Madness at Work

NP was flying his S107G around on break time and Guido was trying to shoot it out of the air with an AirZooka. Guido is not exactly the world's greatest sportsman and his hit ratio was pretty low. I got a little frustrated at all the misses I was hearing, and set out to see if I could down the airplane with the air cannon myself. First shot was a miss but a close one. Second shot was a hit, but not too impressive because it was about 1 meter away. Then (after recovering from yet another disastrous crash) NP started flying again and he was going about as fast as his modded S107 could go. I had a wide-missed shot, then realized I needed to lead the bird to hit it in flight. I led it and hit it and the helicoper smashed into a doorjamb and went down, hard. Satisfied, I put the AirZooka on a shelf and went back to work. On my way back to my desk, I said quietly, in a squeaky voice, said "How can you shoot women and children!?" to nobody in particular.

JM asked if I had said what he thought I had said. After I responded in the affirmative, he LOL'd pretty good.

If Only It Worked for FLYING Rats

I found this fabulous device at Bill's Idle Mind after a bit of wandering around the internet. A squirrel or rat crawls into a pneumatic rat launching gun and automatically fires itself out the barrel. Optionally into a brick wall or some similarly lethal target.

Then, if you set it up properly, it resets and waits for the next one.

This is a beautiful solution (to an engineer) to a very ugly problem.

Vermin Eradication

The pile of nasty bird poo right by my house is a sign that the blue jay is not doing his job. Fortunately, my Daisy does hers and the world is a cleaner place for want of one vermin bird.

The World Is A Better Place Today . . .

Feral hogs are a menace to farms. They destroy crops and breed like . . . well, like wild animals will do. In some place, you can shoot them as freely as you can kill flies. Will somebody please frikken invite me on a pig hunt already? Just give me a field to watch and say "go" and I'm there. Paying you $800 for the privilege of ridding your farm of vermin is pretty low on my list, but I'll volunteer! My man MM has a contact, but they have to invite him first, before he can invite me.

Feral gangsters are a menace to civilization. They destroy lives and . . . oh nevermind the rest of the analogy. Anyway, a HUGE Bravo Zulu to Officer Sean Kelleher for having the presence of mind to jam a thumb in the hammer of a revolver pointed at him, and another one for Officer Tara Hayes for getting in a perfect one-shot kill on a piece of human offal referred to by those who knew him best as "a troublemaker and a thug".

Hat tip for both links to Tam

No Pigeons This Year?

It looks like a blue bird has taken up residence in the tree over my car. Maybe I won't have to go hunting at all this year. I've seen exactly ONE flying rat on my driveway to date, and it was on the ground. I LOVE that blue bird!

After-Action Report: 13 November 2009

Night Hunting

I set out at bedtime-thirty with poquito and my nifty LED flashlight that can be stood on end (for steady vertical illumination) and hit the driveway. SurpRISE surprise, right over a poo pile on the drive, I found a bird. I lit him up and searched for a clear shot. Twigs everywhere. Nobody has trimmed this tree in at least 6 years, and there are lots of little branches in between the big branches. This makes for frustrating shooting when the optical axis of my telescope sight is +1.5" over the center of the bore.

Ok, I see a clear-ish path. Shot!
Little pieces of twig fall down.
. . . I move around a bit . . . the bird is still asleep . . .
Another clear-ish view. Shot!
Little pieces of twig and a few leaves this time.
. . . I moved again, probably moved 50 feet laterally, forward, and back, in a four square-yard area. Lots of motion, but the bird still stays put.

Alright, trying again . . . Shot!
After a short pause, the bird fell like a stone to the driveway. Thud. No twitching, even. He panted out his last breaths for a minute, but that's only because birds are dead simple animals. This was a painless kill.

Come on VFD you're just saying that to make yourself feel better!

When I went to pick him up, his head was floppy. Shot straight through the spine, in the middle of his neck. Have you ever heard the expression "running around like a chicken with its head cut off?" Yeah, this was like that, except the head was still on. He was a dead bird breathing.

I looked around for a few more minutes, but I didn't see any more foul fowl, so I tossed my boy down the drain for the cats and went inside for the night.

After-Action Report: 11 November 2009

The other day I noted, when a loud noise was made in my front yard, at least 6 pigeons flew out of the tree over my driveway. I looked at the driveway, and sure 'nuff: huge patches of concrete covered in bird poo.

Time to go killin'.

I rolled out with my trusty poquito sometime after 21:00 and found the first bird without too much difficulty. After what I was sure had been a good shot, he flew off! Damnit. Okay, let's keep looking. . .

. . . and then, from two houses down, I hear as noise in the neighbors' trees: 'flapflapflapcrashflapflapflapcrashthunk'

I walked over and there was my boy, dead as a doornail. I collected him and went back to my yard and started looking again, and my next door neighbors pulled in to their driveway. The squeaking of their brakes spooked one bird out of the tree. The slamming of their car doors spooked another five or six. I exchanged pleasantries with the neighbors, and then spotted another bird the wife heard in their tree. I set my torch on the ground so they could see the bird lit up from underneath. The husband told me "shoot it" and they went inside. I took one shot, but it was offhand and the tree was being windblown (miss). As I was reloading, TWO cars passed each other going opposite directions in front of our house, and ANOTHER half-dozen birds flushed out of the trees, including my current quarry. Disgusted, I went inside after tossing the one dead guy into the storm drain for the cats.

Time to spend some quality time outside. I also need to do some surgery on the front sight on my pellet gun. The protective ring around the sight blade gives back a huge glare that mars the picture through the telescope sight when the flashlight hits it.

After-Action Report: 28 August 2009

I was cleaning out my garage and opened the door so I could haul out some trash. I worked for a while and then I thought I'd go check on the trees over my car. Loaded with Rattus Volantus. Feeling charitable, I went and got some 3/4" "gravel" from beside the sidewalk and tossed stones to scare away a couple of the birds. Some wouldn't scare. I got a pole saw and poked a big limb, and three more flushed. Then I saw one right over my headlight that wouldn't spook.

Okay, if you're that deep of a sleeper, or that stupid, you're toast. I went and loaded up, found him again, took careful aim, and fired.

Nothing happened.

I was standing there for a half-tick, beginning to wonder if I had somehow missed, when I heard a rustle, a couple of thuds, and the bird came out from the boughs and plop fell about a foot away from the front-driver's side corner of my car. DRT. My ballistics team told me he took the pellet in the breast, through the spine and probably something else important, and the exit wound was on the left side of the neck. I tossed him in the storm drain where the neighborhood cats take refuge from passers-by.

I went back in and kept working for a while and decided to to another sweep. Sure enough, there was one more up there. I propped up my flashlight so it shone directly on the bird's underside and went and loaded up. The shot sounded like a thunderclap, which means it broke some thick feathers; the bird flew off. Good riddance. As I picked up my torch, I noted that it was (directly under the bird) on top of a little pile of poo. Gee, I wonder who put those there . . .

Curses! Foiled!

Note to night hunters: Pigeons will spook and fly off, if the light from a laser gunsight hits their eyeballs. That is all.

After-Action Report: 26 July 2009

Night Hunting

Once again, I took out the Daisy with a handheld torch zip-tied to it. Once again it was almost like cheating, it was so easy. During the dusk and early evening hours, the birds are not really settled in, and any little disturbance sends them flying off. At night, they are either asleep or even stupider than usual. Just sit there while their buddies drop like the oversized flies they are.

My hunt was suddenly interrupted by my neighbors coming out to see their daughter's latest stud boyfriend off. She actually brought one home, which is an improvement. The husband is part of the Large Hadron Collider project, and he said that his friends can't destroy the universe just yet, because they found more Helium (coolant) leaks. They have to warm the stupid thing up and fix it, then cool it down again. Make that two MORE months' delay.

Anyhow, here's the deal with me vs. these birds:

Last week, it rained cats & dogs and my car was washed clean, thank God. The next day, I come out and find this:


That would be, at least 50 poops on my car, overnight. Now are you starting to understand why I feel no compunction about killing these birds? My neighbors also complained about them during our conversation last night.

I found and shot the first one, and it went ker-THUNK on the ground. Not a single flap. The second flew away in worse shape than it was when it picked my tree to sleep in. The third flapped a little on the way down, but it didn't flap for long. You may note a common theme when it comes to the fatal shots on these birds:



Fortunately, this lot included a female. When you kill a female flying rat replicator, she is unable to make more eggs. The males, well there's always another one out there. . . .

Night Hunting After-Action Report 07/23/2009

Colonel Cooper always wondered why so few people seem to enjoy stalking and hunting at night by spotlight. The Leopard Light he specified for the Steyr (now Mannlicher) Scout was for spotlighting leopards specifically. I can only imagine how much of a thrill that hunt would be.

The first part of this week, I noted the accumulation of SCORES of bird droppings on my car's hood. Per. DAY. A couple of days ago it rained pretty hard and the car was washed clean. The next day, scores of bird turds, again! This, of course, means war.

Tonight I strapped my second-brightest LED flashlight to the axis of my Daisy's telescope sight and loaded up, then stepped out. The light grey of the local doves stands out in stark contrast to the green and medium dark gray of the foliage of my trees, in the light from this torch. I went over by my car and shone the light (on the loaded rifle) up to the tree. Spotted. Sighted. Shot. Hit. Loud hit. Solid on hard feathers. Fly away. Dangit. Load up again, stalk for maybe half a minute. Spotted. Sighted. Shot. Hit. Fly away. Dangit. Stalk again. Spotted in profile, target angle almost 90º. Sighted. Shot. Hit. Fluttering. Flapped down across the street.

Make that two to lightly winged and one probably dead by the time I write this. The local cats will be getting fat soon, I hope. I had been letting the birds be, because they only come around at dusk and I'm usually inside putting the children down at that time. Now that I know I can spot them, I'll be keeping my car's AO clear.

After-Action Report: 10 July 2009

My Darling Wife took #1 out bike riding and #3 in the jogging stroller, to keep her company on a jog through the area. I took #2 swimming at the neighborhood pool. We got home first, fortunately, because she forgot to take any keys with her. When they got home, we let them in the garage (to stow the stroller & bicycle). I noticed, as I was going about the business of putting things away for the night, that there was a pair of pigeons in the tree just off to the side of my driveway. Everyone had already gone inside, so I was able to stalk the birds without an undue amount of noise.

I loaded and pumped up the pellet rifle quickly, and I immediately was glad to find (again) that the 4x40 glass I mounted on the Daisy is almost as good at gathering light as my eyeball. Shot. Plop. Reload quickly, go check the bird from a couple yards away: dead still. I backed up a little so's not to spook the other bird. She was apparently unperturbed by the sudden disappearance of her sitting buddy. This shot was taken in rapidly-fading light, and with the old Tasco 4x15 scope, it would have been impossible; as it was, I had to look twice to find her in the branches. Shot. Plop. Twitch. Twitch.

Then something most unexpected happened. It has happened only once before, and that was half a year ago, done by a now-dead cat. The neighbors' grey tom was on the driveway next door, and saw the slowly-twitching pigeon. It did a bit of unnecessary stalking of its own, and pounced. It was a good strike, right on the bird's neck.

I went to snap a photo of the cat having his supper, and another local flying nuisance tried to make supper of me! Make that 3 confirmed kills for the night:



Then I got off one shot at the cat before my memory card was full. Still hadn't unpacked the images from Independence Day. When there is not enough ambient light for the autofocus to focus, this is what you get:



As it turns out, the first bird was a male, and the second was a female. The first was easy enough to tell, just go over and look. The second, I didn't want to scare the cat away from while he was eating. I inched closer and the cat started meowing, but I only hung out long enough to have a look at the coloration on the bird. Then I grabbed the male by a toe and took him to the backyard, and slung him over the fence to feed whatever it is that cleans up back there.

I was starting to feel bad about all the misses I was getting with the birds on the wire when the scope was not sighted in yet. Two one-shot kills can get you feeling better about bad shooting in a hurry!

After-Action Report: 02 July 2009

We were out in the backyard, with the children splashing in a wading pool, and I saw a pigeon alight on the phone lines. I heard the little voice you should always heed saying to get my Daisy, and I did. I loaded it, set the safety, and waited. Sure enough, some more birds came up and settled on the line right by our yard. Shot. Hit. Flop. Bounce off the top of the fence. DRT. Couple of near misses on moving birds (scope never got finished sighting-in, oops!) and then my Darling Wife came over for some trigger time when I set up an empty water bottle. She was chasing it pretty good, and was aiming for a shot at the bottle when I took the rifle from her and put some more air in it. A pigeon had just landed on the wire straight in front of the firing line (and 30 feet up, call it 20yds) Shot. Flapping/falling through the trees. Shot on the ground. 3 more flaps, DRT. More water bottle shooting ensued, then we all went in for supper. We left the birds to be supper for the cats or opossum or whatever cleans up back there.

Of course, after we went inside for supper, a half-dozen of them came and roosted on the wires. A near miss literally scared the poop out of one of them, but then they flew off. Not as much fun as seeing them fall, but just so long as they're not crapping up my land, that's fine.

A Comment On Shooting Birds

When a pigeon is struck by a pellet, it makes a most satisfying thwack!* as the feathers break.

A contented "aaaaaahh!" with a small smile.

********

*Not to be confused with the disgusting crunch of a cockroach.

After-Action Report: 14 June 2009

Shooting .177cal. pellets through tree limbs stinks.

My rifle still hits when it has a clear shot

One less female pigeon to lay another generation of flying-rat eggs.

I had to wing this one (crushed the ulna or humerus) and it flopped out of the tree, where I killed it with a 2x4 to the head. Total suffering: single-digits of seconds.

After-Action Report 06/05/2009

The children have a couple of their little friends over to spend the night, and they were out playing in the front yard just before dusk. They were moving all around the yard and riding scooters up and down the sidewalk, making a racket. Enough of a racket that the pigeons thought it must be okay to roost over my car with all those loud moving things down there.

Hold on there.

I heard a ruckus from the trees and asked my Darling Wife what it was. She reported pigeons. Then, bless her, she stayed on target and kept a finger pointing at the nearest one as I retrieved my Daisy and loaded up. Seeking. Hard to see with this dim scope in the failing light. They retrieved a flashlight for me and I held it to the barrel of the rifle with one hand. Shot. Hit. Flapping fall, and off to the neighbor's driveway. I knocked it out temporarily with the flashlight to the head, then knocked the bird into the grass so it wouldn't leave (more) blood on their driveway, and reloaded. There was another bird up there, silhouetted against the sky and easy enough to see without the torch. Shot. Hit. It was hurt badly but fighting. It hopped around in the boughs of my tree and rained down a couple of drops of blood on my left arm (ewww). Finally it found its way to the grass between my driveway and the neighbor's. I went and conked it on the head also, then went to the first bird and shot it through the head as it was twitching a little. There was another one up there but it got too dark to see through a thick bunch of leaves where it hid and (fortunately for it) it decided to lay dog until we gave up searching for it.

Then, and this is the fun part, I had #2 and his friend put on gloves and they each carried a pigeon back to the opening of the big garage door. #1 and her friend came around and we had an avian anatomy lesson long enough to drive my Darling Wife inside due to the pestering mosquitoes. #1 was a bit disappointed that I wouldn't field strip the birds right in the garage doorway; I told her maybe on another bird. I don't like disassembling animals unless I'm eating them. Then we went around to the back yard and tossed the carcasses over the fence for the ants or whatever lives back there.

As it turns out, there were a male and a female and it was interesting to point out the differences in size and decoration. 2 less car poopers to worry about. Oh, and for David who asked about the pellets in the last one, all three shots were through-and-throughs.

After-Action Report 06/03/2009

So there I was, all ready to leave the house in time to get to work early for a change, opening my car door when I noticed a disturbance in the force. The leaves of the tree above the end of my driveway rustled and I looked up. A pigeon took off and crossed the street, and alighted on the street light by the mailboxes.

What could I do? I went and aired up my pellet rifle. Presented with a clear shot like that on a varmint accustomed to making doody on my car, there was no question. As I was pumping (it's a 10-pump pneumatic rifle) a fight broke out. My pigeon was young and smallish, and another came over and said 'Hey that's MY streetlamp!' My quarry decided its previous perch was preferable and came back to my tree, this time almost directly over my car. So, I took aim and fired. Hit. The bird decided that was a noise unrelated to itself and settled down immediately. Disbelieving the stupidity of the thing, I reloaded as the bird hopped to my neighbor's tree (the two trees intertwine) and watched me take aim and fire again. Hit. Clump of feathers sent flying out the other side. Pigeon again decides this is some random noise that has nothing to do with it. It watches me reload from the safety of 12 feet away, turning slightly to present a better target angle (approx. 20). I take aim again and fire. Hit. The bird decides that one hurt pretty bad, and drops flapping from the tree. I reload and finally it decides to get away from the big moving thing that makes noise. It walks under my neighbor's truck and out the other side. I shoot it in the neck point-blank and it flaps STILL! WTF Die Hard Pigeon Edition! I reload AGAIN and shoot it in the F'ing HEAD and it flaps STILL!

Okay fine, this is stupid and you're getting your head chopped off. I picked it up by the tailfeathers and the pitiful thing noted it was free of the ground somewhere in the most basic part of its brain. It made feeble flapping motions with both wings as if it were flying, until I dropped it on the grass where it lay still. I decided it was about dead by then, and went back in the house to grab a plastic grocery store bag in which to wrap it up. #1 and #2 were reading quietly, #3 was complaining about being alone in his crib with a wet diaper and Mommy was tending to personal business prior to getting #3 out of bed. I got #3 and the bag, changed his diaper and took him out to pick up the bird. My Darling Wife took him from me as I went back in to drop the baby off, and they saw me off to work.

Where I delivered the bird to the fellow here pragmatic enough to eat them if they are fresh. Why not? They're doves! I just don't think they're worth the effort to clean, to eat, while he does.

Note on shooting pigeons: if your rifle can reliably deliver a head shot, I generally recommend you take them. Mine has a recent history of being good enough for 2' groups from offhand at 20 yards at least. I usually go for center of mass shots on pigeons however, because this is a suburban area and a miss could lead to property damage. It's easy enough to hit the center of a pigeon at reasonable distances, even though my scope is a pretty dim piece of glass. As it turns out, this one didn't even go with a head shot, so . . . .

Hunting Buffalo: An Experience Indeed!

I have never had the money or opportunity dropped in my lap, so I have never had the pleasure myself, but here is a Hunter's description of hunting a buffalo. From Cooper's Commentaries from 1999:

I have long regarded the buffalo (Syncerus caffer, not Bison bison) as a very marvelous game animal. Not for his rarity, nor for his horns, but for his attitude. Thus,

"You wound a buffalo and he turns into 1500lbs of hate. He can run faster than you, smell what you had for supper two nights ago, turn on a coin, hide behind a bunch of leaves, and when this big black brute boils out of the bush his little eyes are focused only on you. Nothing will turn him. As he charges, he chews up bullets and spits them out. Only death will stop him - his, or yours, or both"
(by Jep Jonas in Magnum).

If this does not sound like something you would at least momentarily think of enjoying, you are either a woman (nothing wrong with that hey! ) or else you need to examine yourself quite sternly, and wonder what, exactly, happened to your machismo

Try Crapping All Over My Car NOW Birdy!

Yes! Great Success.

My car has been throwing a check engine light so tonight I moved it up to the top of the driveway so I could be (mostly) out of the wind and close to my tools in the garage. I had recently un-destroyed the garage enough to park my wife's car inside, so it was backed in, providing a convenient flat surface (the hood) on which to set my tools. At around 22:00 I went to work. Outside temperature: 34 degrees F and falling. I set up a wooden sawhorse and lashed a Sun Gun lamp to it, and pointed the light at the engine bay and got elbows-deep in my car.

I finished up around 23:00 and heard that lovely little coo-ooo of a morning dove (a.k.a. flying rat or common pigeon). I cleaned up my tools and turned my work light up to the old ash tree above the driveway. It was spotted, but too young and dumb to move. I left the light on it and went and grabbed up my trusty scoped Daisy 880 and gave it a match pellet and a full 10 pumps, and said a highly modified version of the sniper's prayer. I went back out and he was still up there. There was no place for a rest and I didn't have time to improvise one, so I took aim offhand. The shot was no good, for there was a twig in the way. I moved a foot or two to the left and it was clear shooting through a 2-3" gap in the sticks & twigs of the tree. Steady. Exhale. Still too shaky, wait. Steady. Exhale. The wind is coming up the street, you can hear it in the leaves' rattling. Now or never. Squeeze...

It dropped like a stone out of the tree.

I walked quickly around the car to see if it was still alive, and to mark the place where it fell. The bird was sitting on the concrete like it had decided to roost there for the night. I went quickly back to the box of pellets on the hood of my wife's car and reloaded. Another full 10 pumps, to be sure not to have to do this twice. By the time I got back down the drive, the pigeon was lying with its head down. I poked it with the muzzle of my pellet rifle. No response. Well, the rifle is ready to go, and there is no need of an animal suffering needlessly anyway. Point-blank to the head for good measure.

I wrapped him up in a plastic bag from the grocery store and left it on the hood of my car. It's the same thing, tonight anyway, as putting it in the freezer. Except that my wife wouldn't ban me from hunting pigeon if I forgot it on my car. Tomorrow it will be a present for one of the other guys at work who is not too proud to eat at the roadkill cafe.

That makes two pigeons so far.

The first was bagged this past Thanksgiving day before we went to visit my family. I was (again) doing something in the garage, with #2 keeping me company, and I heard the cooing of a flying rat. I rushed in and got my rifle, loaded up and bade #2 follow me in silence as I stalked across the front yard until a hole opened up in the tree, maybe 3-4" across. One shot and down he went, flopping around in the front yard. I rushed back to get another pellet and was in the process of reloading when I heard the voice of #2 say "Daddy, Wally got the pigeon." I went back out and sure enough, Wally the black & white neighborhood cat had snagged my bird! I shot the pellet into the earth and blew a crater in the dirt, much to the amazement of #2. Wally was busily enjoying his Thanksgiving feast next to the next door neighbor's driveway as we went inside. Tear jerker: they put Wally down the next day because he was old and sick with the cancer. They thought he had caught the pigeon himself and were glad he got a last Thanksgiving feast. Their christmas reindeer lighted sculptures won't be going up this year because Wally was a fixture under the reindeer, and it made N.S., their youngest daughter, cry to think of the deer without Wally under them.