varmint hunting...(starlings ?)
 

Okay flipping idly through one of O'Connor's books and reading a chapter on varmint rifles...Now varmint rifles really interest me..my bucket list includes owning a .220 Swift, among some others, but frankly I know very little about varmint hunting and have done very little of it...

But out of curiousity, I checked Wikipedia, and the short piece there on varmint hunting includes starlings as possible targets. Not sure of the challenge here, but the off beat has always fasinated me, and there is no denying starlings are a major pest and nuisance, so without getting into the various legalaties of it in this state, (I'll run that by the Fish and Wildlife Dept a bit later...) but are starlings hunted? It does seem like a fair idea...plenty of them, they ARE pests, they ARE annoying...so...are they?

Targets of opportunity here, they get wild very quick when ya start shooting at them.
RR

We have a Season for Crow Hunting.....those would be more fun/challenging to Hunt in my Opinion! ;)

Called it target practice when I was a kid, standing in the cornfields back in New Jersey.

Now memories.........................

Well I have tried crow hunting...challenging targets for sure...but crows have 'seasons' now...and as I said..I have always been interested in the unusual. Starlings though..that one kissed me off the cushion...(I mean..who the hell makes a starling call? starling decoys?)

Although they may be challenge on the wing...I am willing to bet if you could locate a roost, you could fairly easily sneak in close enough with .22 rimfire to do enough damage to the flock to make those old buffalo hidehunters look like pikers!

I shoot them under my grandmothers bird feed its like a shootinsg gallery, With a 22 auto.

I'd definitely quantify starlings as "vermin", but not necessarily varmints. They're nasty nasty birds.

But like many of the others here, I killed plenty of starlings as a kid with a BB gun as target practice and pest control.

Dunno why there would be an issue, they were brought over from europe so they aren't a native species...there isnt a bird alive that I despise more than a damn starling.:devil:

Not sure there is an issue here. But I found out the hard way, several years ago, the North Carolina Fish and Wildlife Dept is not fond of people 'assuming' things about their regulations. At one time, I seem to remember a line in their regulations that only those species listed were legal to hunt...not listed, then they were protected. And starlings, of course, are not listed. As I said I do plan on running this by them at some point.

But varmint hunters don't have a good year round shotgun target. Crows now have a closed season. The Open Season is very long and generous, the 'closure' was more to appease those Feds who became convinced that crows were migatory birds and needed protection...(Ha!)

But I was curious, assuming one wanted to (to use bunny-hugger terms) murder a helpless mass of poor downtrodden starlings, how you would attract them within range of your shotgun. Like Hunter, I feel the fewer starlings the better, but having them come in on the wing for shotgunning practice, rather than popping them off with .22 seems like it might be a worthy idea.

JMO - Starlings are nasty birds, but are unworthy of a shotgun or even a rimfire round these days. Were you looking for an excuse to purchase an adult air rifle? :)