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Night Vision or Lamp? Close-range vermin and rabbit control with air rifle

MurderousCrow

MurderousCrow

Hello all,

Wondering if anyone has any particular thoughts or recommendations as per title. This is to go on a UK-legal air rifle, which currently has a 4-16x50 scope on it.

Quarry will be rats at ranges between around 8-30m, and rabbits around 20-60m.

A decent adjustable-power lamp with 3 different colour LED pills can be had off eBay for about £65.00. Whereas a decent NV scope which can be used night & day and doesn't compromise shooting position is about 10x that.

I don't mind paying the bigger sum too much if it makes the process more efficient & humane. I will be going for headshots only, the calibre and absolute power mean anything else risks maiming.

I've had some experience lamping rabbits with bright white light, this worked well but I believe the coneys are increasingly lamp-shy anywhere near farmer's fields these days.

I'm told that rat lamping is difficult, but low-powered red light can work.

The rats are an essential target, they need to be gone, whereas the rabbits are for recreational shooting & cooking.

Recommendations?
 
Merle

Merle

Sionyx Night Vision looks thoroughly tasty, tho as you note, a significant short-term drain on the pocketbook.
I can imagine the satisfaction of many grand night adventures. Which might offset the initial uhm, pain?
 
MurderousCrow

MurderousCrow

Merle said:
Sionyx Night Vision looks thoroughly tasty, tho as you note, a significant short-term drain on the pocketbook.
I can imagine the satisfaction of many grand night adventures. Which might offset the initial uhm, pain?
Click to expand...

That looks a very good unit, and the night colour mode would be great for capturing nature video as well as hunting. The Sport version is fairly reasonable in price, so I'll look into how to get it mounted in front of the scope I have fitted. There's only a very short scope rail on the rifle so it might not be possible, but this would be the best of all possibilities. Thanks for the steer.

@Ad Astra good shout on the traps, these are pretty cheap but might be a challenge with the chickens and the small dog. I'll look into it.
 
nortac

nortac

"Can't Raise an Eyebrow"
I need to rig a red lens cover on my white light that's mounted to my .22 pistol. Rats invading my chicken coup really scatter fast when lit up, very difficult to hit. My kill ratio was much better when I was using less light and shot cartridges in a revolver.
 
MurderousCrow

MurderousCrow

nortac said:
I need to rig a red lens cover on my white light that's mounted to my .22 pistol. Rats invading my chicken coup really scatter fast when lit up, very difficult to hit. My kill ratio was much better when I was using less light and shot cartridges in a revolver.
Click to expand...

Thanks, good to know. Consistent with what I'm reading online.
 
BigFoot

BigFoot

I wanna be sedated!
Staff member
Off subject, but a good place to add this. When I was a younger lad of about 10 or 11 I used to go into our corn crib, yes we had a corn crib and we shelled our corn. I digress, I would go in there and start blasting the rats with a bolt action .410. I had to stop when Dad noticed the bottom boards being shot out of the corn crib.

Rats hate bright light. I would go with night vision if you can afford it.
 
N

nikonNUT

The "Peter Hathaway Capstick" of small game
True but he did ask for a night vision option. Not sure what the Wraith runs on that side of the pond but here they can be had for $488.00 with the illuminator included here. Native resolution is 4x and pretty darn sharp. 8x is useable but I wouldn't go over 12x as things get noisy. The Wraith is built like a tank and what I feared was cheap plastic is aluminum. It's a heavy unit. Another plus to the wraith is it can be toggled for day light use. I have stalked the cats in the yard at night and can see the patterns on their coat!
 
simon1

simon1

Self Ignored by Vista
I picked up one of these a few years ago, and it has worked great for an outside light and it came with a red lens cover. I don't know how you'd mount it to an air rifle though. :biggrin1:

I've heard of people wrapping 3 or 4 layers of red gift basket film over the lens of a light, and also some using a red marker to color the lens. Never tried that.


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MurderousCrow

MurderousCrow

Excellent suggestions fellas, all practical with the bases well covered. The standing light is an excellent suggestion @nortac thank you. Gives me a good option to use while I look at the NV options. On that @nikonNUT the Wraith 4k is more than double that price here in the UK, one can get the HD version for about £600.00 or $740.00 or so. The Pard 008 with rangefinder is probably the best available here for value, but that 4k wraith looks very good. Not £1100.00 good though...
 
Mattybo

Mattybo

For rats i would go wmr .270😏...hahahaaa jkjk.I'd trap them or set up a wee bait station and blast em with tnt!! In all seriousness i used to just shoot them with 1 of my air rifles ay,bait is the way to go
 
nortac

nortac

"Can't Raise an Eyebrow"
Update on rat control in my chicken coop. I did install the dusk to dawn solar light. As I suspected, the rats got used to it, but they remain extremely wary and scatter before I can approach them. In trying to use my pellet rifle, the Hawke scope has a very fine reticle that is all but impossible to see at night unless against a brightly lit background. So sniping is very challenging. If I can stalk close enough, I have better luck using my suppressed .22 pistol with a red dot sight, but still challenging. I realize that that is not an option for the OP. I have probably killed more rats with the TomCat bait station, which works pretty well. So short of using NV, my recommendation is a static dusk to dawn light that the rats get used to and a red dot or an illuminated reticle for "sport" and a poison bait station for efficiency. The bait station can be hidden away from pets/kids/livestock where only the rats will get to them.
 
jkingrph

jkingrph

nortac said:
Come to think of it, I should rig a low lumen solar powered light in the chicken coop that the vermin would get used to. Then I could stand off at a distance and snipe them with my pellet rifle or a suppressed .22 LR rifle.
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Try some of the Aguila Colibri .22 ammo. very light weight bullet that only uses priming compound for propellant, very quiet, quiter than most of my air guns.
 
H

Hohn

jkingrph said:
Try some of the Aguila Colibri .22 ammo. very light weight bullet that only uses priming compound for propellant, very quiet, quiter than most of my air guns.
Click to expand...
Colibri and super colibri in my experience are not very accurate, feed poorly, and won't cycle any semi auto due to the low power. If you have a single shot or a revolver, they might be a better option. I'm very pleased with Aguila ammo, just not the colibri.
 
H

Hohn

MC, given the nature rats and the congregation in large numbers, I think picking them off individually might be an exercise in frustration. Instead, I would explore the non-toxic bait option to get kills in larger numbers.


I live in town and even though I've been able to successfully take rabbits with stealth using quiet 22LR and small game heads on a compound bow, trapping has by far proven to be much more effective. This must be the case even more so with rats.

I love anything that launches a projectile. But if this is about pest control more than having a bit of fun, I'd suggest the trapping or Rat-x options.
 
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