Blasting Barn Birds?

The reason 22 caliber rat shot scatters so bad, is because of the riflings in the barrel. It limits the pattern to about 10 or 15 feet. Most of the time it won't pattern much past 5 or 10 feet.

I went to the local pawn shop and paid $20.00 for an old single shot 22 that had to be 50 years old, and I asked him to find one that had the riflings pretty much shot out of it. When I got it home I took a dowel rod and some emory cloth, on the end of a drill, and finished taking, what little riflings that were left, out of the rifle. Then I polished the barrel on the inside until it resembled a smooth bore shotgun. This is NOT an easy thing to do, and will take several evenings, but when you are done, you will have a Rat shot rifle that will pattern really good out to about 30 ft. This is great for inside of my warehouse, as the ceiling is about 25 ft, and is made out of roofing metal. There is no danger of shooting holes in the roof, and it takes the birds out BIG TIME. (And it is a boat load of fun)
 
back when i lived in New York, the little bastarxx did a lot of damage to buildings.
we used to get some pasty stuff from a mail order place that repels them. in NY we had to apply it every 6 mos because the popupaltion was so great.
out in the countr you probably only need to chase the current group out with one application.
having said that, i vote for trapping them alive and then letting em go one at a time, like skeet! lots of fun and challenging too!
just my 2 cents
tom
 
Wild Bill - Obliterating the riflings of a pistol to create a smoothbore puts it in the 'Any Other Weapon' class of firearms according to the ATF/NFA. To be legal, you need a tax stamp.
 
Failure!..

..So far.

I got some .22 shot shells, tested them at ~15 feet on a left-over piece of barn tin. It scored it a bit but didn't puncture; and that's with no wood in the way. But the poster above was right: the semi-auto Win-190 only likes one at a time (which is kind of a bitch if you know this gun). Getting the spent shells out is tricky. And after several jams, when they had been loading with relative ease, I had to poke a spent shell out of the barrell with a cleaning rod. It had just stuck there.

I counted 5 birds, so it's a small brood. I'm heading out in moments to try again, with the other-half riding flashlight.

WhooHoo!
 
Sidetracked

Wild Bill - Obliterating the riflings of a pistol to create a smoothbore puts it in the 'Any Other Weapon' class of firearms according to the ATF/NFA. To be legal, you need a tax stamp.

He did it to a rifle, not a pistol. As long as the barrel is over 18" it is perfectly legal.
 
Wild Bill - Obliterating the riflings of a pistol to create a smoothbore puts it in the 'Any Other Weapon' class of firearms according to the ATF/NFA. To be legal, you need a tax stamp.

He did it to a rifle, not a pistol. As long as the barrel is over 18" it is perfectly legal.
Click to expand...

:eek: I swear I read 'revolver' in there. He does clearly state it was a rifle, though. :eek:

I guess I should stop multi-tasking while reading posts.
 
.22 Birdshot vs. Salt

Grab some table salt, sneak out to the barn at night, then sprinkle it on the bird's tail. It is just as effective as .22 birdshot and much cheaper.
 
Roy, I would suggest you ask the pigeons I killed as a kid with .22 birdshot.... ooops you can't, they are all died when shot.
Brent
 
Not sure if it's a myth or not, an old farmer told me once.....put out plenty of dry rice and water, birds eat the rice, it swells up inside their stomach and digestive system....dead bird.
 
trap vs holes in the roof

We use to trap those sky rats vs blasting holes in the roof. Other times as kids we could wait outside and pick them off coming and going but the ultimate was traps. One of the side benefits was we could either kill them in the trap or do some selective release with a few shotgunner s near by for practice.
 
Pigeon solutions that have worked for others.

Feed them Rock Salt in a non rusting container they can easily feed out of.They eat it for grit and it kills them.It will not hurt anything else or anything that eats their bodies.

Cheap electric fencing wire spaced so their feet cannot reach their roosting places.

Entrance and exits made hinged or removable for access and covered by wire.

I have heard of using a timer hooked to a loud boom box used in the country.They won't roost where they ain't safe.

I see you have closed in some of the Barn with glass.Some old barns have started rotting after standing for a century or more due to heat,moister and condensation in hot weather.Metal buildings will rust worse.Moisture will also make the underside of the roof rust worse.You are caught between moisture induced rust and manure rust.The ammonia fumes given off by bird manure and livestock urine is very corrosive.My Miniature Jack that I had for years was completely housebroke!alfred
 
Alfred, I don't agree with the boom box method. Over time, birds can grow accustomed to some of the loudest things imagineable. I have seen birds roost in jet engine test chambers. Once they realise the noise isn't a threat... they don't care; no matter how loud it is.

His best bet is still just to eliminate the problem ;), and prevent it from happening again.
 
re: hogdogs

Take a piece of cardboard and place it fifty feet from the muzzle of a .22 rimfire rifle. Load a round of birdshot and aim for the middle of it. Let me know what kind of pattern you get. If the cardboard is thick, count how many pellets exit the backside.
 
Tested against a sheet of tin at ~15 feet, the pattern was ~10 inches across and mostly round, with several strays far outside the group. The tin dimpled but none broke through. The gun is a twitchy win190, so it's load one in the mag, wrestle it into the tube, fire, grab the lever and shake the gun until it falls out, rinse, lather, repeat. It might be quicker to just swing the gun by the barrel at them--if they weren't 15-feet up.

I've sealed all openings with chicken wire. I need the ventilation, so any other method is no good. If they figure a way to fly out the cupola (or if they fit), I'll try the lethargic blasting .22 angle again, or the wait-n-blast outside with a 12ga. Flushing them out is all but impossible; they just fly back and forth along the peak. I'm reluctant to use poison, as I've got dogs and cats that will eat anything and get into everything. I may try traps. Otherwise, they get to starve.
 
Please read the last two paragraphs!

I agree on the noise and have seen them roost in many noisy and lit places.This is why I put down "Heard" on that one.The wires worked.The salt works on most any large bird if they will eat it.I had a friend loose his show Bantams when his small children fed it to his birds to "help daddy feed the chickens".

The Rock salt will poison them and will hurt none of your animals who eat it or eat the birds.Now Doves will eat this too,so place it in pigeon spots.A little feed scattered around and in it will attract them.A little as you want the salt eaten.

When cleaning up the mess,please wear a mask and only remove your clothes and mask when well wet in a shower.Wash you clothes immediately.Treat it like a biological agent as it may well be.I had a coworker and friend who contacted a illness most likely from the dust off of pigeon manure.He almost died and was off from work for many months.A long drawn out treatment with near lethal drug levels was the only cure a that time.:eek:

This is also found in Turkey manure including wild Turkeys he was told.:eek:alfred
 
Rocksalt, poison, BB guns, traps...LoL. This is the first GUN enthusiast website that i've been on where people actually suggest using means other than guns

I need just the slightest excuse to shoot :cool:
 
50 feet? I never got a fifty foot shot off inside the barns... 30 feet MAYBE. But I do assure you they were .22 shot shells made around 1978-82...
Brent
 
One time as a kid my cousin and i took a couple of smoke bombs and flushed them out and my uncle and grandpa stood out the front with shotguns... scary for us but thats what happens.. we had to move all the hay out... but was worth it cause we didint have to clean any more pigon crap off the tractor!!!!
 
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