Me vs. My Cat -- pt. Two

So, I guess this is, or, will be, my repository, and thread of rodent hunting tales.

In the title, I suggest that this is part two.
Reality: I'm fairly new here, and, have only just started posting here. I have posted for a longer time over at GTA - Me vs. My Cat, and, that is where pt. one of this tale is chronicled.
So, this being part two, I'm going to start where we are at currently. But, I am also going to include past hunting antics, of both myself, and, my cat, Kitty.

Kitty,.... She is a ferocious hunter. Seriously. But, she really only hunts Rodents, and leaves my wifes birds alone.
Me: I'm probably the worst shot in the west, especially over the last year, since I've been declared as legally blind. In that time, Kitty was kicking my heiner in the rodents kill column.
But, I've had both eyes overhauled and new lenses implanted; I'm now bionic. This has all played out since early March. I've since upped my game.

Kitty - my competition:
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On her own single bed, never used by humans; in her own bedroom, with front and side windows, and her own side slider door entry:
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She came to us from our wild edge, which is probably 15 acres of open, wild steep hillside land.
That hillside is steeply rising above us, rising from our houses base elevation of mid nine hundreds of feet in elevation, and rising sharply to nearly 2000ft elevation. That mountain is an extinct volcanic cinder cone from a billion year old volcanic cycle here.

Kitty was abandoned when the landowner above us sold and moved on. She moved herself into the wild edge, and, lived for the better part of two years in the wild, and amongst nightly large packs of Coyotes. And if you don't know, Coyotes eat Cats.

So, for two years, Kitty lived on her own, feeding herself on the local rodents, and avoiding being eaten by Coyotes. And she lived with us without our realizing it for probably a year and a half. She lived in a break line in our roof, where the roof changed elevations, and created a small crawl space. She found that crawl space, and called it home. It provided her with a safe nighttime escape from the Coyotes. To get there required a huge vertical leap (from a hillside) to get onto a horizontal patio caver beam, and then onto the roof.
We're not sure just how long she lived with us before we noticed her living on the roof. And she, and her boyfriend, Halfy, are the only cats that we've seen here in over 12 years of living here.
Halfy was a feral male with all of his male junk parts still intact. We called him Halfy, due to him only having about half of his tail.
He was so elusive that I only saw him at hundreds of feet distance, and, then only when he was running at full speed away from us. For quite a long time, I thought he was a Bobcat, as he was a very large Cat, and his coloring was a nearly perfect match for Bobcats, and his bobbed tail,.... well, I thought that he was a Bobcat.
Halfy was an old cat, and sadly, after getting to know him, he had bad rear hips, and likely got taken out by Coyotes, or, Cars, as he had a large range to roam (literally miles wide as suggested by neighbors that saw him in other areas).

Kitty is a Bengal/Tabby hybrid, known as a Marbled Bengal. She has human hand in her upbringing, but we feel that she was a barn cat at a neighbors horse property. She knows how to behave around people, but, was on the verge of being a feral cat (neutered, but living on her own)..

We've since, allowed Kitty into the house, and, she sleeps with me on the bed. I made her her own 'tuffette" to sleep on, as I don't want to steamroller her in my sleep. I'm a really big guy, and, could faltten her in a hot second.
 
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Here she is with her last rodent take-down. It was an adolescent Rabbit.
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Kitty has settled onto a domestic routine of, whining incessantly at 6am, to get out. And then she insists on being inside in her own bedroom by noon'ish. She sleeps with me at night, until I feel it safe for her to go out into Coyote land in the early morning.
 
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Me:
I've settled into a Ratting routine, which also includes mice. This is mostly done after dark, in the Red Light District. But, I also take down whatever rodents appear around the yard.
I have also caused a localized extinction of Cal Ground Squirrels,... hundreds and hundreds of the things.
I got a Rat last night, and a mouse the night before.
But, this is my latest quality rodent, a fully mature Rabbit that I got a week ago, out in the front yard:

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Beeman Chief 1322 .22 first gen.
UTG SWAT scope 4-14x44 AO sidewheel scope
H&N Dome 21.+grain pellet
 
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I mentioned Kitty, and multiple rodent days?
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She brought us this mouse, ^ , in the early morning hours of her day. I captured it and dispatched it, and threw it back up slope, which is likely where it came from.
She immediately headed out for more hunting, and within under 5 minutes, she came back with this mouse (below)

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And, this same mouse, and, her showing me the belly that I cannot resist rubbing:
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Where did it start for me?

I was not raised as a shooter, and have never hunted anything, until I ran into the Ground Squirrel infestation that we had here
But, I was raised as an avid fly fisherman, from really early on, by my grandfather, who was a fly fisher from the earliest of days, dating back to turn of the century western Idaho, Snake River salmon. I was tying tapered leaders and fishing flies from an age when most kids were figuring out how to tie their shoes.

I was given a CO2 pistol for xmas one year, when I was about 10 (1970'ish). I ran that out of gas in about 10 minutes, and since it was a holiday, there was no way to get another cylinder of gas. I hated it.
That led to a Crosman/Daisy multi-pumper rifle. I used to to shoot plastic army men on a slope at the side of our house.

My contemporary air gunning days came about from necessity, in trying to reduce the amount of Ground Squirrels that we had on our property when we bought it (here before my wifes bird feeding). We had a huge abundance of them.
Why a huge amount?
We bought a house across the road from at least 5 solid acres of Macadamia Nut trees, as an abandoned orchard. This meant, millions of Macadamia nuts on the ground, and as free range food for the rodents. Their population exploded.
So, I started out here with my likely 5 year old Crosman 2100 that I bought to eliminate one single ground squirrel at our old place. I broke it out, gave the front sight a spit polish, and started popping ground squirrels from my patio. This lasted for the first year, then the rifle died.
So, I joined these air gun forums to research things a bit, and learned of PCP, and, the updated multi-pumpers. I eventually settled on a Beeman Chief .22 PCP

Where I started at my patio had a massive amount of g. squirrels, and I started taking notes about which directions they were coming from. In that same time, they started noticing where I was coming from. So, I started thinking about a blind, to shoot from.
At first, I hid at the far end of a picnic table that we have on the patio. My target was at the base of a pile of firewood, where Sarge feeds her birds.
That firewood backstop is near the center of the image:

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A bit closer in,...
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and right in on it - one popped Sage Rat:
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It didn't take long for the rodents to take notice of what I was doing, and if they saw me,.... vanished.
So my theory of a blind started to take shape, and it involved the support post in the image that is a patio cover frame member.
 
My place, and, the shots that I had; I still live there, but lack quality rodents now, by my own hand. It is a story of obsessions, and over-efficiency.

In the images above, I detailed the firewood backstop from my patio shot. That firewood backstop is detailed between the red patio shot arrow, and the designate B. That 5'x6' area is where my wife feeds her wild birds. It is a 35' shot, with a solid backstop.
Shot-A was well beyond 90º from shot-B, and slightly longer, uphill by a solid hill slope of 9' above patio grade.
Shot-C is right at 70', and just slightly elevated.
Shot-D is a 90' plink
Shot-E is 125'
All of these shots were backed by a sharply rising hillside along the line of A, C, D, E.
The building beyond those shots, is a horse stable. And its base grade elevation is every inch of 6' higher grade. The natural slope in that same area is at minimum 9', and rises up to another 1000ft higher as you go up the mountain.
The North Corner shots are all downhill, and range to 200'
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Shots A, C, D, E are from this perspective.
Shot-C is parallel to the chain fence. The rodents had a large colony under the raised wooden pool deck.
Shot-D is down and over the concrete step pathway
Shot-D & E are to the left, through and under the trees. There is a large firewood pile out there, but not seen in this image:
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Shot-C backstop firewood pile:
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Shot-A. This shot is still there, but is now part of a massive rock garden. I have not seen a rodent here in years.
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My patio blind that supported all of the above shots. It is braced by an 6x6 patio cover support post, wrapped around it, and bunjee corded.
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Shot-B firewood backstop to the left. This is a 35' shot, and is where I'm still popping rodents to this day.
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And, my original blind:
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Shot-B,....
For years, I called it the Whack-A-Mole Shooting Gallery
Why?
I've taken to calling it the Red Light District lately, because of my new red LED fixture.

By my best reckoning, with the birds constantly scratching the ground with their feet, and banging it with their beaks, it must send vibrations out that Gophers hear. It seems to attract them, and allows them to find the center of the feed area, from below. And, they have been a constant rodent presence.
They dig holes from below, straight on dead center to the dirt floor area where my wife feeds her birds.
They are not the dirt-mounded holes,... rather, they are just holes at the soil surface, without the dirt mound. The Gophers pop their heads out of the holes, and it becomes a game of Whack-A-Mole, or, Whack-A-Gopher. It is all conveniently in front of my safety backstop.
So, I've got the Gophers popping their heads up in front of the backstop.
And, the Ground Squirrels always preferred to run along the very bottom of the backstop, from L->R, R->L - very predictable. In fact, it was at times like the Duck Chain at the Carnival Shooting Gallery. And the Rats have upped that mental image by looking very much like the Duck Chain, running along the backstop base boards.

This is a Gopher that I recently popped in the Whack-A-Mole gallery:
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This is the rodent, closeup. The holes are marked by arrows. The Gophers dig the holes upward, come up to feed, and then fill them from below. The birds scratching for food fill the holes with dirt and seed husk.
Whack-A-Mole Gopher:
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So, I've popped quite a few mice over the last couple of weeks, and a few Rats. But, they tend to just disappear, like so much shrapnel. I went out to the Red Light District, and got another last night, around midnight, and I thought the same thing,... poof!... vanished under a low FPE load, and carried away behind the backstop.
nope,...!
I hit it, and it fell into a low depression left from past gopher holes that it was working; hauling rocks out of a gopher hole, and, I assume, getting the seed that had in part, become backfill (maybe had become a rarified form of fermenting, as underground seed?) . At any rate, it fell into a low depression, and became part of the shadows, and I thought I had ghosted it behind the backstop.
I got up this morning, and go to pour out the grounds from the coffee press, to start the process all over again, and there it was,... in the depression.

It was ferocious, had teeth, and I thought it was going to charge at me.

Take that, Kitty,... I'm whooping on you this week. slacker.

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A tale of two Mice, and two nights.
See if you can tell the difference,....

Night one (two nights ago)
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Night two (last night):
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So, what's the difference?
Night one Mouse taken with my .22 caliber Crosman Backpacker (14" .22 barrel)
Night two Mouse taken with my newly renovated 2289, with a new 16" .177 barrel. The new barrel was added yesterday afternoon.
Is it now a 1789?
Up next, a flat valve upgrading,....
 
My Whack-A-Mole Gallery has had an old plant behind it, called a Jade plant, which is a succulent. It had grown really tall, and then started drooping. The dropping branches rooted, and added to its thickness.
This same Jade plant is also the location of three Rattlesnakes over the years, including a very recent night time occurrence while looking for a hit Rat.
So, I went and thinned it out, and cut it back to about 18" back and away from the rear of my backstop. The rodents tend to try to get back behind the backstop when hit, and the thickness of the plant prevented retrieving them for disposal. So, I cut it back.
This is the newly reduced plant growth behind the backstop, and, the mouse from last night. The pics are taken looking behind the backstop.
This area is exactly where I've encountered the three Rattlers, but in heavier cover.
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And, last night,...
Two more Mice.
one of them:
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And, i had not seen a Rat in over a week, and thought that I might be running low. Then, around midnight, I got up around midnight, and looked at the red light district, and sure enough, there was a fat Rat vacuuming up seed. but by the time that I got out there, it had disappeared into the night. I waited around for about 20 minutes, saw nothing, then Mouse #2 appeared, and was dispatched. I then went back to bed.

I'm really liking this rifle as a .177 plinker.