Mates, 50c sound very little for a tag, but due to the size of this country and the distance you got to travel to use up the privilege of the tag, you may ended up spending $200 - $300 for the petrol (gas) to get there.

Shooting roos were fun once.. but it gets boring after a couple shots.. they are really dumb animals who just look at you when disturbed. Well, some in heavily hunted area runs away when they saw ya, but most of it just do that.. sit and look at you dumbly.

I get more thrill sniping at rabbits near their warren but then again since the intro of calicivirus these favorite shooting is way restricted now.
Used to spend hours near a large warren and can get up to 10 + in one season, now, be lucky if I could get 2 or 3.

Gelan,

Your right the gas and everything else is what costs many hunters, still the plane ticket would be free ... don't ask me why but I've always said I was going to talk what ever girl I marry into a honeymoon in Australia. Just need to sneak off for a few days to go hunting while I'm there. Or ideally she'd come with me.

Dimitri

Dimitri,

My wife is a not a hunter, but the first meal I fixed for her when we were dating was BBQ wild hog. She liked it so much that she's always hollering for me to bring my rifle into the back yard and shoot a wild hog in the field behind the house. Of course I'm always happy to oblige.

Cary

I do recommend a trip to Australia. Wonderful place. Great people.

Cary

OntheLasGallinas wrote:

Vince, We have an over-supply of Jack Rabbits, every so often, and we go out and thin them out. We normally drive around the ranch at night and shoot until they are hard to find. This normally takes about 3 or 4 nights. The first night we'll kill about 150, the next night about 100, and so on. If we don't do that, they will destroy acres and acres of crops. I planted about 100 acres of peas and found about 5 acres a night disappearing. We have to do something. The same thing with wild hogs. I'm assuming that Kangaroos do the same kind of damage to crops. Cary

Roos are the same mate, as are the deer. A good size mob of roos could number 50 or 60, and they will chomp through a bitt more than a rabbit. One of the spots we hunt deer has a couple of paddocks under broccoli and the fallow deer love it...that and grape vines.

When you hunt the jacks rabbits do you spotlight them or just use whatever natural light there is? We spotlight rabbits...makes it a lot easier at night and you can hunt right through if you wish. I have a 2,000,000 CP spotty and it will hold a rabbit at 100m no problems. You could always put a rabbit proof fence around your peas. Hire a ditch digger and put a ditch about 600mm deep all around then put up a wire netting fence, ensuring you bury it in the ditch.

With the hogs, you could put a hog trap in the most likely approach. I have seen traps made out of arcmesh (concrete reinforcing steel) with a one way gate built in at the end of a channelling corridor made of the same steel. In the morning you get Mr Winchester to explain the error of their ways to them.

Spotlighting roos is the same...they just stand there looking at the light. Some guys spot them out to 300m...with a BIG spotty.

As Gelan says, sniping a rabbit warren is a lot of fun. I like to use my .22 rimfire with subsonic rounds. No noise and it doesn't frighten the rabbits off too much. Funnily, the calicivirus has had minimal effect where I hunt...they think that it is the cold that has stopped it from working efficiently. Good for me.

Cheers, Vince

I would like to feed them-------80grs at a time------------
Thank you-------------------------------------------

the Belding Ground Squirrel was estimated to be eating 25% of the alfalfa crop in NE California before they started Squirrel Wars. They actively encouraged squirrel shooters to come up and shoot the squirrels and had BBQ, and contests, with prizes for high count for the day. They still have plenty of squirrels.

They renamed the weekend to Squirrel Roundup.

That sounds like a heck of a lot of fun A17.

Didn't think the State of California would allow that sort of thing...from what I've heard and read they are very anti firearm.

Cheers, Vince

Vince,

Northern Cali seems to be a little more accepting of hunters and firearms. Just ask Dave.

OK mate. Is Northern Cali a different State to California, or is it just a part of that State?

Cheers, Vince

Same State different values mainly because of the influx of Left-Wing Liberals in the movie industry flocking to the South part of the State for about the last century.

Dimitri