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THE BIG ONE THAT DIDN'T GET AWAYTRAPPED LIKE A RATTHE BUCKET AND ANTI-FREEZE TRICK FROM SWEDENPRO RAT SHOOTING IN A FOOD FACTORY
MY OWN PRIVATE RAT WAR
COMPETITIVE RAT HUNTING -- INCLUDING RAT POLO
RAT FISHING IN BALTIMORE
THE ERATICATOR AND HIS GUNSNEIGHBORS' CATS V. RAT
NEIGHBORS' CATS V. RATCANADIAN DAD'S RAT HUNTING NOSTALGIA
RAT STEALS BREAD ON RATCAM1HAVE SOMETHING TO SUBMIT?
SUBMISSIONS
THE BIG ONE THAT DIDN'T GET AWAY
Though the original version of this tale was likely better written and more dramatic, it was lost in an electrical snafu. I wanted to get this photo up and a little story of the hunt to go with it:
I had been shooting and killing rats out of the tree in the back yard with great success, the Beeman R9 was a joy to use, it almost made it too easy to drop these bastards. The challenge largely became where to place the shot.
I won't say it was boring, but it was systematic. One after another, I dropped them from the tree to the ground, picked them up with a grabber, hung them by their tail in front of a ruler I had mounted on the back porch, photographed them, and stored them away for lizard food (see previous Eraticator article). These rats averaged about 12" long from head to tail, medium size for a roof rat, though small for a norway rat. Either way, the lizard thought they were good eating.
Then one night it all changed. While sitting in bed talking to my girlfriend, I saw what looked at first like a baby possum shoot down the tree trunk outside. He grabbed a whole doughnut that had been at the bait station and ran back up the tree. Ran like a rat, not lumbered like a possum. And he was dark gray, light like a possum.
I knew there were possums around, and the dogs would routinely tree them, but I was pretty sure this was a big rat, bigger than any I had seen before around here. This isn't an urban setting where there is trash galore and they grow big as dogs. Like I said, average size was about a foot long, head to tail.
I started stalking this "king rat," baiting the station every night and waiting by the bedroom window to take my shot. The first few nights, the possum who we named "Henry" sauntered down the tree trunk and made off with whatever I had left out there, making me wonder if I had imagined the huge rat. But on the third night, my suspicions were confirmed as the guest of honor showed. As he made his way down the tree trunk warily, I marveled at his size. He was round and fat, like an overstuffed dufflebag, and beady eyed, like a Beverly Hills chihuahua. I started to cock my rifle. The dogs, knowing there was action on it's way, began barking. The rat spooked and ran back up the tree. He disappeared into the upper canopy, a missed opportunity.
I cursed my luck and began obsessively plotting the shot. I went on line and researched the cost of having a rat mounted by a taxidermist. Amidst protests from my girlfriend, I set up a sniper camp in our bedroom, waiting for his return. Two nights later I got my chance.
He came down the tree trunk following the smell of peanut butter. I calmed the dogs, cocked the gun and lined up a shot in a place where I wouldn't damage his pelt, down behind his right ear. I sqeezed the trigger and saw the big fella jump. I calmly walked outside, leaving the anxious dogs in the bedroom (where they drove my girlfriend crazy with their barking and whining) and searched the ground with my flashlight. I saw no trace of him. I looked at the tree trunk where I had shot him and though I found a fresh hole in the bark, I found no sign of blood. Unbelievably, I seemed I had missed. I went to sleep puzzled.
The next morning I took some shots at a target with the R9 and found it missed the mark consistently about 3/4" up and to the right! Somehow the scope had been knocked out of alignment, likely by the housekeeper. How frustrating! I realigned the scope and hoped he wouldn't be too scared to come back.
I began waiting at night, and after almost a week he showed up again. Ever so carefull and cautious. He darted down the branch and back up quickly. He came down again and took a bite of the bait. I cocked my gun. He looked up at the click of the breech closing and darted back up the tree. I quieted the dogs and took up my post. After a few more minutes, he came partly into view. Though his head and body were mostly obscured by foliage I was anxious that some mishap would sabotage this effort, so I took the first open shot I had. Aiming for his neck on the right side, up towards the base of his skull, I squeezed the trigger.
Through the scope I saw him fall. I put down the rifle and I ran outside to investigate.
Lying on the ground was a rat so much bigger than what I was used to that I stopped in my tracks. As I picked him up with the grabber, his weight was considerable. I hung him by his tail to measure him and he checked in at a whopping 17.5 inches! A photo was clearly needed to prove such a rat tale.
After cleaning up the scene of the crime, I wondered what would be next.
I went inside and went to sleep, feeling like the world was a slightly better place.
-The Eraticator
TRAPPED LIKE A RAT
I was not surprised that I shared my back yard with a few rats. Now and then I would see one flash past the spilled seed on the ground under my bird feeder or hear the thumping of rodent love in the attic. It was easy to poison the attic rats but I was willing to live and let live if they stayed in the yard. This arrangement went on well for a few years.
In January of 2001 I used my income tax refund to fence the back yard. A nice seven-foot high wooden fence to deter the neighbor's cats and the stray cats from terrorizing the song birds feeding back there. Little did I suspect that I was doing a great favor to all ratkind. In hindsight, it does not take a genius to forecast unlimited feed plus no cats would equal more rats.
One July evening while stargazing through my telescope in the back yard I heard a commotion in the holly bushes that line the fence. The racket went on and on and was obviously being created by more than one creature. Upon inspection with a flashlight I observed several rats navigating the branches of the holly with the agility of gray squirrels. Rats, as disgusting as they are, really don't freak me out. It was the number of them that drove me to buy two standard, spring-loaded, neck breaking, Victor rat traps.
I placed one trap under the holly bushes and one on the metal awning above the back door, both loaded with juicy walnut meat. I placed both traps so they would be visible from a window. With binoculars I could check the traps from inside the house.
Night 1. I caught a rat under the bushes every twenty minutes for two hours. Big ones!
Night 2. Caught my first "awning" rat and two more "bush" rats.
Night 3. Still catching BIG rats. Maybe I should start taking pictures.
Rat #8
Rat #9
Nights 4 through 7. The rats are gradually getting smaller. Also caught two at a time twice. Litter mates forced into the world early due to the probable death of momma rat on a previous night.
Rat #14
Rats #15 & 16
Rat #17
After a week the action dropped off. I still saw a rat here and there but they would not go near the traps. Once I forgot to spring the traps before bedtime and caught two blue jays the next morning. Bummer!
Next summer, if the rats invade again, I am going to try my skill with a blowgun. I invested in a .62 caliber blowgun that is 8 feet long. It shoots 10 inch bamboo darts for the outdoor rats and is completely silent. My old .40 caliber blowgun does not have the firepower to kill even a mouse but is quite accurate. I plan to use the .62 in the attic with 8 inch wire darts. My whole attic is wood. The plan is to pin the rats to a wooden surface and prevent them from escaping down the walls before they expire. Outdoors I plan to use the bamboo darts with broadheads since it does not matter if they bleed out where I can clean up with a water hose.
If I have any success with the blowgun you can bet I will start taking photos from the start so I can post them on RATKILL.COM!
Joey
THE BUCKET AND ANTI-FREEZE TRICK FROM SWEDEN
Hi out there!
Want you to know about my way to kill rats. I use a bucket half filled with a mix of water and glycol ( automobile-antifreeze), 10 liters of water to 1/2 liter of glycol. The glycol lets the rats to die by drowning, they canīt swim in the mix.
A piece of wood acts as a "ladder" up to the little cheese thats lures the rat to take a forced dive into the water. Enclosed is a drawing of how it works. My score for a week was 57 rats. This was in an old cottage here in Sweden. This action is known as illegal hunting by the law in Sweden, so I had to stop. Itīs very very effective anyway!
The piece where the cheese is placed is laying on the edges of the bucket in such a way that it tilts when rats go out for the cheese, which by the way is fastened with a nail.
Sorry to say Iīm not an artist, but I hope you understand the picture. :-)
PS: Best regards from Sweden...
Lennart S.
PRO RAT SHOOTING IN A FOOD FACTORY
Alright, let's see....where to begin, I guess that I should start off by saying that I'm a HACCP administrator that oversee's a pest control program in a food processing facility.
I'm dealing with a unique type of situation in that the rats that I've had to deal with are somewhat bigger and stronger than the ordinary type rats since they are stealing and eating a formula mix that was developed to accelerate and incite better growth in domestic live stock within the food processing industries.
Aside from the ordinary rat traps that are in common use with us' I've had to resort to direct extermination via way of an airrifle to insure a passing inspection with the USDA and the FDA, as it stands' one live rodent within the facilities can result in the operation being shut down, so pest elimination is very serious with us.
At present I am using an RWS Model 34 rifle in 22 caliber equipped with a low level light (dusk / dawn) scope with an illuminated reticle. This set up assisted with a six cell maglite with a krypton bulb and a red lens filter so as not to spook the quarry seems to work rather well.
We're not allowed to use poisons or residual type toxins within the food processing areas of the plant' so it often becomes necessary to spend a couple of nights a week stalking and hunting rodents through out the property on a routine basis since we never know when we're going to receive a surprise visit from the governing agencys that we're under.
A couple of neat tricks that I've come to use that are good at producing results' involve the use of teargas in the septic drains to "flush" them out (no pun intended), this often involves throwing a couple of cans of mace or red pepper spray into a large culvert or waste line and illuminating the canister with a flashlight and simply puncturing the unit(s) with a pellet from my airgun.
As the saying goes "blind mice...see how they run" , this in it's self assists you in that it allows you more time to reload and fire since they are not able to seek cover and concealment....so time is on your side.
Another tactic that finds favor with me is the use of invisible "ultra-violet" thief detection powder that is non-toxic, odorless and easy to apply, just spread some along the walls in problem areas where it may be hard too see in the dark and position several portable black lights in proximately to the powders and wait for them to crawl through the inert "taggent", you now have an illuminated target.
I'm also starting to work with Infra-red night vision scopes equipped with a laser to target problems, I've found that a bright white light type of dot (HOT DOT) works better through the scope and isn't as easily absorbed in the rodent's coat of fur which can make it difficult for shots involving the naked eyes or when you need to shoot on the run.
Anyway, these are some of the tactic that I'm presently using with good success, I hope that you can put them to good use also.
With Best Regards,
John G.
MY OWN PRIVATE RAT WAR
I have my own rat tale to tell, which ended in a victory. I didn't kill it though. But I used a sort of "guerilla" type war tactics on the son of a bitch of a kangaroo rat. I don't know exactly how big this damn animal was but he was at least the size of my camcorder. This war started as the winter cold begin to settle in in Dallas, Tx.
My family and I live in an apartment. Our unit is on the end, so we have an alley on one end. During the cold nights we started to hear a faint scurrying around between the walls and this sound over a few weeks started to increase in volume. The sound of gnawing was added to the suspicious noise.
We knew it was a rodent of some sort. But we did not want to mention the "R" word. One night the noise became so intense we were about to go mad, and yes scared too. Let's be honest, rats are kind of scary. We have two children too. The youngest is only one year. We fear these relentless rats could bite our kids.
Well, I noticed that the hole for the sink drain pipe had been eaten around the pipe, so a rodent could gain access. I plugged it up with spray foam. Just a few days later, the damn rat chew a new hole in a fraction of the time! Not much larger that a dollar coin! I decided that instead of plugging it up, it would set traps under the sink and put the camcorder under the sink as well to see just what we are dealing with. Unfortunately, I could not find rat size mouse traps. In fact, I could find any rat traps! The darn things were sold out everywhere. I got some sticky paper, but that was useless. Rat pellets seemed to be useless. As the camcorder captured, this was a rat dodging sticky paper like a he's been doing it for years. He didn't even touch the pellets. BUT, the peanut butter coated mouse traps were irresistible! He moved ever so carefully toward the treat to get a lick and after a few successful lick a slight nibble triggered off a ! SNAP !. Unfortunately, this kangaroo was just to big to get caught by the little trap and in a panic scurried up the drain pipe and out from the new hole whence it came.
The next day, I played the recording to discover the size and intellect of this creature from hell. I didn't want this monster in the apartment any more. I plugged up the hole. But what I didn't expect the following to happen. As I sprayed the foam into the hole much of the foam must have dripped down from between the walls. The hole was plugged and I went the bed.
It takes a few hours for urethane foam to dry as it expands slowly at the same time. Well, this rat started back for the hole and as it approached got that semi-dry urethane foam all over him (assuming). I could there the frustration of him rubbing against the walls to get the stuff off. But the good news is urethane foam DOESN'T COME OFF!! with out chemicals.
I suspect that this rat wore a urethane foam jacket for the rest of the winter. And by the way, I didn't have a rat problem for the rest of the winter either.
-Chuck G.
COMPETITIVE RAT HUNTING -- INCLUDING RAT POLO
How strange that I found your site. I was a very serious rat hunter for several years. We in fact THOUGHT we invented it. We started with pellet guns, but quickly learned that they were inefficient. One night I dropped my speed loader down a drain, so I was forced to improvise. I picked up an old broken axe handle and went to town. I had a much better kill ratio. We had a group of four of us that hunted almost daily. We had many variations of the hunt. Here are a just a few excerpts from our several hundred outings.
Equipment: Our crew ended up going with new high quality axe handles. We tightly wrapped duct tape over the end, and put in several (read 10 or so) nails that protruded through the tape. We wore only tee shirts and shorts, regardless of the weather, and had yellow miners hats with lights on them. We also for a period had smoke bombs taped to the sides of our helmets. This was to smoke a rat out of a hole. (It did work at least once) We also commissioned a special vehicle that we called the danger van. The Danger van had two ill-fitting Capt. seats upfront, a three place, free floating living room coach in the rear, and a nice hanging hammock as well. The van was not one of the present day soccer mom types, but more a 3/4 ton work van that came from a carpet store. It was "Royal Blue" and quite abused and damaged. Just the way we liked it. We always traveled with a red Coleman mini-igloo, which we occasionally used to capture a live rat. When we were over anxious to kill, we would open the big sliding door, and drive down "live" alleys looking for vermin. Much time we would play rat polo from the van. No confirmed kills came from this tactic.
In our game it was all about confirmed kills. A rat that crawled away was not a dead rat and did not count for shit. You had to present the rat to the rest of the group for confirmation. I ended my career with 54 confirmed kills. I think I was either number one, or number two in our group. We did all our hunting in the old 14th street section of Washington D.C.
Two cool stories that I will quickly convey.
First of all rats jump, and jump far. At one of our hunting grounds there was a long alley that ended with 5 steps going down into the back of a large restaurant kitchen. All along the long alley were dumpsters full of food products. We worked as a team. There was a "shaker" he used his axe to systematically whack all of the cans from the far end towards the steps. There was a "spotter". This guy's job was to spot rats on the run, to prepare the "batter" The batter would stand on the bottom of the five steps, and like a baseball batter, get ready to swing. The rats, trying to get to their hole at the bottom of the steps would fly at the batter, not unlike a pitch to a batter. It was real excitement. It was also hard as hell. There were very few confirmed kills from the "Batter's Cage" You had to have big balls to be the batter, as sometimes several rats at once would come flying at you, chest high.
My last kill.
One night I was out for a nice dinner with some girls, and one of my old rat hunting buddies. Somehow the topic of Rat Hunting came up. The girls did not believe us that we rat hunted. So after dinner we took them by one of our hunting grounds. Sure to form the rats were out in force. I had a quarter full Miller light bottle in my hand, when I saw a rat sitting at the corner of a building, looking right at us. With little hesitation, I hurled the beer bottle a good 35 feet and killed the little vermin on the spot. I couldn't do it again in 100 years, but it was classic. I high fived my buddy that was with, we both got out to confirm the kill, and called it a night. Truly classic. I ended my career on that throw.
Well that's my story.
Thanks for your site.
/bmw
RATFISHING IN BALTIMORE
hello from east baltimore,
love your site. are you familiar with the popular east baltimore sport of rat fishing? for years, baltimore sportsmen have enjoyed hooking rats with fishing tackle, reelin' 'em in and clobbering them with a baseball bat.
there isn't a lot written about rat fishing that i know of. i have been told by some of the locals that it's been going on since at least the 1930's. basically you use regular fishing gear, small hooks are preferred. you bait the hook, and when the rat takes the bait you yank hard to set the hook. then you reel them in and finish them off.
a now defunct neighborhood bar even had an annual tournament. the bar that held the tournament was called the yellow rose. it was just an ordinary corner bar, and the tournament started out as a word of mouth, neighborhood thing in the late 80's. the last one that i know of was in '94. it got bigger than the bar owners could deal with. tv satellite trucks, cops directing traffic, peta protesters, it was a mess. they even had a tv crew from australia.
the documentary film, the tournament, was featured at microcinefest, an annual independent film festival here in baltimore. check out information on the documentary film here: www.bcpl.net/~bfink/microcinefest/mcf98/tournament.html
happy hunting!
harry
THE ERATICATOR AND HIS GUNS
it's been a year now that i've been at it, and it seems like such a short while ago that i spotted the first two fat rats in the peach tree that hangs over from my neighbors yard. it was dusk and they were unashamedly eating a big peach while my dog barked at them with no effect. being quick minded and prone to mischief, i picked up the nearest appropriate tool and dispersed them with a hex nut from my wrist rocket. i vowed then to make war in all the ways possible, traps, guns, and possibly explosives.
i knew the first step was to arm myself. i got on the internet and bought a cheap chinese air rifle, large bore hollowpoint pellets, and a barrel mounted flashlight. the gun was really loud, and not very accurate,
let me digress briefly to say the i consider myself an environmentalist, an animal lover, and also a vicious opponent to my enemies. to feel good about putting these little bastards out to the big dump in the sky, i needed a clean up plan. i didn't like the idea of hunting for sport, and i didn't want the dog to be eating these dead rats, and i didn't want a yard full of dead rats.
enter the dragon.
my friend has a lizard. a water monitor. a big lizard. the closest living relative to the komodo dragon. her name is coochie. she weighs about 45 pounds now, and may hit 80 when she fills out. she eats rats. he buys them bulk from a place in fresno called rat alley. they ship him 60 lbs of frozen, dead rats. so i figured, he needs rats, i got rats, he gets my dead rats. problem solved.
anyhow, i would sit out on the porch in the dark and wait until i heard motion above, as quietly as i could cock and load the gun, flip on the barrel light and go into action. i pulled about four rats total out of the upper canopy that way, but there were a lot of missed shots on the fast moving grey targets, and at 3 a.m, i wanted a "one shot, one kill" rule in effect, as my neighbors, though not totally unused to the sound of gunshots at night, would probably be more comfortable if the sound wasn't coming from my backyard. seeking better odds, i moved to a different set up, i built a pellet trap on a low branch of the tree outside my back porch to prevent missed shots from breaking any neighboring windows. then i started baiting the spot, with peanut butter, bananas, honey, whatever. i would leave the window to the door of the porch open and glance out my bedroom window at the baited perch form time to time when we watched movies at night. when i saw one, i would get up, close the dog in the bedroom, cock the rifle, (at which point the dog would start barking) and creep to the back door for what was most commonly an easy 10 foot shot. i hit around 20 rats this way.
however, it presented some problems. the inaccuracy of the gun still resulted in many injured rats that needed a coup de grâce, thus ruining my "one shot, one kill" target of operational procedure. also, as rats are fairly hardy creatures, many would scurry off into the ivy to die of their gut wounds and i would be unable to recover the bodies, which i felt i should do for the reasons i mentioned before. out of the approximately 20 that i hit, i recovered 14, some with the flashlight and some with the dog
so just when i should have been saving money, i invested. making friends with an airgun emporium founded by men with similar rodent problems, i talked tech and got the answers i needed from www.straightshooters.com ladies and gentlemen, the beeman R9, it's everything
the great rat hunter could ask for. it has a low light scope that can zoom in to 12x magnification and it's accuracy, well let me talk for a second about our first date.
i hadn't tuned the scope in yet, and just had the beeman out of the box when the first opportunity arose: from my bedroom, taking advantage of the new scope, i targeted a rat who had come down for a bite of french roll. not sure of the scope's calibration, i aimed for right behind his shoulder. i squeezed the trigger and he dropped. unfortunately the dog got to him first and when i came out, she was shaking him. she dropped him when i told her to, so i have no way of knowing, but my suspicion is that he was done ticking pretty quick, judging from the size of the exit wound.
after that, i spent some time during the day practicing so i could go for some more accurate shot placements in the coming weeknights. well, the first member of the gray scourge to step into my field of vision ended up looking a little big headed. from my bedroom sniper post, about 12 yards away from the bait roost, i put a crosman premier domed pellet in the middle of his forehead. he fell like a rock. when i recovered him, i noted that his little eyes were bugged out (i assume to make room for the pellet, as there was no exit wound). he had a small trickle of blood coming out of his right ear and what looked like a bindi dot where the pellet had punched through his forehead.
the next three were taken over the course of a week when time allowed me to wait up and watch the roost. each is a headshot, one shot, one kill. each one hit the ground dead, like a tiny sack of flour, without so much as a twitch.
number two shows more blood from the behind the ear exit wound....
number three shows a great deal of blood from the mouth....
number four shows little to no blood, the shot placed inside his right ear....
i will continue to keep you updated.
my name? that's not really important.
just call me the eraticator.
NEIGHBORS' CATS V. RAT
we received the following series of frantic emails from steve, one of our neighbors, a few nights back....
time: 2:37 a.m.
subject: are you awake...
right now? Come over quick, my cats are hunting a big ass rat in my house, oh they got it! Come over
time: 2:46 a.m.
never mind
wow, that was animal kingdom mixed with Danish modern furniture as obstacles. Two cats, one 4" rat, and a 31 year man with a yellow broom wearing worn out Calvin Klein underwear - all going at it for 12 minutes at 2:42 am. I will show you the "end"results tomorrow. Looks like one of yours
time: 9:46 a.m.
subject: re: never mind
want to see it? It's pretty big. I'm telling you, when you leave on your next vacation, put the dogs in a kennel for a week and I'll come over with the two cats and we will differently get rid of a few. You may lose a vase or a picture frame, small stuff like that, but it's worth it.
PHOTOS: NEIGHBORS' CATS V. RAT
never holding back on it's coverage RATKILL.com dispatched a photographer to the scene of the earlier cats v. rat incident.
steve told him: "i kill rats the old fashion way... with cats."
CANADIAN DAD'S RAT HUNTING NOSTALGIA
one winter some years ago, when we kept laying hens, a colony of rats moved into the hen house. they tunneled under the floor where it must have been relatively warm during our long, cold quebec winters.
they fed well on the laying mash and milk rinsings we fed the chickens.
shooting rats became my winter sport. i got 17 one winter with my single-shot, lever action .22 carbine. i was elated with every kill.
one got into the house one night. after a frantic chase i cornered it in the bedroom. my wife was freaking out on the bed, screaming, as i slammed it again and again with a broom, all the while yelling "die! die!"
our youngest son, then a strapping teenager, came racing downstairs. he thought i was beating his mother or something equally weird.
what a night. fecking rats. i hate them. i don't much like mice, either.
another time, when all four sons still lived at home, we were sitting around the kitchen table in our log cabin -- we homesteaded in canada beginning in 1972 and built all of our buildings (house, barn, sugarhouse, bakery).
a mouse came across the kitchen floor, then stopped and looked at us. i said, 'watch this.'
i slipped out my knife -- i have always carried some kind of knife -- pen knife, belt knife, pig sticker -- and whipped it at the tiny mouse. it pinned it to the pine board flooring and it died instantly.
my kids were in awe. my wife was unhappy with the dead bleeding mouse in her kitchen and the new knife wound in the flooring. i felt pretty good about the whole thing and didn't let on to the extent of my surprise. i disposed of the mouse -- i think i fed it to the porch cat -- cleansed my knife, and accepted adulation and high praise...always nice to be a hero to your kids.
yours for plugging more rodents,
john mahoney
log cabin chronicles
www.tomifobia.com
PHOTOS: RAT STEALS BREAD ON RATCAM1
a kind soul sent us these frames from RATCAM1, showing why it is important to bait your trap properly. within minutes of putting out the bait, a rat made off with all the goods -- in this case peanut butter on top of a piece of sourdough. a fan pointed out that if you use bread, you should put peanut butter on both sides so the bread can't be dragged off.
