Rats!

Pahoo said:
This is one of those questions when asked to the local authority, You are likely, to get a "NO" answer. Now then, if one of those big rats attack you, that's a different subject. You have to be sensitive about your "living" environment/neighbors. I live in a small river town, know all my neighbors well and .22 cal. and pellet shots, are quite common. All is well, in the neighborhood. ...... ;)

With all due respect, are you sure these are City-Bred Rats rather than water-bred, Muskrats ???

Be Safe !!!
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You're correct on that. I doubt I could even use an air rifle where I live, but I ask because it's more likely as a gun owner to carry for protection, and I'm curious if an animal threatens you, can a person defend themselves in that situation. In my state I'm pretty sure it's a no.....
 
That would be a better question; Maybe ???

You're correct on that. I doubt I could even use an air rifle where I live,
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Don't be so sure as where I live, a pellet gun may be used but not anything beyond that. However, condo rules may not allow. We do have a "city" ordnance that if an unleashed dog is threatening you, you can legally shoot it but man, you are really going to have to show justification. !!!!!

Be Safe !!!
 
Massachusetts? Yeah, the Rats probably have more rights than a gun owner! :D

I use an old scoped .22 bolt action Glenfield / Marlin for woodchucks, Rats, squirrels, etc. around my rural place, but I'm not in Massachusetts. Carry pepper spray if legal, squirt those nasty vermin with a dose of love! :D
 
In the past I have used a very discreet .22 cal round.....called a 22B I think. They have no powder but the .22 BB is propelled by only the rimfire charge. Very effective at short ranges. They do crack a bit but not like a regular .22. They might be worth looking into.
 
pellet

lung shot. Lady in Northern California wanted to chase the pesky deer from her flower garden. She used a pellet rifle and did a lung shot. Deer calmly walked away and layed down. Then it died. Pellet in the lungs (or through the rat's lungs) means it'll go away and die somewhere else.
 
Since the op is living in a city condo there's a good chance they have a pest control company contract, complain to the superintendent or whatever they call themselves and it'll probably get taken care of without any effort on your part.
 
Double K said:
Since the op is living in a city condo there's a good chance they have a pest control company contract, complain to the superintendent or whatever they call themselves and it'll probably get taken care of without any effort on your part.
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I'll probably need to go that route. People sometimes trespass on the property and sleep on the floor of the gazebo. I can't imagine how they do it with rats making the rounds on the property. It freaks me out to think of going to my car and bumping into one of those things.
 
Given that I've killed thousands of prairie dogs with 22lr ..... I don't see why that would not do for a rat .... that said, the 36gr hollow points work better in prairie dogs than the 40gr round nosed bullets, IME.
 
I was just watching a video of someone with pest control shooting them with a .22 and it seemed surprisingly ineffective in that it took a while for them to die and wasn't instant.
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Have you hunted or watched hunting videos before?

1. A shot can be instantly fatal (destroy the brain) and not cause instant cessation of movement. In fact, brain shots very often result in rather violent thrashing behavior as the body reacts to the electrical signals being sent out randomly by the destroyed brain. It can be disturbing for someone who doesn't understand what's going on.

2. Body shots often don't result in instant death. The typical hunting aim point in the shoulder area of an animal (it varies somewhat from one species to another), if hit properly, cause fatal damage to the heart and lungs, but the animal may take several seconds to expire--sometimes running a significant distance before collapsing.

In other words, one can't expect instant and total cessation of movement, even from a properly placed, fatal shot.
 
As a kid, I always sat at a local dump in the evening and eradicated rats with a .22 LR, Winchester Model 69A rifle. Sixty-three years later, it still shoots as well as an Anschutz that I have. But those days are gone; I haven't seen a rat in 50 years. Until one day when my wife looked to the kitchen window and saw one scurrying between bread below the bird feeder and a row of ground-cover shrubbery 10 yards away. We're rural but in development of homes on one-acre lots. The rat then moved to the property line where I use grass clippings as ground cover, and was evident by the moving mass of grass. I slowly approached the spot and at 10 yards or so, it stood up to look at me and I blasted it with a handload of #7-1/2 shot in a .44 Mag Speer shot capsule from my Ruger Super Redhawk. Dead as a doornail. Rather large so searched on Goggle and it matched the description of a Norwegian rat Probably made it's way from a nearby farm.
But why was it moving back and forth from the bird seed to the shrubs? I set a few mouse traps and over the next few days trapped 3 babies Mom had been feeding in the shrubs. No rats seen since.
 
Where is the problem ??

As a kid, I always sat at a local dump in the evening and eradicated rats with a .22 LR, Winchester Model 69A rifle.
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Well, as a kid, during my BG era; (Before Guns) we would organize a group kids, go down to the dump and kill rats with sticks/saplings. They were not that hard to kill. ..... ;)

In regards to .22, at a moderate range and shot placement, I have never seen a rat that could not be killed with a .22-Short. Lately, I would say the same for the use of a "modern pellet" gun. I have killed squirrels with a .17 Pump up, pellet pistol at 25yds. ..... ;)

This thread is going to die soon, so I would ask; Specifically, what problems are you having with Rats? I understand that they "can" carry deceases but like most rodents/mammals they are only looking for three things;

1) Something to eat.
2) Shelter.
3) Someone to mate with.


Be Safe !!!
 
".....so I would ask; Specifically, what problems are you having with Rats? I understand that they "can" carry deceases but like most rodents/mammals they are only looking for three things;"

In my youth, and even to this day, the answers would have been/are:

1) Something to eat.- not in my house
2) Shelter.- not in my house
3) Someone to mate with.-not likely someone in my house

In my youth, quite often we battled the arrival of rats in the basement with traps. When the community dump was positioned 5 miles out of town, we still had rats in town. But the dump had BIG rats and we high-schoolers would often sit on the front fenders of cars our friends were allowed to drive, and blast rats with shotguns as we drove through the dump at night.
 
So as discussed earlier the op is going to let a pest control company solve the issue because he lives in a townhome in the city of Boston, not the place you would want to be shooting any gun including a pellet gun and lets get real for a moment, rats pose no real threat to a person walking across a parking lot at night other than on an emotional level.

For the record, I own a pest control and and shoot vermin pretty often in fact I shot 4 prairie dogs this morning with my Diana Outlaw .177 pcp air rifle, none were head shots, they all died within 2-3 seconds in spite of what you've read. Two were through the front shoulders, one was straight on and the last one was looking at me when I hit him under chin. None of them moved more than 6" from where I shot them.
Comparing shooting rats with a .177 to shooting deer with any normal deer cartridge is absurd. If you scale both animal and cartridge up at the same percentage it would be like shooting a deer with a 4" muzzle loader.
This was a decent sized pd at 37yds, he rolled off the mound and bled out in a couple of seconds. Norway rats are easier to kill than prairie dogs.
 
We shot dump rats at an early age a long time ago. It was literally like shooting in a shooting gallery. They die easily w/ a .22.
 
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