it'd be fun to step back a bunch of years when there were these little country dumps around that were filled with rats. geez i grew up shooting rats with everything from a 22 to an m1. but wouldn't it be fun today with the little 17 rimfires.

holy cow yes!

man we used to shoot em up every week end. i always wanted a 22 pump with the riflings bored out to shoot shot with. that dump was sure something.

as a real young kid dad gave me nickel for every rat i got. that was my mad money. one nite we went in the barn together and a couple rats ran down a wall and i popped both with a bolt gun holding a flashight. he bragged about me forever over that.

Shooting rats with a 22 on the west side of the city dump, shooting rats with a 22 in a farmers grainery while my friends dad checked his muskrat traps. Shooting muskrats out of the company pond early on sat. morning before anyone was around. They paid me a bounty on the muskrats, five bucks each. The farmer paid us kids 10 cents each. The rats and skunks at the dump were purely recreational. Some of the best shooting I ever have done was ridding farmland of rats and pigeons. It would be the best fun. DW

I think some of my fondest memories of youth are shooting things at the local dump. I was lucky in that the dump was about a mile down the road, and I was gainfully employed by the local dairy farmer, so I could buy all kinds of 22 and 20 gauge shells. The dump didn't have alot of rats but there were plenty of other targets.

Anything that would float in the toxic soup at the bottom of the pit was thrown in and shot at. Bottles, cans, light bulbs and any manner of such would eventually sink with enough 22 holes through them.

When someone would dump a bunch of empty pop bottles, I would often line them up on the far bank and see how many I could bust without missing.

One cold december day I rode my bike to the dump to do some shooting and someone had dumped a sack full of puppies. There was one still alive, shivering, almost frozen like the others. I dug the puppy out of the bag and put him inside my jacket, zipped it up tight and headed for home. I got home, ran into the kitchen and opened up my jacket to show mom what I found. We both looked down at the puppy to see tiny little creatures jumping off the puppy onto me. Fleas. Mom grabbed up both of us and we were dumped into the tub and scrubbed to within an inch of our young lives.

The pup was given to my uncle on the farm and grew into a particularly ugly mutt, with a very pleasant disposition. I was banned from the dump for several months, and told never to bring anything home again.

Jim

An old-fashioned garbage dump was indeed a magical place for a youngster. It stirred the imagination, sparked creativity, and couldn't be damaged. Most kids survived them with little more than an occasional bruise, sprained ankle, or a brief case of lockjaw from cuts received from rusty objects.

Dumps were not the only fun place. In the early 1960's, We lived near Lakehurst, New Jersey. My father's pal Smitty rented a big old farm house outside of town that had a some huge chicken houses out back. These were about 30 feet wide and 200 feet long. The menfolk would set up a car or two with headlamps aimed down the loong back side of one hen house with lawn chairs on either side of the cars. When it started to get dark, the rats came out. After a few minutes, someone would turn the car headlamps on and the shootin' would commence. After the rats missed had vanished back under the building, the beer drinking would re-commence. About 10 minutes later, the rats would forget the recent blast-fest and the fun would begin again. I was too small to shoot, but I got to turn the car lights on.