed all year long and then farms can be quickly overrun. Whilst the farmer will have measures in place – commonly poison – an airgunner tin exist a useful addition to the rat command entrada.

A productive night's shooting can yield 40 or 50 rats — frequently many more than — so an airgun shooter'due south contribution can exist major. Numbers on farms tend to meridian during the colder months of the year when natural food becomes deficient. (Read our listing of the best airgun pellets here, which offers some useful advice on which ammunition to choose.)

Shooting with the support of sticks allows you lot to take full advantage of any chances

Which airgun should you utilise for ratting?

If you're choosing an airgun specifically for ratting, go for one with compact proportions, so you can quickly swing on aim without fright of bashing the barrel when shooting in a bars infinite. A magazine-fed loading system is too a help when shooting at night, as information technology will relieve you the hassle of blindly fumbling into the breech when rats are scurrying about in front of you lot.

Much fuss is made near the supposed advantage of using the larger .22 and .25 airgun calibres when shooting rats at close range, simply I actually prefer to use the .177 and limit myself to head shots. This isn't likewise challenging when you consider that y'all'll more often than not be shooting at ranges of between 12m and 20m.

What's the best time to go ratting?

Rats start to get active at dusk. So if you're having an evening session of using an airgun for rat command, arrive at the location an hour or beforehand and have some time to wait for the runs they apply to travel between their nests and the places where they feed — maybe at a silage clamp, feed store or amongst cattle that are inside for the winter.

Observe yourself a identify to sit and wait almost 12m or 15m away, then set out your baits where y'all tin can easily see them and take condom, unobstructed shots. Baits can be placed outside ratholes if you can't locate the runs, although the occupants tin can become spooked and refuse to venture out. I usually transport my kit — which includes bait, torch, headlamp and stout gloves — in a minor backpack that incorporates a fold-upwards stool. Apart from it being useful for carrying my ratting essentials, this as well means I have a stable place to sit down and shoot from if I can't discover a convenient stack of hay bales, feed sacks or pallets.

Notice yourself a place to sit and await

Where you volition find rats

These places attract rats:

Heaps of rubble
Dilapidated sheds,
Stacks of logs
Piles of fleck metallic
Log stacks
Animal feed and grain
Around hen houses

If you accept permission to shoot on a farmyard or on ground that's managed for pheasant shooting, the chances are there will be rats. Rats are smart and will search out easy feeding opportunities and it doesn't take them long to find them. On a shoot, yous will usually discover rats in areas shut to feed hoppers especially if close to a bank or log pile.

Rats will sniff out a meal and quickly set upwardly home close to places where they can steal food from troughs and silage clamps. Grain stores are a favourite, and rats tin crusade major bug when they find their way into places where foodstuffs are stored.

Treat rats with respect

Rats should exist treated with the same respect in terms of swift despatch that a hunter should try to give any quarry. Rats are surprisingly hardy creatures and I try to take them out with headshots — this sounds like a tall guild until you lot consider that farmyard rat shooting is rarely washed at ranges much beyond 15m. With exercise, most people should be able to grouping shots inside a 25mm circumvolve when using a pre-charged airgun to shoot at 15m from a stable sitting position. The tricky thing, all the same, is getting rats to keep nonetheless long enough for you to go a steady bead on their head. So the best answer is to get them decorated with some bait. (You lot'll detect our list of the best chronographs for air rifles here.)

The best bait for rats

I of the toughest parts of using an airgun for rat control is getting a telling shot at these fidgety rodents, only information technology's much more easily done if you lot use some bait. My favourite approach is to target rats either every bit they emerge from their burrows or equally they make their way along their runs between their nesting site and wherever they're feeding. Place a tempting offering where they can't miss information technology, and they'll probably stop to investigate. Liquidised cat food is ane of my top rat baits

Rats tin can't resist piles of this smelly, fishy sludge, and the fact that it has been turned into a soup means they have to pause and lap information technology up if they want to get a overfullness.

I've too been experimenting with the fishmeal pellets you can buy from angling shops, also; they're clean and dry, rats seem to like them and, if you lot purchase the really tiny pellets, they accept to stop to get a decent mouthful which gives you fourth dimension to get them on the cross-hairs.

It may be messy but liquidised cat nutrient is great for keeping fidgety rats exactly where you lot want them

Lamps

Gun lamps designed for airgun shooting seem to be getting more than and more powerful, and oftentimes boast far more than candlepower than y'all'll always need for ratting. Make certain you lot opt for 1 with variable power so that you can air current it down to a very soft glow. Rats are often suspicious of lamplight, and so the last thing you desire is a axle that will light up the hills 400m away.

Using a telescopic-mounted lamp

My advice for after-night shooting is "proceed information technology simple" — and so I utilize a conventional scope-mounted lamp unremarkably.

Clip a lamp to the top of your scope and y'all've got light wherever you point the gun. Bearing in mind the close ranges yous'll be shooting at, at that place's no need to splash out on a super-powerful lamp. In fact, lamplight that is dimmed downwardly with a ruby-red filter is much less likely to spook rats than a dazzling beam.

While I acknowledge that hefty .22 and .25 pellets have more knockdown ability, they too have a significantly curved trajectory when fired from a legal limit (sub-12ft/lb) airgun. Range interpretation can exist tricky when you're shooting by lamplight or with night vision, and I've often found myself missing over the top or underneath my target afterward misjudging the range past a few metres. A faster, lighter .177 pellet has a much flatter trajectory, which makes it far more forgiving if you don't get your concord-over or hold-under exactly right. consequently, it makes it much easier to land a head shot right on target — and if you hit a rat squarely in the skull, you're going to achieve a clean kill whatever calibre you're using.

When it comes to choosing a telescopic sight, I like a model with variable magnification — usually with a range of iii-9x or iv-16x. I tend to current of air downwardly to 5x or 6x at night. The lower magnification helps to improve light manual and results in a wider field of view, which makes it easier to spot rats while scanning through the scope. (We've listed our all-time airgun scopes here.)

Rats are most agile from twilight until a few hours afterwards nightfall, then Mat uses his Tracer Tri-Star lamp and Nite Site NS-l night vision unit of measurement

Sitting comfortably

A stable, comfortable seat is essential. I apply a cheap petty backpack stool; it provides a steady shooting platform and room to stash a torch, hat, gloves and other night shooting essentials — it'southward also reassuring to know that you're well off the basis when there are rats scuttling about.

Though you lot can shoot enough of rats by wandering around the farm and picking them off every bit you lot get, you lot tin often shoot a lot more past setting upward an ambush in a place where they're peculiarly active. Y'all can requite them a good pasting before moving on to another spot.

A litter grabber means yous won't have to run the run a risk of touching rats, which harbour diseases

Safety

Farms can be dangerous places, then make sure you become to know the location in daylight and will be enlightened of whatsoever potential hazards yous might miss if you lot go ratting at night.

Rats can also be unsafe. They are known carriers of some nasty, potentially fatal diseases, including Weil's illness. Infection can be picked up from contact with their urine, which could be literally anywhere. Never accept human foot and beverage on a ratting trip.

Never handle rats with bare easily – that's why you lot need stout gloves in your haversack. And if you're clearing up the vermin later lamping rats with airguns, move them with a shovel or spade – and wearable your gloves throughout.

It'south too a good thought to conduct a litter grabber and so that y'all tin can go along your hands well away from rats when clearing upwardly afterward a productive shoot, though you should exist able to discover a shovel on near farms.

The rats had been attracted by the feed Mat puts out for his laying hens.

Dealing with rats by a hen house

Rats beloved grain so a hen house and hens are like magnets for the rodents.

Holes forth the edge of a chicken run are a certain sign of intruding rats.

This cocky client hung around long enough for Mat to snap it with his iPhone.

We had rat problems around our hen house so I made a plan.

Over the side by side couple of mornings, I placed a small heap of cut maize in the chicken run and carried on with other jobs for half an hour or so before letting the hens out. Even on the get-go morning, the corn had been snaffled by the time I returned. Rather than trying to thread shots through the wire mesh that surrounds the run,  I was going to shoot through the open door — before letting the hens out  of their coop — and I intended to employ my maize offering to persuade the  rats to venture out to where I could  get articulate shots at them.

I had intended to keep with  the pre-baiting ritual for the best part of a week to give the rats fourth dimension to really grow in confidence, only impatience eventually got the better of me. To be fair, the rodents weren't exactly shy and, equally I hadn't seen more than than ii out at once, I didn't want to give them time to multiply.

Because I was but going to be taking shots at about 15m, I opted for simplicity over sophistication and took my e'er-reliable Weihrauch HW 95K from the chiffonier. The little .177 break-barrel may not exist fancy but it is extremely accurate and has accounted for a quite a few rats over the years. I slipped a scattering of pellets into my pocket, grabbed my backpack stool in readiness for the mini pale-out and fabricated my way up the garden.

The chicken run door had been left open all night in lodge to go the rats accustomed to the new arrangement, then all I had to do was dish out a little heap of cutting maize and sit dorsum to  await the inflow of the diners.

What exercise y'all do when grey squirrels, rats and corvids are robbing nests of eggs? You lot exit the airgun…

Provided you follow some sensible prophylactic rules, garden airgunning is a cracking way to meliorate your target skills. Any garden…

There was a plump rat on the bait pile earlier I'd even ready my seat. The greedy rodent continued to feed while I made myself comfortable on the stool and loaded up, but the clunk of the closing barrel sent it dashing for encompass. I needn't have worried, though, as a pair of rats ventured dorsum out to feed no more than two minutes later.

Shooting from a sitting position, and at very close range, the shot  was a mere formality and I toppled  the larger of the rats with a smack  to the head. Its mate darted off at  the sound of the impacting pellet  but I had a feeling it would soon  be back for more.

The cutting maize offering worked a treat, luring the showtime rat out for a articulate shot.

Head shot

I was starting to regret not taking a mug of tea with me when a rat — presumably the one that had scuttled off a few minutes before — poked its head out of a hole at the back of the run. I settled the cross-hairs just behind its eye and squeezed the trigger, ending its feed-stealing days with 8 grains of lead to the head.

After a hearty breakfast, I went back out and stamped rocks into the holes the rats were using to access the run in an effort to discourage others from creeping in for a feed. I'k pleased to say there has been no sign of unwanted visitors over the past couple of days, but you can never drop your guard when it comes to keeping rats abroad from poultry.

This young rat lingered too long on one of Mat'due south breadcrumb piles and paid the price

More on night vision for ratting

Every bit previously mentioned, rats often become suspicious of lamplight, especially after a few nights of hard shooting. With night-vision kit getting more than and more than affordable, this high-tech gear is a realistic alternative, and enables you lot to pick off unsuspecting rats without having to use conventional illumination.

The Yukon Photon night-vision scope has a loyal following amidst airgun shooters. I've also made some huge tallies using the NiteSite Viper and the Night Master Cantlet. These 2 digital add together-ons connect to your normal telescopic sight, using a camera to encounter through it and converting the sight picture into a digital paradigm. I prefer to apply add together-ons rather than dedicated night-vision gear because you can use all the usual aim points on your scope without having to re-nothing, and yous don't need a divide airgun to dedicate to night-vision shooting.

Which pellet?

Q: I am looking for a pellet that volition deliver plenty of shock at shut range when targeting rats around the farmyard. Some people have told me to employ hollowpoint pellets that open up  upward on touch, while others say they are inaccurate. What would you recommend?

A: My recommendation is to use  a quality roundhead pellet that produces expert accuracy with your airgun and focus on hitting the right spot, rather than worrying near what the pellet does when information technology gets there. By and large, hollowpoint pellets don't tend to be accurate and certainly don't mushroom as much as we are led to believe when fired from a sub-12ft/lb airgun.

There does seem to be an unlikely exception to the dominion in the shape of the JSB Predator Polymag. I assumed that the dum-dum blueprint and polymer tips were probably simply a gimmick, but my Weihrauch HW100 shoots them accurately out to about 20m and they do open up more than than typical hollowpoint airgun ammunition. I take been using them to clobber farmyard rats and, while I tin can't guarantee your airgun will shoot accurately with them, they  are certainly worth a effort.