Will a Beeman .20 cal. RX-9 kill a feral cat with a shot to the chest (broadside, just behind the shoulder) from 20 feet? He ran off and I can't find him.

P.S. He was attacking our geriatric, toothless family cat and stealing its food, so I consider it a justified assault and/or caticide (depending on whether the intruder survived).

At 20 ft., yes. At that range, the gun should be spitting that .20 pellet out at 13 foot pounds. If the gun is shooting at it's optimum power level.
You've got a dead feral cat somewhere, just hope it's not near your house.

It went into a culvert near the house. Its pitch black in the culvert---no light at the other end. I pumped a couple rounds into the culvert too for good measure. I think he's gone.

Thanks for the reassurance.

Perfect. A politician would call it " Plausible deniability"....

If you would have aimed (and hit) for ear, you'd have a dead cat right there on the spot. Remember, airguns are like bows, they kill with penetration to the vitals, not shock. To answer your question, yes the R9 has plenty of power to kill a cat at 20 feet.
regards, Scott

I don't know what an RX-9 is but I've got a .20 R-9 that has counted many coup against feral cats, dogs, groundhogs, skunks, o'possums and small chillun.

For my money, your shot selection was perfect. The head is too iffy because the cat's brain is small and the rounded angles of the skull can deflect the pellet enough to cause it to miss the brain pan. And that close in, if you're scoped, you've got scope height-over-barrel to contend with.

The lungs are a much higher percentage target. Nothing lives if you puncture both lungs. Nothing. It might crawl out of sight first but it's in for a pink and frothy and certain death.

Take the feral in,shoot the toothless.

Never a problem dispatching feral cats with my Beeman R9 in 177.

feral cats need to be removed since they are hell on quail population as well as other game birds.i'll give them credit as survivors but undesirable.--cranky72

I've always considered a cat "feral" the minute it steps out of the house.

Growing up on a farm, I usually whacked the feral cats with a .222Rem............a puuuurfect cartridge for the job.

One time I had to hunt a feral tom under our house. The toms usually get big, but this one was HUGE. I used my dad's old Sheridan Silverstreak 5mm and one shot did the trick. I was admittedly a little scared being in a 2ft crawl space with a single shot airgun and a flashlight, but justice prevailed.

I'd rather hunt cats than just about anything else. I agree about shooting them in the head. It's hard to stop them with even a 22LR if you shoot them in the chest. You really need to place that pellet in the brain if you're looking to drop him where he's standing. Several years ago we (with the park ranger's blessing)two of us went into a park at night to thin out the feral cats. In one night we killed something like 27 or 29 cats.

Cats ARE hard to kill. The most spectacular shot I ever made on a cat was with a S&W Model 53 with an 8.375" barrel. A 40gr. soft point at 2000fps up the "poop chute" at a range of around 15'. The largest piece recovered was the head. Late at night, and every light in the neighborhood came on.

i blew one off a log at 150 yds with a 222mag--devil climbed back up but he was moving sideways. cranky72

I never had any trouble killing them, and I DID have a blast hunting them. True feral toms are sneaky bastids, and a worthy adversary.............unless they get all horned up and combative, thinking THEY own your barns. That's fun too.

House cats turn feral quicker than other domestic animal and can be a real pest. When I moved to a rural area, I lightened up a bit on cats because I appreciated their ability at rodent control. However, ones that didn't get along with the sheep, lambs, and chickens, were put "in the wind" very quickly.

I once lived with a girlfriend who was obsessed with cats, we had 9 of them. Overall, I like cats but several of these were evil, one of which bit me. I had a Crosman 2200 10 shot pellet rifle in .22 cal. and pumped it up to 5 pumps, shot the cat under a bed at point blank range in the chest, he jumped so hard the bed lifted off the floor.

After the cat settled down I checked him well and there was not a single mark on his chest skin, I really became a believer that cats are very tough animals. At 5 pumps the Daisy and Crosman rifles are close to their maximum power output. That particular cat died of disease a year later.

Yep! We lived in a rural Florida county during my hi-screwl years. I dispatched a stray tomcat that was after our female krat and would easily bully our male krat!

I shot it with a Sheridan Blue Streak, .20 cal. Seems that where 8 pumps was considered MAXIMUM, I think I pumped it up 10 times. Hell that was over 30 years ago!

But the intruder krat indeed took the pellet behind its front leg under the shoulder, didn't even make it 20-25 yards before it keeled over [dead] in our driveway with just the slightest blood starting to show on its mouth. It was very late one dark night when it went to kitty heaven.

I agree with Xposo - you likely have a dead cat somewhere! Just hope it doesn't attract any undue attention or get autopsied at the vet's. If you don't hear anything for a week or so after the incident, maybe you won't hear anything a'tall? Hope you don't have to dispatch other bully krats, but if so, you need to find a disposal method!

In 1981 my wife and I bought a small farm in east Texas. It had been rented to a "lady" with two horses and 26 cats. She was not able to catch all of them before she left and just told us "they'll take care of themselves...".

The first thing they did was attack our cat. Then we learned from the neighbors that after she had moved in every quail and rabbit within two miles had disappeared....so we started shooting...

My wife's best shot was with a Ruger Standard Model .22 with a 4" barrel. She and the dog jumped one in a pasture near the house and she made a rolled them in place shot on the running cat at about 30 yards... It took two years before the quail, rabbits and ground nesting birds came back.

Nothing against cats as I have had them almost my whole life...but cats need to be under the same regulations as dogs...and I dropped several "loose" dogs over the years also....

Bob

I use 14.3gr Crosman Domes 'Premier' solid nose like the original Sheridan pellet in my R-9. They penetrate well.

Something may run off a bit, like a deer hit w/a rifle, but they will die.

In college my BSA Meteor .177 at 675 mv dropped a few rogue cats loaned out to someone. Point blank w/shots to the head, deadly.

I drill the flash hole out slightly in .45 Colt cases and prime them with magnum rifle primers and then add a paraffin wax plug. I buy the canning wax and let it soften slightly in the oven and then push the primed cases onto and through the wax filling the case. It's not lethal but it sure as hell rolls them and get their attention, for more power I sometimes add a couple of grains of Unique but that makes it much louder. Out of my 5.5" barreled Blackhawk with a solid hit to the body the wax will mushroom just like a soft point.

One factor most often overlooked is the feral cat is an invasive , alien species, the same as the Norway rat or the English starling. Estimates are that they kill 80 MILLION song birds yearly. Indoors they are fine companion animals.

Heck, my Dad killed a cat that kept crapping in his garden with a bb from a Daisy Pump air gun. Lung shot. The cat did run off to die at his owners doorstep. She was apparently upset as she wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper. Of course Dad didn't fess up and it was one cat he didn't have to deal with.

I hereby officially nominate this as the best (and among the funniest) Campfire thread of 2012......



Casey

I can't speak for the .20. but...
Let's see it was about 30 years ago.. my son was very young and had a nice sand box on the back patio...
you guessed it.

I finally caught the critter in the act.
A huge mostly white tom.
He ran out of the box and in front of my old 1930's single car garage behind my Euclid Ohio double.
And then sat there preening.
About 50 feet from the back door,
I settled the cheap scope on my Wienrach .177 on his throat.
and squeezed one off.

He reared back on his hind legs and I thought ( good he'll fall over dead...)
and then he ran down the drive, spraying blood everywhere!

I quickly decided it was time to wash down the blacktop.

The best thing?
I saw his owner walking him a while later.
In bandages and on a LEASH!

I hope the vet bill hurt more than the loss of a cat would!

One of my kid brothers had a Sheridan 5mm when we were kids. We were not very closely supervised and, without getting into too much detail, I can tell you that one of those will kill damn near anything.

I live trapped a feral kitten a few years ago, down by my boathouse. Normally, I would have given him the same treatment I'd give the mink I'd catch down there: throw the Havahart in a couple feet of water and come back later and dispose of the carcass. I felt sorry for this little guy, a more ragged, skinny little critter you've never seen. I took him up to the house and over a period of a couple of months, got him tamed up to where he'd eat out of my hand. After I had him a couple months I took him to the vet and he weighed two pounds. He grew up to be a really big boy, black and white "tuxedo" cat. Nicest house pet anyone could want. I like my house cats, but that's what they are, they don't go out unsupervised at all.

We have a bunch of semi-feral cats out at the barn. We feed them enough to keep them around, but not enough to get fat and lazy. We never have a rodent problem. We leave bags of horse feed and seed right on the barn floor and have never lost an ounce. Once in a while the numbers get up there and they need thinning out. I'm getting so I really don't care to do that anymore.

Okay fellers, here's the latest. I've taken three feral cats now with the Beeman R9 .20 cal. One was a frontal chest shot from about 20'. He ran about 30' and then just flat out died, almost immediately. The other two were chest shots (from the side, just behind the shoulder). Both made it to a culvert 'bout 70' from point-of-impact. They never came out the other side. Looks like they expired in the culvert.

So, looks like we've got adequate killing power.

Logical....but still made me laugh out loud.

I had 3 cats get in my attic through a blown off board.I didn't even own a cat and they turned my attic into a cat house and were apparently having cat sex up there.At least it smelled like they were having cat sex when I got up there with my trusty 20 year old pump Crossman.

My plan was to run them back out of the hole and fix it so they couldn't get back in.Two of the cats ran right out but one was extra stupid and kept running around in circles.

At one point it was close to the exit hole but hunkered down and wouldn't move.I tried to shoot it in the rear to convince it that my attic was an unfriendly environment.

I only pumped the Crossman about 5 times and was using a BB.Well,I killed that cat stone dead with the first shot without so much as a quiver.

I never did an autopsy to see where I hit him or if he just died from a heart attack brought on from too much excitement after vigorous cat sex.

Just goes to show,you never know.

I have a Beeman R-10 .20 cal. I thought it was big medicine until I tried to pop a raccoon nesting in the chimney. I think I shot it in the side of the head 4 times as it ran back and forth on the roof, down the gutter, and back up again. Until I point blanked it between the eyes hissing at me from the gutter, it was very much alive. I thought the .20 was going to be more powerful. I've shot some squirrels with it though and it works better on them. Cat being somewhere in between, it's a tough one. They would probably slink off and croak somewhere.

Roger that. They are very susceptible to shock, CNS shots are the most effective. Screw body shots, I always aim for the head.

the headshots are indeed quite effective on cats of all sizes ...

What you shooting there n8dawg6? Don't look like no air rifle.Very cool anyway!!!

it's a .22 with Wolf (i.e. subsonic) ammo. slightly off-topic in this forum ... but hey, its the fire!

I will say that there is a pretty big killing difference between my R7 and my R1. The R1 can put a pellet, especially a 10.5 g version, all the way through a squirrel at 15-20 yds. there is little or no margin for error, though. I would think it would produce similar results with feral cats. the R7 just maims squirrels at the same distance.