How come more people in US aren't into small game eradication hunt (rats etc).

maybe because with the exception of local parks, the problem tends to exist on private land?
some service to connect hunters with folks that need pesting might exist already. if not, it should.

I personally would love to shoot the hell out of some rats. I used to kill rats at one of the places I lived over a decade ago. I met Biohazardman on the old Crossman forum and he setup a 2240 and a 2260 for me back then. We used to live about 10 min from each other until he recently moved. Anyway the place i lived had rat issues because the landlord would keep all kinds of stuff in the barn/garage. He setup traps but they didn't really do anything. I told him i can shoot them but he didn't believe me. so one night i setup some peanut butter on a piece of wood and just waited. After about an hour i bagged about 7 or 8 of those damn things. It was a blast.

It’s more about having the opportunity and the time. For instance I used to have a dairy five minutes away, and a second 15 minutes away, killed hundreds of pests, but alas they are no more. Now the nearest is 1 hour away and the others? Two hours, I plan on attempting to gain some new permissions. But that pesky issue of having the time, keeps coming up.

Getting permission being the biggest hurdle in my area, extreeeemely difficult. Very much .243 ranch rifles in the back of the F150 Cowboy mindset. If you ain't local you're suspect. Multi-million $$ operations are a big business and start talking insurance, liability wavers, bonded, etc., etc.

It's a complicated issue, lots of reasons, I'll recap
We have a cultural war going on in the US between city people and country folks, it's divided between political lines. Everyone in the rural parts of the US know what I'm talking about. "City people" are basically shown the end of the driveway immediately or never even given the opportunity for an introduction.
Department of agriculture has very strict rules concerning toxins {lead} use around animal production facilities.
People work longer hours in the US, there's less free time for recreational shooting, when people are off work they tend to shoot centerfire guns.
Much less gun control in the US means people have real firearms instead of "bb guns", serious airgunners are far and few between compared to real firearm shooters.
Real guns cost about the same or less than airguns in the US at least the airguns that are accurate enough for pest control.
There's almost zero tolerance for rodents in any industrial facility of any kind let alone food production where monitored by the USDA, relatively safe pesticides have made that possible with professional pest control companies. I own a pest control company and can count the times on one hand where I've seen enough rats to shoot in 14yrs.
To get insurance to cover yourself while doing any pest control in the US requires a USDA pest control license, an individual can't just go take a test and buy one of those licenses, it requires a 2yr training program by a certified instructor and a series of tests and documented field training. The only viable way to do this is to go to work for a national company, one that's willing to do this for you and those are far and few between because it's expensive. If they will do it for you they'll make you sign a non-compete clause. It's certain that to do this you'll have work for national company and long enough to become a second level supervisor.
Been there, done that.

can't convince farmers around me not to use traps and poison , and they do not want liability issues .

jgg765 said:

How come more people in US aren't into small game eradication hunt (rats etc).



I think there's nothing wrong with prestigious big game hunting, for instance getting a deer or a moose or something like that. Hunting feral hogs looks great. However with all of this you could spend one day or several days and only get one kill.

Also the logistics in doing something like moving pigs would require a lot of physical labor ATV's and things of that nature.



I think it would be much funnier to hunt rats pigeons or iguanas

Maybe it's just me but shooting 100 rats would be more fun to me than shooting one large animal.

In the US it doesn't seem like it's as popular as in Europe or in England. It seems like in Europe and England they're huge on rat hunting probably because of gun restrictions. Just like to get people's thoughts.

on another note if you're in the New England area I'm looking for people to do eradication hunting with.

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I agree with you 100%. I’m trying to find some good pigeon barns around and would love to find someplace infested with rats but not sure where that would be. When I was a kid you could go to the local community dump and there were hundreds of rats. I never was able to shoot them but watched a guy with a Remington Nylon 66 shooting them. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. I was too young to do it myself and we didn’t have the disposable income to buy 22 ammo for shooting rats. By the time I was old enough the dumps had closed.

There are a couple of large landfills not too far from home but I’ve never checked with them to see if they have a rat problem or if one would even be allowed to shoot them. I’m guessing it wouldn’t be allowed but who knows, I could be wrong. I need to make some phone calls…

The “rats” I shoot are BIG. most people call them prairie dogs.
I’ve shot thousands of them over the last few years.

Lots of reasons and many pointed out here. In the US, we have access to a lot of public land in many states which provides a plethora of big game and bird hunting opportunities. In Europe most big game hunting is done on private ground by well heeled people. In other words it is a rich person’s game. That relegates those with more moderate means to shooting pests. Trust me if the Europeans could access big game readily they would forfeit time from pesting to chase big game.
Another reason is that air gun hunting or pesting for small game is just starting to gain popularity here. Be careful what you wish for or you will find yourself bidding for permissions rather than asking for them.
We are in the best days of pesting in America. An abundance of opportunity and very little competition.

I agree shooting rats looks like a blast. I’m 55, and other than the white rats in pet stores I think I have only seen 1 rat in the wild. Grew up in a small rural town, lived half my life in a small city, but really only saw 1 rat there.

So hard to hunt something that isn’t a real problem

There's a few guys around here shooting prairie dogs with large caliber airguns, not really pest control because there mostly on public land where they're not bothering anyone

I have a warehouse account that has rats, not a huge number but enough to shoot. They originate from a creek behind the place where it would would be possible to shoot at night except for it also infested with transients. As well as the safety concerns on my part shooting there's a good chance I could get mugged or worse. Shooting rats is complicated business.

Because not enough people with pest problems (rats, hogs, pigeons, grackles, etc.) are smart enough to know such scourges can be controlled with GUNS, and/or would rather live with pest , diseases, damage and depredation than to live with GUNS!

davecole said:

The “rats” I shoot are BIG. most people call them prairie dogs.
I’ve shot thousands of them over the last few years.

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Pdogs are the pinnacle of airgun quarry.

South Florida is pretty darn awesome. Every trash pile has rats at night, as well as the rest stops along alligator alley (NVGs recommend) and during the day we have iguanas...

If that's not enough, you can go fishing or just go pop some cane toads. Life is good friends!

Franklink said:

Pdogs are the pinnacle of airgun quarry.

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I've always preferred a compound bow. ;-)

I was lucky enough to spend my youth growing up on a prairie dog infested ranch in NW New Mexico (Browning Ranches) and was paid to eradicate them as a kid. But, the ranch was in the city limits, and this was before pellet rifles were really a viable solution to this, so firearms were out, and the bow (with some good stalking skills) proved to be highly effective.

During that decade or so, I've taken over a thousand with a bow (probably a lot more, but the math seems ludicrous, as best I can recall and figure i probably took about 30-50 a week, during the spring and summer for quite a few years) And yes, I do know how ridiculous that claim sounds. ;-). I feel extraordinarily lucky to have grown up where (and when) I did.

Though, I have to admit, OLD me (the current version) would probably like the PCP option. :-D... If only because you can shoot from any angle! (With a bow, never shoot lengthwise, unless using broadheads, as the damn things will run down the hole with your arrow!)

Miami Airgunner said:

I've always preferred a compound bow. ;-)

I was lucky enough to spend my youth growing up on a prairie dog infested ranch in NW New Mexico (Browning Ranches) and was paid to eradicate them as a kid. But, the ranch was in the city limits, and this was before pellet rifles were really a viable solution to this, so firearms were out, and the bow (with some good stalking skills) proved to be highly effective.

During that decade or so, I've taken over a thousand with a bow (probably a lot more, but the math seems ludicrous, as best I can recall and figure i probably took about 30-50 a week, during the spring and summer for quite a few years) And yes, I do know how ridiculous that claim sounds. ;-). I feel extraordinarily lucky to have grown up where (and when) I did.

Though, I have to admit, OLD me (the current version) would probably like the PCP option. :-D... If only because you can shoot from any angle! (With a bow, never shoot lengthwise, unless using broadheads, as the damn things will run down the hole with your arrow!)

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Oh I believe you. Unless you've experienced a heavily populated area of prairie dogs it would be hard to image the density they can reach. There was a 3 year span where I'd make a spin through a couple infested irrigated fields and kill 30-50 in a 2 or 3 hour outing. Between me whacking them and eventually the owners putting out poison, those fields have very few pdogs these days. Luckily I've still got a couple good spots. I don't hit em as hard as I used to though, for fear of being too effective for my own good. Although I think it was primarily the poison that spoiled my fun in the previous hot spots.

I use to hunt rats and sparrows at night around barns. We would spotlight them in eves (sparrows) and shoot them with a pellet pistol. Rats I hunted a pig farm and would use a red light. Killed hundreds of rats and thousands of sparrows. All went away with the new methods of livestock rearing. You don't have the structures anymore nor the feed lying around that there use to be. Mennonite's own most of the farms here anymore and they seldom allow hunting. All together it has limited my vermin hunting to sparrows, chipmunks and starlings.