The Bug Blaster

[Nueces]

Some of you will recall magazine articles from years ago, titled “Silly Safaris,” or something like that. Backyard grasshopper hunts, and so on. When I was a grad student, I lived in a garage apartment next to a brushy urban drainage, full of cockroaches. Mental health evenings would be spent depopulating the roaches, using candlewax bullets in primer-only cases in my Model 19. Little purple splats on the rocks. Softly scented breeze carrying away the perfume from the wax. Hard reset of the little gray cells. To the end of her life, my Mother loved to tell folks about her roach hunter son.

Gave it up long ago, especially indoors, where the splats were tough to get off of lampshades and painted walls. Times, however, do change. One of Dad’s roles is Bug Killer. My ladies are fruit eaters and the drosophilae melanogaster (aka, fruit flies) have moved in with us. A cup of juice or cola, left out for days, will slowly accumulate swimmers and a few bank walkers, which may be harvested with a vacuum cleaner. Fairly effective but lacking in elegance. Certainly deficient in proper Bug Killer MoJo.

Well, Bunkie, you can have it all back, and more, with a way-cool widget I found on eBay (none there now). www.bugblaster.net Honcho is Martin Jenson, a Utah farmer and inventor. I have his permission to share this and use his photos.

This thing has a short spout that is inserted into the muzzle of a bb or pellet gun. Attachment is by bungee cord around the front sight. Fill the ‘magazine’ with table salt and each shot meters a blast of salt grains that more than does the job. I use a Walther PP CO2 BB pistol, with the bungees through the trigger guard. Range is short, but useful. Mine will shred a tissue held a foot from the muzzle. The BC of a salt grain is 0.0023, so you still need to sneek up on ‘em. Hunting ethics apply. Not for use where fruit flies are endangered.

177 and 22 versions are made, but not for spring guns. Advise Martin on your application and he will, at no charge, customize to make sure it’ll work for you. When warmer weather brings back the wasps, I’ll try it on big game. Much safer than poisons, especially with the barn swallow nest on the back porch.

Now, when the “Bug Killer!” call is sounded, all gather to watch and wonder. The girls now have more to tell their friends than “Dad wears the same clothes every day.” It’s another step toward reclaiming men’s rightful role in the family.

Enjoy, Mark

[Halfbreed]

I use to use a .177 cal pellet gun with generic q tip ends broken off, dunked in water to load and shoot at bees, wasps and horse flys, the end result was usually a big ole spit wad with legs sticking out from under the q-tip. 15 feet was a descent range, just keep a good evacuation plan, like feet don't fail me now route. :drinks:
Halfbreed

[Curly James]

I want one! My wife already thinks I'm crazy for tryin' to kill a flying squirrel in the house was a Red Ryder BB gun a few years ago. Wait till she and the neighbors see me running aorund in the yard blastin' salt at the flies and bees and such. Sides, we have these big ole angry yellow hornets here. I'm thinking vengeance is mine with this gizmo. I have lots of CO2 guns left from when the girls were young. CJ

[Nueces]

Halfbreed,

Now that you mentioned it, I used to do the same thing! 'Cept I'd angle cut the Q-tip to make a pair of darts. One of those lab Q-tips with the 6" wooden stem was the berries. If a couple of us were in the physics lab in the wee hours, we'd make up some darts and tape a piece of brass tube to the nozzle of a trigger air gun. Could shoot through corrugated cardboard.

As a bare-foot kid in South Texas, we'd carry a Coke bottle of gasoline around to soak the red ant beds. Stand off and shoot a kitchen match out of a BB rifle. Pop! Whoof! This was not simple meanness, but payback. More than once had I levitated from my comfortable seated position in the soft dust, with ants taking niblets out of my tender butt. My relationships with obnoxious insects have suffered to this day. :mrgreen:

Mark

[Nueces]

Hey, Curly, whaddya think about starting an insect trophy postal match? :drinks:

[longhorn]

My 24-year old still comments in wonder (and respect) about "Dad shooting the mouse" -he was 2 or so. Piece of cake, really, a 15ft headshot with an RWS 6G and a target pellet. When I was twelve or so, kitchen matches were a favorite from a Crossman .22 pneumatic pistol-did need a bucket of water handy, though. Q-tips are great for wasps, but slow on the reload--wear your running shoes.

[Nueces]

Many thanks be to all of you for fessing up to this stuff. Your replies will be useful if a pencil-neck ADA tries someday to make me look crazy, on the stand. :mrgreen:

[NVcurmudgeon]

Now that I know that the neighbors are cool, I can use my CZ .22 LR discretely jfor ground squirrel contol. That leaves the Sheridan Blue Streak, formerly the CA urban crow killer, idle. But here's a trick I learned from Nevada Duke. For black widows, pump up the Sheridan just a few pumps and don't load a pellet. Get the muzzle close to the spider, and fire what is called a "slug" of air in the submarine service. If you have good eyes, you might find a leg or two! Sheridan doesn't recommend this practice, but for one or two black widows a year, it seems to do no harm.

[Scrounger]

Now that I know that the neighbors are cool, I can use my CZ .22 LR discretely jfor ground squirrel contol. That leaves the Sheridan Blue Streak, formerly the CA urban crow killer, idle. But here's a trick I learned from Nevada Duke. For black widows, pump up the Sheridan just a few pumps and don't load a pellet. Get the muzzle close to the spider, and fire what is called a "slug" of air in the submarine service. If you have good eyes, you might find a leg or two! Sheridan doesn't recommend this practice, but for one or two black widows a year, it seems to do no harm.


Bill, buy some cleaning pellets for spiders and roaches. Protects the gun's air system, strong enough to kill the vermin, yet won't travel far or penetrate anything stronger than tissue paper. The modern day equivalent of the schoolboy's spitwad.

[redneckdan]

whadda you guys recommend fer drunken frat boys?:twisted: the two across the hall tend to get rowdy on the weekends.

[NVcurmudgeon]

Scrounger, thanks for the tip. I didn't know they made cleaning pellets. Only had that Sheridan for eight years, guess it's time to read the instructions!

[Curly James]

Okay Nueces,

Can we have a category for dangerous game? You know, largest hour glass on a black widow, longest stinger in the hornet. The really brave guys will take them as they charge, without the wife standing back up with a big gun (flyswatter).

Plains game can be the roaches, siver fish and ants. You know, those crawlers you see when you open the kitchen cabinet doors. Uh... maybe I better call the exterminator. I just realized I'm running a game preserve. CJ

[Nueces]

Hey, Curly, thanks for the chuckles

Mark

[Nueces]

Redneckdan,

You could buy 'em each one and tell 'em "go ahead and have fun, they're harmless." :mrgreen:

Mark

[scrapcan]

As a kid we did lots of bug hunt'n ( ever see the little rascals episode where spanky was shooting bugs with a cork Gun).

We used rolled up cigarette butts. Not sure I would do that now knowing what all exciting ills we can get from others. But hey as a kid they rolle dup nicely and fit in the muzzle of a crossman 760. Spitballs, qtips, and just about anything else was propelled out of the 760. And then we go at co2 rifle. We tried all the seeds in the spice cabinet, some are just right and when they hit they leave a dust. Took awhile to be ratted out, but soon enough they found out how the corriander, cookie sprinkles, and who knows what else got on the walls.

Anyway I was thinking you could make one of those by using a brass tube and making a small funnel to load it with. If you put it at an angle ( angle from shooter to exit of tube) so as to pull the salt in, then the air blast would pull salt and not exit the loading tube. Think of a sand blaster, it pull sand due to air assing the inlet port, only in this instance we want a slug of salt or sugar to be propelled.

When the experimentation is done I want to see what you come up with. Remember this is not a good idea for spring guns.

[Scrounger]

Has anyone tried the 6MM Air Soft guns for this fast growing sport? Can't wait till CarpetMan takes a rattler with one of these...

[Four Fingers of Death]

whadda you guys recommend fer drunken frat boys?:twisted: the two across the hall tend to get rowdy on the weekends.


Redneckdan! good to hear from you. One way of breaking up a party is to go and offer the guys an old Australian drink from the early days of the colony. Not many Aussies know about it. Get a can of warm beer (for mixing purposes, cold beer won't work). Pour an inch or so of the warm beer in the bottom of a glass, mix in 1/2-1 oz of Gin, top up with beer at the normal temperature you drink it at. Next round, pour in a good ounce of Gin and then more as you go along. Given three or four of these, they'll be snoring away big time. :-)

It doesn't taste bad either.

I used to use this when I worked as a bouncer at a rough all night club by myself. I'd get a phone call from the bar and then I' d walk by the rowdy guy/guys and chat for a minute and then buy them a drink. I'd tell Wally the Russian barman, that the drinks were on me, they'd hoe in and generally quieten down some and and hour or two later I was helping them into a cab.

Lots of young bloods and yankee serviceman on R&R who were set to bust up the joint went home in one piece and woke up with a big headache next morning.

You have to get creative when you are by yourself and can't fight worth a spit (I was just a big strong un' who'd pick em up, smear em up against a wall if they continued with the shennagins and throw them out). Worked as a bouncer for about 6 years over a ten year period in one of the hardest clubs in town without hitting anybody.

PS, the drink's name was Dog's Nose.

[7br]

whadda you guys recommend fer drunken frat boys?:twisted: the two across the hall tend to get rowdy on the weekends.

Get the biggest freakin capacitor you can find. Charge it with a Meg Meter, and leave it on the floor next to their door.

[longhorn]

Loud, drunken neighbors? My favorite tool used to be a Wrist Rocket slingshot and peanut M&M's. Careful, they'll go right through a window (or an eye). Evidently make a hell of a noise inside the door......