Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Air Guns Feral cat vs. Beeman .20 cal R9: Who wins?

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.