As I was enjoying this forum I started to reflect on all of the feral cats I helped advance into their next life adventure and the guns that I had used. Besides shotguns I recall a 222 rem, 221 and 357 Rem Max Contenders, and a 25-06. The largest caliber rifle I ever used was a 338 Winchester with 250 grain Nosler High Energy loads on a cat I called up while using a predator call when bear hunting in Montana. It was amazing to see this cat this far from anything, but he was in seemingly good health prior to our encounter. It was a pretty good shot, but it is rare that I can really discuss this with many people.

Anyway, it might be interesting to see what other large caliber rifles have been successfully employed.

Consistent with the recent guidance as to being mindful to only post on appropriate forums I thought maybe this should be on the Big Bore or even Double Rifle forums, but I will try this here....

I apologize for any misspellings as I have a former barn kitten who keeps bumping my elbow as I type....

No caliber too large
None to small
It merely takes will
Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.


Dan

POTYHC

www.ISenseYouAre.ConflictedOnTheSubject

Technically, this is a smoothbore cannon, and in the design stage. I think a long piece of 6" or 8" PVC pipe with gasoline in behind the cat would be enough gun. Enough to send the cat back to his owner's farm or Feralistan, wherever they come from. Of course, we'd want to test some vertically fired cats to see if they land on their feet.

H. C.

The best calibre for crats is the one you have in your hands when the opportunity arises! And thus endith that discussion! derf
Ooops, except for welcoming you home Don!

quote:

No caliber too large
None to small
It merely takes will
Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.

Hey Dan--you forgot the closer: "Burma Shave"

Well sheeeit.


www.BurmaShave.Com

Not so fast there Mr.Derf. Flintlock is considered finest especially in .50, .54, .58, and .62. The 30's and 40's are ok too but the larger bores "bark" cats more impressively. ned

The largest shoulder fired weapon was a 458 Win Mag. As for other weapons, and don't tell the Navy about this one, but 20mm gatling gun on full auto used on a crat on a little island off the Phillipines. I called that one "a brief moment of complete satisfaction". In between them was a Browning 50 BMG on "goat" island off Hawaii. A friend of mine used a 105mm on a cat near a barn in Germany. Thanks to NATO for the crat shooting fun. The biggest was lobbing bowling balls from a short barreled but large caliber mortar at a cat in a cow pasture. Three misses and one cat burying hit.

quote:

Originally posted by Old Elk Hunter:
The largest shoulder fired weapon was a 458 Win Mag. As for other weapons, and don't tell the Navy about this one, but 20mm gatling gun on full auto used on a crat on a little island off the Phillipines. I called that one "a brief moment of complete satisfaction". In between them was a Browning 50 BMG on "goat" island off Hawaii. A friend of mine used a 105mm on a cat near a barn in Germany. Thanks to NATO for the crat shooting fun. The biggest was lobbing bowling balls from a short barreled but large caliber mortar at a cat in a cow pasture. Three misses and one cat burying hit.

Good God! You win, Elk Hunter! I can't think of a better use of tax dollars.

Unless we can get someone from the Battleship Yamato reporting in or maybe the Enola Gay I think that the Old Elk Hunter wins.....

There's no way I can win if we include unconventional arms. A friend in high school
was trying to get a cat that lived in the voids between the roots of the stump of a 200 year old
Douglas fir tree. It was about eight foot across where the loggers felled it. The cat was quick and the cat
was smart. One day my friend and I packed high nitrogen fertilizer, a little diesel oil, and blastiing caps in between the roots of the old rotten stump. He ran wire back to the barn and made ready to connect it to the tractor's battery.

I ran around the barn chasing the cat until it headed for the safety of the stump. My friend was ready
and when the cat got under the stump he detonated the charge. The stump went about thirty feet straight up
and the root pieces went everywhere plus a few ground squirrels and rocks were mixed in. After everything quit
falling on the barn roof, we went and checked the site. A kill was confirmed by the cat pieces found in several places.

A crazy farmer lived near by and he hated cats. A mother cat and her litter had taken up residence in an old
Ford coupe (1940's vintage) in his pasture. The car set near some very old large Douglas Fir trees. I was over
there one day helping the farmer when the cat streaked by us and headed to the old car body. The farmer went to
his shed and got out a two man chain saw. The farmer looked at me and said it was time I learned how to fell a
tree. We headed out towards the car and he showed me how to accurately drop a tree - dead center on a car.
No more cats.

I can see I'm in the minor leagues with this bunch, but I can claim a "kill" with a "garden shovel guillotine" I was a young tad and one of the neighborhood crats ran into my yard and snatched up my pet Easter duckling and ran off with it. Well, I knew where the crat lived and I decided to just bide my time. Well, one day I saw it go under the house, and my buddy and I made our plans. I picked up the shovel and got ready while he went to the other end of the house and became my "beater". I, Gunga Din, was ready, tightly coiled like a garage door spring, and when the crat's head emerged, the guillotine slammed down. I dropped the shovel, and we legged it home. Never saw the crat again.

A 3" shotshell loaded with 1 1/2 oz of #6 shot with turn a kitty into a stretched variety.

I've told this story before, perhaps it should be resurrected again.

The jarhead F-4 driver inbound on the bunker complex..hydraulics failed on the first run so he and the GIB punched out. F4 continued to follow the pipper and made an incredibly big hole in the ground where the complex usta be. In retrospect it is possible that he saw a crat in the complex. The Captain yelled Simper Fi more than a few times that night. Drinkin' can do that to a fella.

BTW, didja know that back then a Captain was nothing more than a 2LT with two years of practice? To think they put them in charge of such machines without giving them the class on pullin' out of the run.

Dan

POTYHC

www.DontKnowIfThat.Counts

panzerguy hasn't reported in yet, but I think he claimed a crat kill with a tank of some type that had a BIG barrel.

Bwah haw haw,,,,How many crats did we get in downtown Hiroshima ?Dresden? Nagasaki?

Thats a big caliber.

White Tail deer are like crats to me. Too 'effin many of them back in Illinois where I grew up.

1976, Ft. Bragg, NC. 106 mm Recoiless HEI round center punched bambi. Red 'effin mist/mess.

1985, deer walks out onto the target area of Canon range on the back forty of Ft. Leonard Wood, MO. Denny Whitley (Captain) center punches bambi's mom with a 33# little blue practice bomb going . Turned 'er inside out.

I hate White Tail deer. I would pass up the new world record typical to exterminate 100 breeders.

LD

I've always liked the 106. Dunno if they're much good for anything 'cept for the cannister or flechette round(whichever it was), but by damn they are spectacular!

Dan

POTYHC

www.Rat.Patrol

I can remember cratting with a 106 - not sure whether we got him or not though. HEAP rounds do that

quote:

Unless we can get someone from the Battleship Yamato reporting in or maybe the Enola Gay I think that the Old Elk Hunter wins.....

Hi Poletax,

I had Hiroshima covered so I guess we will await any word from the Bock's Car crew and members of the loading team from the "Paris Gun" (they are getting a little old so they might not type too fast anymore.)

quote:

I ran around the barn chasing the cat until it headed for the safety of the stump.

And - this - was the point in reading the thread that I coughed my sprite out my nose.

first time post in this forum...
let me tell you guys a tale....
i was in high school and on the phone for the first time with a girl i was interested in, and low an behold, that damned yellow crat that had been beating up my cat and eating his food was standing in the driveway. i asked the girl to hold on and ran into my bedroom. the first loaded gun i found was my browning 270 with 140 grain hornady boat tails in front of 58.5 grains of 4831. i stepped out onto the porch and whacked the yellow bastard in the middle. i was expecting an explosion like a young coyote, but this little b@st@rd made it almost 50 feet before tipping over. i got back on the phone and tried to resume my courtship.... but was having a hard time hearing. i told her it was a coyote that i shot, but about 6 months later when we had been dating a while i came clean. good thing i waited until she was into me, she said that would have been a deal breaker... :-)

she's gone now, but i still have the memories!

oh, and just so you guys know, i come from a long like of crat eliminators. my dad was a founding member of the TVPP... the Touchet Valley Pheasant Protectors (or the Touchet Valley Pussy Posse, depending on who you were talking to). they eliminated hundreds of crats in order to help the pheasant population. my dad's favorite shot was the 7mm Rem Mag at 200 yards. i understand the TVPP disbanded after a crat was removed from an old ladies front porch with a 12 guage on a sunday morning while she was at church.

my dad was also a fan of whacking crats with a bengamin .22 cal air gun. he said hit them in the guts and they'd run off and die, therefore you didn't have to dispose of them yourself. one neighbor warned him to keep our cat inside, that someone in the neighborhood was shooting cats, and it cost them $300 to have him fixed!

and there was the hole he had to patch in the garage door where he stabbed at a crat with broom handle that got stuck in there!

Good thing. Someone else who believes in the "self-disposal" method. Only I like to shoot them a little further up; it prevents the blue-haired old lady from "fixing" them.

After all, why go to the effort to "fix" them correctly, when someone is going to undo all your good work later....

Good thing blue hairs have family 'cause nobody else can tolerate their wiggy ways...

Dan

POTYHC

www.Even.Politicians

quote:

The largest shoulder fired weapon was a 458 Win Mag. As for other weapons, and don't tell the Navy about this one, but 20mm gatling gun on full auto used on a crat on a little island off the Phillipines. I called that one "a brief moment of complete satisfaction". In between them was a Browning 50 BMG on "goat" island off Hawaii. A friend of mine used a 105mm on a cat near a barn in Germany. Thanks to NATO for the crat shooting fun. The biggest was lobbing bowling balls from a short barreled but large caliber mortar at a cat in a cow pasture. Three misses and one cat burying hit.

I think the only way to beat this is if someone called in an air strike...

My old man would take a sack of cats to the top of an oil derrick and drop them one by one. He said they all landed on their feet.

577 Nitro Express

Just think. In a matter of a couple of months you can be the potential holder of this shoulder-fired record with your new Searcy cat killer....A 750 grain bullet should work just fine....ultimate cat "stopper". Although Taylor considered the 416 better for "cats".

Heath, are you still accepting membership in the TVPP? Guests?

Dan

POTYHC

www.LookinFer.Acreage

My cousin Bubba Hogge over in Greenville County, Va, just a few miles as the turkey flies, probably has the cat rifle record. You may recall I mentioned he built my first spud gun so many years ago when we both like bud. That was the gun I shot a hole through his barn door with when Bubba yelled "bull" late one saturday evening and I thought he said "pull" so I swung the muzzle toward the usually open barn door and hit the piezo sending a spark into a heavy charge of starting fluid. No hairspray crap for us serious experimenters you know. More powder IS better! The door was shut. It was a two inch gun and at 10 yards blasted right through the wooden door. Newly dug spring potatos are tough. The shot was a hillarious event when you are loaded, the gun was loaded and it was me not him doing the shooting. I was over there providing moral support because Bubba was on a mission. Right next to the barn was his garden patch and a hundred yards below that was an 1 1/2 acre pond on the farside of which was a 4 acre pasture. That was where the canadas lived keeping an eye on Bubba waiting for an opportunity to raid his garden as soon as he turned his back. He had a 1 1/2" gun but it did not have the range to reach the pasture. Turned out mine was deficient too. He had vowed to go ballistic till he got a spud gun that would go the distance to kill a goose. That was in our beer-drinking, irresponsible period. After much work, testing and bud he ended up with a 4 incher that looked like a fat bazooka and had to be supported in the front with a tripod. It was thinwall conduit and solder fittings covered over with pvc and the charge was measured by the teaspoon. It was a helluva thing. A city folk would tremble to see it go off. He used used frozen water slugs as bullets and set a target up on a hay bale on the barn side of the pond. I know there was stale beer and whatever in the liquid in the bucket used to make slugs. After a week of dusk dark practice he could hit a barn boot on that bale at 120 yards. I was over again to help celebrate 1/2 a success and we drank to the other half too. That's when Bubba pointed out the target being ready and loaded 'er up. I got well away, I don't know how the hell he could see the target, let alone steady the sights but he clicked the igniter and it ROARED! You could hear the whack of that ice ballet on the target. When we got our night vision back it was gone from atop the bale. We walked down and there on the backside of the bale was half of Bubbas barn cat. Never did see the other half. The cat was used to tipping warm beers over and lapping beer up and apparently had gone to the target to lap up the shattered beer swill bullets. I couldn't laugh cuz Bubba loved that cat. I nominate him for the record cat rifle. N.S.

I would think that a 4" diameter "ice cannon" would be pretty hard to beat.....

Whenever I need a smile, I know where to go. Some of the best stories I've read. Absolutely hysterically funny, tears of down my face from laughing so hard, I am ready to face the day with a happy heart. Thanks guys.

Does the 105mm technically qualify as a 'rifle'? I always forget where the delineation is between 'gun' 'rifle' and 'cannon'...something about smoothbore being a gun, rifled bores being rifles, and diameter...???

Hi HunterMontana,

My story about shooting the cat with the 338 occurred just south and east of you (as the crow would fly)....(as he would walk would be to go to Columbus and turn right...). Anyway it was along the northern edge of the Beartooths just west of the Stillwater Mine about 7 miles.

One of these days I will hang up this working thing here in Chicago and try to become your neighbor in Livingston...or Bozeman....

Have a great day....

Once you get past shoulder arms, things get a little sticky.

Technically, caliber is actually a ratio of bore to length. That is, a mortar is an estremely low caliber, a gun is a high caliber and a howitzer is in between, plus traditionally, howitzers have a smaller bore powder chamber than barrel bore.

A 105mm Tank gun is, a gun and intended for low arc direct fire. a 105mm howitzer, being shorter than gun length and indirect fire mainly. A mortar is a high arc of fire and cannot be practically used for direct fire.

Ned, once again you have brung home the bacon! Just a few months back those guys on TV that investigate stuff, blow it up etc...Myth Busters...well, they tried the ice bullet thing and couldn't make it work. Now I flat knowed they was fulla somethin' I guess a 4" ice bullet is a strong contender, 'specially for a shoulder fired kill.

Dan

POTYHC

www.FourInch.CratCannons

Great thread!