Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Starlings- one down 6 billion to go

My late uncle in northern Minnesota would see from their kitchen window a starling, swear in Finnish, then grab his M62 Winchester and shoot the bird from the back porch. One year I was there he saw a starting and said to me "watch this Artie." He plugged an extension cord into the kitchen wall and decapitated the starling. He had rigged up a fan with sharpened blades to the birdhouse.

We don’t have them in the piney Woods, but plenty where I work.

A number of these would work nicely.

They have become increasingly more prevalent here. Went from not being seen here to pretty common. They are targets for the 22lr every chance I get.

Geno
Did a shoot to kill or wound em in the leg? 😆

Ha ha.

they come in along with the quail, scrub jays, pinyon jays, juncos, etc to eat the scratch I put out for them all. Peanuts for the jays too.

I tell folks those doves are my SHTF emergency food supply.

for now, I'm keeping it to starlings.

but, if I can prove it, a magpie might have to go too. I found an eggshell outside the Gulag extension where I keep a hen that doesn't get along with the others. It was the color she lays, and it's the first in months. I had been out in the wellhouse/reloading room prepping some brass and cracked open the door to check for starlings and spooked a magpie. Up until now, they haven't been on the list, but that might change soon.

I'm a humane SOB. I run out and wring necks if they don't die immediately.

They're pretty fragile and die quick anyway.

I just aim for a hit. I love when two or three or more are sitting in a clump. Percentage of hits goes way up.

Here it's "gray diggers" (California ground squirrels) and squeaks ( Belding's ground squirrels). We don't have the standard variety down here, up on the hill there are some.

So is there a break in the top, at the bottom of the V where the starlings drop into the trap?

Looks easy enough with one of them contraptions to catch the 4 and 20 needed for a pie.

Use to make it rain starlings when duck hunting few decades back in the San Joaquin Delta. Hit the rolling sky wave just right over the tules and you can drop several per shell.

And Eurasian doves.

I've thought of that here. Sometimes the get some big flocks around some of the ranch/farm fields here in the winter. Not as large as I've seen in the valley or over behind the mall in Eureka, but some have to have a couple hundred. Wondered what a spreader choke and some of that #9 tungsten would do from under a roost when they come in at night?

Good Shoot’n Buffalo Bill Cody. 👍🏻

#CaliforniaSlaying

#ReloadFaster

#10/22

🦫

I refuse to waste .22 shells on a little bird.

Gamo pellet rifle works good if I do my part.

I'm kinda bummed though, the wife won't let me toss them to the dogs to play with.

I slink around my deck in stealth mode with a scoped Browning A-bolt 22 smacking anything that is annoying.

Coons, Starlings, Squirrels and the occasional Woody Pecker that thinks my cedar siding is a beak drilling surface. They all die !

😜🦫

We'd scare up the flock, then use our 12 ga loaded with #8 shot... We'd get 6-10 of 'em with each shot... Mucho more efficient..

Three of us were rabbit hunting one winter. As were crossing a cut corn field we noticed that the adjacent corn field was covered with thousands of starlings.. They jumped up and flew right over the field as we were crossing it. We just pointed our shotguns skyward and fired. It rained dead starlings. Crazy... but what fun and there was no end to them. The field around us was covered with black dots. Number six and 7.5 shot really hammers them.

I've gotten in to purple martins and had most first successful season last year, hoping for a good one this year. I always have my eyes open for these things, they can wreck a pm colony.

We had scads of them several years back, there is a way to oisen them.