4 guys X 7 air rifles X 10 hours X lots of pellets = GRAPHIC

Yesterday Jerry and I met at Wade's house at 7:00am and loaded up his Megacab (MC). We had enough stuff to feed/supply a small (very small) army. 6 air rifles, many tins of pellets, 2 coolers, lots of water & drinks & food, 6-7 flashlights, 2 big 12v lanterns, etc. We drove about 1/2 hour and picked up Chad, who lived on the way. He brought another cooler and one AR. We got to The Farm about 8:30 and decided to let Jerry break in the day with some pigeon action. Wade parked the MC so Jerry was looking at a masonry block shed about 35 yards away. Pigeons all over the top. Jerry greased 4 in a row before they all took off. We then drove over to the main shooting destination and scouted it out. It was in the high 20's, foggy and perfect for starling shooting. About 9:00am we went into the barn with all the lights we had and our barn guns. There were maybe 100 starlings and a handful of pigeons fluttering around. I set up the two 12v lights where we were shooting from and aimed them into the far corner of the roof peak, where the majority of birds were. Chad and Jerry were shooting their .177 RWS breakbarrels, Wade was thumping them with his .22 "tactical" Mendoza and I had my .177 Bird Buster. The action was hot and heavy for about 12-15 minutes until there was silence.

We then drove a few hundred yards to the reject food piles. There are very larg mounds of potatoes, fries, hashbrowns, carrots, sweet potatos, etc. that the local food processing plants throw out for whatever reason. The starlings absolutely LOVE eating this stuff and I'm thinking get "drunk" off the grease or some other chemical in it, at they don't seem scared and come right back seconds later after a shot.



We decided to split up into two groups of two and stay on opposite sided of the food mountain so we couldn't see/shoot each other. Wade, with his .22 Mrod and Chad, with his .177 RWS-45 climbed up to the third row of hay bales and shot from there for about an hour. Here where they were shooting from and what there was to shoot at. The far end of the food mountain was about 45 yards.







Jerry, with his .22 Mrod and I, with my .22 H850 HPA shot from the opposite side. While Jerry was shooting I built this blind that worked AWESOME!!!!! With our quiet PCP's, camo on, being in the shade and having a dark background, the starlings were clueless all day. Here's what our blind looked like from the front. Can you spot the shooter in the blind?



From the inside. Many times there were hundreds of starlings at 5-25 yards on the ground in front of the blind or on the face of the food mountain. Notice the dead starlings on the ground in front of the blind and on the pile. The second pic is of Wade & Chad in the blind. We've noticed that if there are only a few 8-10 dead starlings scattered around, it doesn't bother them to land. When there's a bunch (15+?) of dead ones laying around, they don't want to land. They just hover around, acting skittish and when they do land it's only for a second or two. So, we would periodically go out with a bucket and pick up the dead ones. Then it was "game on" again.





After racking up a bunch of kills with Jerry, I let Chad have my spot and I built a second blind off to the left, shooting at the flank of this food mountain. Here's what it looked like.







Following Ted's input to follow them to their roosting spot after dark, we decided to hit the barn one last time in the dark, about 5:45pm. We went in with lights and guns again. I was out of air in the Bird Buster so I just spotlighted with the two 12v lanterns. The ceiling was about alive with birds. Hundreds of them!!! Mostly all starlings with a 12-15 pigeons and a hand full of sparrows mixed in. They didn't seem like they could fine a way out in the dark. Wade, Jerry and Chad were shooting/reloading as fast as they could. After about 15 minutes of this shoulder, tricep workout I started to hear comments about getting tired of shoot, but they troopered on and shot until there was silence. Here's a dim picture of the far corner, about 15 yards away and 20 feet up. Even with the lanterns on, a few other lights and the flash, it's still too dim to take a good picture. You'll have to believe me when I say it was the most intense shooting action I've ever seen.



After we had stopped shooting we decided there were way to many birds to actually count. So we counted starlings until we filled up a 5 gallon bucket. 110 starlings per bucket. 6.5 buckets = about 700 starlings. The grey, plastic bin has about 450-500 in it. We also collected about 30 pigeons. Here's the group pic showing the carnage. It's amazing how small a starling body actually is when their feathers aren't puffed up. This number didn't meet our goal of 1000 but it's not too bad either, it set's our new one day record. Here's Jerry, Chad, Wade and I about 6:45 pm.



We're now thinking of how to build cheap, lightweight, easy to assemble blinds we can use instead of building pallet/tire/weed blings. Camo netting over spreaders would be awesome. A cmall, camo, dome tent would work with no bottom in it. Camo burlap over small wood members. Something like that. Any suggestion that won't break the bank?

Later,
Doug