Garbage Dump Rat Shooting

Concealed Carry.Com ^ | Sep 4, 02 | tanstaafl2

[SLB]

I've heard that one of the great (though perhaps not often bragged about) traditions for shooters used to be shooting rats down at the local/city garbage dump. I never had a chance to try this myself, when I checked around here (Houston, TX and the Ship Channel area) I found plenty of people who knew exactly what I was talking about, but told me that it was a thing of the past. According to them, dumps around here all posted fences and "no trespassing" signs 15-20 years ago in an effort by the cities to avoid potential injury libility issues (from shooters or other people). Can y'all give me an idea how common garbage dump rat shooting was before the liability concerns, and what it was like. Also, how many of you know of dumps wherein one can still pop some rats?

[SLB]

Just surfing through and found this. Wow, talk about bringing back the memories. We not only shot rats, but coyotes, prarie dogs, jack rabbits (they sold for $.25 each to a mink farm). We would have huge almost organized rat shoots. Had to so we didn't shoot the other guys and a few gals that were out there on Saturday nights. I guess now the liablity and the police would go nuts with something like this.

[SLB]

FYI - How many enjoyed this in years gone past?

[RolandBurnam]

doesn't the mafia still shoot rats?

[Jeff Head]

Yep. Rats, Coyotes and some wild dogs. Spotlighted jack rabbits in our hay fields too.

Later, further out west, shooting gophers/prairie dogs was great fun.

Of course this was an addition to the normal, traditional hunting rituals/trips.

Good to cyber-see you bro. Hope all is well with you and yours.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

Here in Alaska, you are more likely to find a Grizzly rooting around the town dump than a rat. In fact, one of our villages recently proposed a plan to charge tourists to visit their dump and watch the bears! (This was an embarrassment even by Alaskan standards, and cooler heads prevailed).

[geege]

Nice life

[johnny7]

When I was in college, me and 2 other guys rented an apartment in a run-down part of town.

After dinner, we would go out on the back porch and shoot rats with pellet guns.

Great fun and the landlord was all for it! These were big, city rats... they didn't kill easy.

[SLB]

Jack rabbits in hay fields! We used to get them right after the bales were stacked. The new growth really lured them in. The mink farm at Laramie would send a reefer truck down and we go our two bits each for jacks. In the days when a box of .22 ammunition cost about $.30 it was a great way for us to make some spending money.

We were all on first name terms with the game warden so there was no problem there. When my folks sold their farm and moved town we lived a block from him. Although we would get tempted by some mule deer every so often.

[Joe Brower]

Well, I'd occasionally bag a rabbit or two on the way out to the local "landfill". Those got taken home. A few rats, yes, but mostly what we have all over the garbage dumps here in Florida are buzzards, both turkey vultures and black buzzards. Tough buggers. And they hiss like lizards when wounded and you move in to finish 'em off.

Lots of seagulls, too -- they'd fill the sky; we called them "dumpster chickens". And white cattle egrets out the wazoo.

Of course, the landfill itself provided a lot of target material. I'll never forget the day a friend and I bagged thirteen (my lucky number!) TV sets in one outing.

Yep, those were the days. If you tried it now, you'd have a sheriff's helicopter on your arse in about fifteen minutes' time.

[Skibane]

I'm guessing that some small-town dumps are still usable for this purpose. Typically, there's not much money in a small town's budget for luxuries like fences and dump attendents — might be worth a drive out of the city.

[taxed2death]

Yup, as a kid I offed more than a few with CB caps in my moms .22

[dix]

Armadillos, down on what is now the site of The Johnson Space Center, and Clear Lake City That was before the Armadillo became a state icon in Texas.

[VadeRetro]

Done it before, forty years ago. Your clothes smell like a garbage dump afterwards.

[Squantos]

Oh yeah..... I can remember as a kid riding in the back of an old pickup with my dads uncles chasing and shooting jackalopes at night in the cut wheat fields in the panhandle of Texas.Of course ya do such these days ya get busted for spotlighting, poaching, lose your vehicle and gun and then we get to the child endangerment fiasco........ahhhh the good old days when socialist revenue based BS laws were just something in Joe McCarthy's mind.

When I was stationed in Italy we used to go to the dump with the carbinairi and machinegun the rats at night (close as I get to a mafia connection).

They brought the ammo of course......:o) Stay Safe !!

[dd5339]

I remember going out to the local dump, (western Kansas) and shooting many rats. The trick that I found was to use my single shot rifle. That kept ammo costs down and increased my kill rate. If I used my semi automatic, I would shoot a brick of ammo and kill very few rats.

A bunch of us went out one night with a jar of cheap peanut butter, smeared it around, turned off all the lights, and sat back real quiet. When we kicked the lights on and opened up, the area was covered with rats. Unfortunately, everyone picked the same rat to shoot! There were half a dozen 22's, a couple of shotguns, 2 38's, and one 30-30! You might call it overkill but we had fun!

Wish that kind of shooting was still around. It made for some great target practice.

Semper Fi

[tet68]

When I was a teenager in the early 60's we would drive over to Canton on Saturday night and shoot at the dump there.
Some times there wasn't room to park there were so many people there. The chicken farms used to dump all kinds of eggs and chicks etc there so the rats were well fed and huge. Most every one used .22s although I remember a time
when mine was broken so I took the 16 ga. , we would all turn off our lights and after a while you could hear the
rats scurrying around down slope. On a 1-2-3 we would all
light up and start shooting. WoW that shot gun was a lot louder than all the rest, but we never got in trouble or saw
the law show up. A great place to bring a date too, most of
the girls I knew , knew how to shoot.
One night my best chum managed to step into one of the holes
that the chicken farms used to dump their eggs and mutant chicks, we made him ride in the back of the truck on the way
home. I mean he was in up to his waist!
Wow, the memories!

[Squantos]

Unfortunately, everyone picked the same rat to shoot! There were half a dozen 22's, a couple of shotguns, 2 38's, and one 30-30! You might call it overkill but we had fun!

LOL !.........And ya could still tell it "was" a rat ?:o)

Great Story !!.......Stay Safe !

[Jagdgewehr]

Shootin' Idaho rockchucks from a movin' John Deere 3020 with a 357 mag. bump.

[Jeff Head]

........ahhhh the good old days when socialist revenue based BS laws were just something in Joe McCarthy's mind.

Amen to that. Although we still get away with most of it out here in Idaho. Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah ... in the rural areas mind you, where rural can be 100 miles from any larger city (and larger here is 5000+ people) ... are still areas where the old ways can still be enjoyed and passed on. It's why I am here.

[harpseal]

I used to do this until I got out of college in 1976. It was a whole lot of fun with a ,22 cal rifle or handgun of the same caliber. Hitting a rat at 50 yards with a handgun is not aneasy shot but it can be done.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

[LTCJ]

Rat shootin'. Yep.

Finally outlawed by politicians. Once again, they put self interest over the needs of the community.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

I grew up in the big city (Manhattan), so no garbage dump shooting readily available. However, we DID have rats. My brother and I would get a few bricks and sit on the fire escape at night- then whenever a rat ran by below (they like to stay right next to the wall) we would drop bricks and make "falling bomb" noises. Pretty funny, and we got a hit every once in awhile. (Although I do recall that I lost my taste for stewed tomatoes right after crushing one of these critters...)

[Restorer]

Growing up in Kansas City we used to go down to the grain elevators at night with flashlights and pellet pistols. Interesting shooting, especially on moving targets.

Didn't smell as bad as the dump. Nobody hassled us.

[Aric2000]

The only time I did anything close to this was when I was based in Turkey. We had a pack of wild dogs, about 30 of the scroungy beasts, and they were terrifying.

They had attacked at least 3 of the Turkish soldiers and killed many of our domesticated dogs. We finally were able to round the little beasties up with bait in our baseball field. Trapped the monsters in there and took turns with the 5 12 gauge shotguns in the armory to take them out.

Loading up and getting rid of the corpses was not fun!!

[Johnny Shear]

Guns and liquor go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Shooting a gun is an exhilarating experience, and anybody who says otherwise is either lying or has never actually pulled a trigger. And drinking can add a lot to the experience. Ted Nugent aside, lots of gun owners enjoy a cold foamer along with their pump-action Mossberg. Playing with guns adds structure to any bender. Sometimes a game of Beer Pong or Hungry, Thirsty Hippos just doesn't generate the level of excitement and sense of purpose that many hard-core partiers crave. Guns do. When you shoot a gun drunk, you get results. Large, gaping results. Whether you are blasting gin bottles off the roof of a junked Camaro or simply getting the cat out of the tree, squeezing the trigger is a wonderful way to cut loose. It is the ultimate in instant gratification. It is American expressionism.

People do stupid things while drunk. We all know that. The advantage of guns is that they throw wide the doors of opportunity for stupid drunken behavior. A drunk staggering down the street is comical. A drunk staggering down the street with a gun is alarming. Oh, the places he might go!

Having access to a weapon while tossing back beers allows drinkers to come up with bold new solutions to problems. Two friends of mine once shared a rat-infested house in Baton Rouge because the rent was cheap. They saved money on an exterminator by simply picking off any rats that wandered into range with a .22-caliber rifle. They'd kick back on the sofa, drink beer, and snuff rodents. It was like living inside a big video game. Instead of just a boring evening at home on the sofa, suddenly the night had purpose. Drinking games arose from the situation, and points and penalties were awarded for hits and misses. But on top of just plain having fun, they got a sense of accomplishment out of it as well. Guns allowed them to take a proactive role with their vermin issues.

One night I was over at my friend Haim's apartment in New Orleans, slamming Jägermeister, a drink that lends itself to certain abuses. This viscous treat is a shortcut to The Zone, and six or eight shots of it will airlift you to a place it might otherwise take a whole long night of methodical drinking to reach. Haim and I were trying to think of something to do, and we ended up deciding to build a homemade silencer for a beat-up old AR-7 rifle he had bought at a pawnshop a few weeks earlier. The gun was only worth about $60 and was ripe for experimentation, and the Germanic liquor added a sense of urgency to the occasion. Silencers are illegal, but Haim had found step-by-step instructions on how to make one in some paramilitary magazine he had bought at a gun show. The magazine was full of neat home projects like that; I imagine that if Martha Stewart lived in a trailer with an abusive husband, this would be the kind of stuff she'd write. And the world would be a better place for it.

The first stop was at a metal shop Haim had access to, where he used the drill press to vent the barrel in several locations. We then brought the gun back to his apartment to finish the job. We slid 10 large washers down along the barrel at even intervals and stuffed the spaces in between with alternating layers of steel wool and cotton wadding. Then we cut a length of PVC pipe and fitted it over the barrel like a sleeve, so that it sat atop the washers. We iced the whole package with duct tape, loaded the magazine with .22-caliber high-velocity LRs, and were good to go.

Haim's place was in a quiet residential neighborhood, an ideal proving ground. If the silencer worked here, it would work anywhere. The first thing I plugged was a jar of cocktail onions I carefully placed atop the mantle in the living room. I put it in a Ziploc baggie, thinking that would be sufficient to contain the breakage. I was wrong. When I popped it, the bottle exploded, scattering shrapnel and cocktail onions indiscriminately throughout the room. But the silencer actually worked. You could hear the action of the rifle kickback and a heavily muffled pop, but that was all. Our experiment was a success! It felt great, and all it took was a little Jägermeister, a survivalist pulp magazine, and some good old Yankee know-how. We celebrated with impromptu ballistics tests on ordinary household items throughout the night.

A drunk with a gun and a mission is a happy drunk. One of the best times I ever had potting with firearms was when a group of friends and I decided to rub out a beaver who had proved himself to be a nuisance. He had dammed a creek on my friend Stuart's farm and flooded the road, and for this he was to die. About eight of us staggered out into the backwoods of Mississippi that night, twisted on rye whisky and horribly armed. We had shotguns, assault rifles, and high-tech pistols. The only things missing were a pitchfork and some burning torches. Memories of what happened down at the creek that night are hazy, but I do remember it began with Dave jumping up and down atop the lodge screaming for the beaver to "show himself," then shoving his 12-gauge into the pile of sticks and mud and pulling the trigger. He backed off, and we emptied everything we had into the dam. Thumps, staccato cracks, whoops, pops, and rebel yells followed. Warren's laser sight swept crazily through the smoke filled air, adding an ominous sense of the surreal to the dark Mississippi night. Finally it was over. Off in the distance an owl hooted. The beaver remains at large.

A gun can make a night of ordinary drinking far more interesting. Nobody is talking to you at the party? Bring a gun! That'll get their attention. Want to kick that guy's ass at the bar but can't? Bring a gun! He might have spent a lifetime mastering the subtleties of aikido, but he's no match for your Glock. Why work out if you can own a gun? As Chris Rock said, "You got pecs? I got Tecs." A bottle will give you the liquid courage to follow your dreams, and your gun will make sure nobody gets in your way.

[AppyPappy]

The neighbors got bent out of shape when I went off on the deer with my shotgun so I started using a pellet gun. I shot 16 deer the first season. Actually, it was probably the same 4 stupid deer. I had to revert to a BB gun when a racoon destroyed the gun. I'm buying me another pellet gun this week.

[Jimmy Valentine]

You may have a great big "Laughing Out Loud" on that one!

[sit-rep]

New one by me babe...never hearda one.

SR

[SLB]

Never heard of shooting rats? Come on! Did I hear you right?

[dd5339]

So let's see, you advocate drinking and shooting. Making an NFA item, (a silencer). By the way, how did you remove the flashing that would have been left inside the barrel of that AR7 after drilling it?

And yet when someone else, (Randy Weaver) is wrongly accused of making a NFA item, (sawed off shotgun cut to legal length) you go into a tirade about how he should have given himself up meekly after they shot his son in the back. I think your phrase was "Right Wing Wackjob who got what was coming to him".

For the record and to get back to a civil discourse, I don't advocate mixing guns and booze. Not a good idea.

Semper Fi

[sit-rep]

Scouts Honor!

After I responded to your flag, I scrolled down and after reading the amount of discourse on the subject, thought to my self...'Damn I lived a sheltered life'!!

Did my share of neighborhood wildlife "poaching" though!! Birds, squirrels, cats and anything else that moved!

SR

[babble-on]

that is a publishable piece of depravity. you a good writer and a scary guy!

[CWRWinger]

About ten years ago, SOF ran an article on this very subject. They carried out a rat kill just like a Special Forces operation, with recon, scouts and high tech 'bells & whistles' pellet gun. They had to post a watch because where they were doing it, it was illegal. I have forgotten the body count from one night, but it was pretty high.

[RightOnline]

"The mink farm at Laramie would send a reefer truck down....."

Ah yes; mink and reefer..............sigh...............the '70's were great......................

[bimbo]

… some great posts, and great memories of a time when America was a free country.

[river rat]

I can't believe that none of you mentioned taking on the huge flocks of crows that always threatened to destroy the crops!

Select a clearing, near their roosting trees - set out a paper Owl, and some paper Crows on the ground...and then make calls like a panicked crow....

With patience and luck - you could get a injured crow tied out on the ground and the flock would go nuts....

Then you stay hunkered down until several were in range - and jump up with your silly little single shot .410 and blast away....

Our little gang of 4 -- all under 11 years old -- thought we were the badest hunters in the valley...

Another memory --- It was possible for a few young boys to walk though town with their BB guns, .22s or .410 --- and not be confronted.
Semper Fi

[SLB]

Also had a good time and made money by shooting sparrows with a BB gun. My dad owned a farm implement business and sold livestock feed and corn seed. the sparrows did not eat so much as to make a difference, they were pests that would roost in storage buildings and really fowl (pun intended) things up with their droppings. I got a penney a piece for them. My dad tells of getting a penney for crow feet in the depression.

Another story about as good as shooting rats was one that my grandfather did. You have to understand he had came over from Russia in 1911, and was one tough old codger. They sold their farm in the early 1950's and moved into town. the city recreation department decided to move some squirrels in for the local park. They found that my grandfather had a nice apple tree right beside his house and they were really chowing down on the apples. He called the city and compalined and they told him there was nothing they could do. He grabbed a Stevens Crackshot .22 some CB or BB caps and headed for the attic. He just sat up there smoking his pipe and popped off the little bushy tails. Needless to say the city fathers did not appreciate it, but they had to catch him in the act and never managed to do so. they had many a meal of squirrel.

[CWRWinger]

My very first kill was a squirrel at 20 feet, with a 7.92 x 57 Mauser. Talk about stopping power!. That attack squirrel didn't advance one mm after being hit with that ball.

[river rat]

"...didn't advance one mm...."

I would imagine the poor little critter was driven back several meters!
I'm calling PETA!!!
Semper Fi

[CWRWinger]

Go ahead and call PETA!! river rat fink!! (LOL)

PETA = People Exterminating Tortuous Animals.