I wanted to shoot yesterday

[44man]

But had a pile of logs to split first. Took all day and at the last I found a piece I forgot to split. I had a lot of trouble starting the engine every time I shut down and it seemed the engine was running hot.
I had my grandson hold the clutch lever with a stick, got it running but it stopped working. I had to tip it up to remove the bottom cover to find the belt had slipped off.
I got it back on and looked up to see a mouse nest under the head cover. Took a little panel off and picked it out. Runs great now. I didn't find a roasted mouse.
Day was gone but today I will shoot.
Anyway, watch your engines for those pesky critters.

[farmerjim]

Dirt Daubers are also bad about plugging up things around here.

[rush1886]

Couple of years back, dirt daubers decided to utilize the space under the "safety bonnet" on an acetylene bottle in the back yard. I did discover this the hard way, prior to donning my welding gloves.

[shaper]

Here is my mouse story. Son n law's 77 Chevy truck was in my shop for a week. My shop is an old chicken house and yes, there are critters in it. I finally found the electrical problem with the truck. After getting it running again I called him to come get it. It was after sundown when he left for home. Later I got a call from him. He said he got a couple miles from my place and a mouse jumped up onto the dash. Remember it is dark, he is going up hill on a winding road with a 30 foot drop off to the right. He yelled, the mouse yelled, he jumped to the left, the mouse jumped to the right and disappeared. He watched for the mouse all the way home but didn't see it anymore. The next day he pulled everything out of the cab. The mouse had built a nice nest under the seat. He vacuumed everything away but no mouse. He told some coworkers about the event and they told everyone else. One of them looked out and saw the mouse in the parking lot. Son n law ran out and moved his truck to another parking space. The mouse was seen again in his now empty parking space looking for the truck. No one would park in that space for a week. One lady got off work and called back to say she saw the mouse again leaning against the truck tire smoking a cigarette waiting for the son n law to get off work.

[DeputyDog25]

Found one of those mouse nests in my tractor engine, blasted thing had clogged up my air filter inlet.

[Nocturnal Stumblebutt]

I love splitting wood. Thankfully my wood piles aren't far from my little home shooting range so I will often spend an afternoon switching back and forth. Shoot for a half hour to an hour then split a half rick of wood, stack the wood, the back to shooting. Repeat. It makes for a wonderful fall Saturday.

also, I split with a 12 pound maul. So the frequent breaks keep me from getting worn out.

[44man]

Neighbor woman always called me to replace rubber gas lines under her car. Mice or squirrels ate them. They must get a cheap high! Dang I hate gas running down my arms. Stupid Subaru had rubber underneath.

[fecmech]

A mouse built a nest behind the intake manifold on my wife's Rav4. The way it was discovered was I had a check engine light and the engine went into "limp mode" as the mouse ate the wire off the knock sensor. The car does not get driven much and in the past I've had to change cabin air filters due to mouse nests on them. With winter comming I have put a lot of rat bait in the garage for those little suckers.

[white eagle]

fired up my quad one time and a mouse ran out from under the seat
must have just got in there no damage was done

[ShooterAZ]

Around here it's the Pack Rats you gotta watch. They will crawl into the engine compartment of your vehicle and chew on the spark plug wires. Learned to always have some spares!

[Mytmousemalibu]

This is a sore subject at my place. Along with my 40x60 shop there's a very big oak tree behind it, like the trunk must be 5ft in diameter. Well thats an endless food supply for the critters. Mice and stinkin pack rats are a battle out there. I can't count how many times i have fired up a car and blown a nest out of the exhaust. Damn things make a mess.

[Bullwolf]

Around here it's the Pack Rats you gotta watch. They will crawl into the engine compartment of your vehicle and chew on the spark plug wires. Learned to always have some spares!

My Ranch suffers from the same problem of annoying Pack Rats. The regular rats just chew on things, same with the mice... The Pack Rats will drag off a curry comb, or even an item as large as a box or open end wrench. The Pack Rats really suck.

If I leave my truck parked on the Ranch for more than a day or two, the rats often try to take it over. Have found my share of rat nests, chewed hood insulation, and stick home piles under the hood on top of the air cleaner, or in the heater/vent box, also they really like to nest in the battery box on the tractors, and so on.

Sometimes you can get lucky and find a gem in the Pack Rat stick nests. It's often an item you thought you had simply lost, or just haven't seen a while. I once found a (sealed) blister pack of moly brake pad grease in a Pack Rat nest, and other notable finds off the top of my head include a pipe & tubing cutter, a Bic lighter, a (ruined) cassette tape, and an unbroken non bio degradable clay pigeon.

My favorite rat/mouse story however doesn't involve the annoying pack rat but rather the common mouse. One of my lower neighbors, a shooting buddy who raises cattle and is closer to the county road than I, was having computer problems. He asked me to take a look at his PC to see why it was beeping, giving errors and would no longer boot up.

Turned out a mouse, or some mice had crawled into the back of the PC through an open expansion slot, and made a nest of hair on top of the CPU. At some point they decided to chew through the IDE ribbon cable on the PC. After opening up the PC and taking a look, I easily diagnosed his problem - You've got mice!



- Bullwolf

[bob208]

we have a large cherry tree between the house and drive way. every fall I dump the cherry seeds out of the air cleaners.

[funnyjim014]

I had a car towed in with a squirrel fried when she cranked it over and he was snacking on a plug wire

[GRUMPA]

98 Toyota Tacoma......Air intake.....let the truck sit for more than 24hrs and they make a nest. Every time the truck started, WHAM.....mouse nesting material got sucked right into the air filter. Take off fender, install hardware cloth and it fixed the problem....I thought.

Month or so later the mornings got cold, turn on the heater and the entire dash was shaking. Seems they were determined to nest in the truck. They were getting in the fresh air intake under the windshield for the dash fan. I must have taken that fan apart and cleaned out pinkies and nesting material half a dozen times. Finally took the dash apart (no small task) and installed hardware cloth so they couldn't get in, problem solved.....I thought.

The mice were ticked off now, so they got together, pulled there resources together and hired some of the rats. Rats came in and started eating my plug wires. Got online, did research, got some T-Rex traps.....best thing I ever bought.

97 Ford F-150..... Heard a noise late while watching TV. Cornered something large, yelled at wife to get the 22 and I blasted it's nose off. All I did was tick it off, it was livid and hissing, all I could think of was....Mr Rodent meet Mr 22 and I got another round off and that really ticked him off. He started climbing up the side of the house, right above the wood pile. Grabbed a piece of firewood and clobbered it. It was still thrashing when I grabbed it with my snake grabbers, lucky for me we had our burn barrel still going. After a few dozen laps around inside the burn barrel it finally gave up. That rat must of weighed at least 2Lbs, it had chewed branches, not twigs, off the willow tree and completely packed the engine compartment with them.

Next day I went out to clean up the branches, and low and behold there's another rodent trying to move in. Well that didn't happen, so now we have the hoods open at all times, with T-Rex traps.

Rodents are a way of life around here, and seems it always will be....

[Pumpkinheaver]

Dirt Daubers are also bad about plugging up things around here.
They can wreak havoc on an outboard motor!

[Bullwolf]

now we have the hoods open at all times

I forgot to add that Grumpa.

This is the best advice you can give if you live around rats. If you leave the hood of your vehicle up, then the rats aren't as likely to think your vehicle is a dark comfy hidey hole, and try to build a nest in it.

Took me a long time, and many of buckets of rat poison before realizing that.

Works the same with the washer and dryer too. Leave the lid open and you aren't going to find it turned into a rat nest as quickly as if you leave it closed. Rodents must feel really safe in warm and dark enclosed spaces I guess.

My washer and dryer were both housed in an outside tool shed, and I had a heck of a time keeping the rats out of them. The worst part though was having to re-wire em both because the rodents also liked chewing on the wire insulation. If you keep a car or a truck in the barn for any length of time, keeping the hood open really helps there too.

Leave something unattended long enough though, and the pack rats will likely build a roof of sticks over the top of it and move in.


- Bullwolf

[GRUMPA]

Around here Pack Rats are really something to be watchful of, same as Mud-Daubers. I used to burn the pack rat nests which consisted mostly cow pies. Did that a couple of times and let me tell you those suckers smolder for days, not recommended. At first I would tear them apart using my hands till I found out they booby-trap them with cactus thorns, not a brilliant move on my part.

When I clean out the T-Rex traps I used to just throw them out in the field to let the Ravens have them, seem they're a delicacy for the Ravens. Then I started noticing a hole just under there neck. The only thing I can think of is there's some sort of Bot fly larvae located just between the throat/chest area where the rats cant reach.

About once a year I walk the 40 acres with my shot loads for the 357mag, and I get rid of a good dozen every time.

The T-Rex traps are screwed down to a metal stake, those rats can cart them off and you'll never find them again. Seems peanut butter with a chuck of dog food works real well. We also use the smaller version called Tom Cat or the mini-rex that we bait the same way.

[starmac]

In New Mexico we always left the hoods open on the grain trucks and such that wasn't used every day or two, if you didn't you wouldn't have any plug wires left when you did decide to use it.

[Bullwolf]

When I clean out the T-Rex traps I used to just throw them out in the field to let the Ravens have them, seem they're a delicacy for the Ravens.

About once a year I walk the 40 acres with my shot loads for the 357mag, and I get rid of a good dozen every time.

The T-Rex traps are screwed down to a metal stake, those rats can cart them off and you'll never find them again. Seems peanut butter with a chuck of dog food works real well. We also use the smaller version called Tom Cat or the mini-rex that we bait the same way.


Ravens, and sometimes a lone hawk or two will follow me around like lapdogs when I mow the field with the Brush Hog behind the tractor. They fly just above and behind me keeping watch for any rodents I stir up. (sometimes literally) It's rare to not see a few mice or rats when mowing, and stomp or chop a couple up as well.

From autopsies I've performed on rat nests, and the piles of empty acorn shell they leave behind I'd say they are subsisting mainly on acorns and other seeds from the fields. They can really put some size on if they eat enough of em.

If I was keen on making my own pistol shot loads instead of buying the CCI shot capsules, I could probably clean house on rodents and crows while mowing, but I save my expensive store purchased shot loads for rattlesnakes.

I use Tomcat and Hawk bait blocks, the dark green and the lighter green blocks when I can buy the large buckets of them at the tractor supply. The dark green Tomcat blocks kill faster (3 days or so) than the lighter green Hawk, but the Tomcat is more popular and often in shorter supply.

Totally agree with you about the peanut butter. Don't remember who originally told me that Rats are suckers for peanut butter, but they were so right!

A little Jif peanut butter, and if you have dogs, mix it with a few pieces of kibble and it makes one heck of a good rodent bait. If you store feed grains, mix some of that in as well with peanut butter for your traps, as they will definitely have a taste for it. After losing a trap or two, I started to staking them down as well. The one's I didn't stake down either turned up in the strangest places far away from where they were set, or got lost for good.

For a kick, sometimes I walk around my Ranch at night. It never ceases to amaze me how many rodents are active and rattle around in the brush in the early AM hours.

Rodents wouldn't be my first choice (or second,third, or fourth either) for a food source, but they really are a large part of the food chain for many of the other animals in the area.


- Bullwolf

[TXGunNut]

I had a mouse get into my A/C evap case a few years back. Fan ground it up and blew pieces everywhere, including the resistor which singed the fur and such quite nicely. I cleaned it out as best I could but it was pretty gruesome. Still had to go most of that winter with the windows down.
Lots of horse owners around here, some swear by dryer sheets tied off under the hood to keep the mice out.

[Bullwolf]

Lots of horse owners around here, some swear by dryer sheets tied off under the hood to keep the mice out.

I'd also heard of using dryer fabric softener sheets as a rodent repellent. I tried spreading a new unopened box of Bounce brand fabric dryer sheets, around the inside my camper.

I still caught mice and rats in the traps, and saw some minor signs of nesting around the sheets, but it smelled really fresh and pleasant in the camper for for at least a year after.

Might work better on mice than it does on rats, or maybe I was just unlucky and used the wrong brand. Have heard similar stories about moth balls as a deterrent, but I haven't given that one a try yet.


- Bullwolf

[Crawdaddy]

A tree rat got under my hood and chewed up power steering hoses and the wiring going to the tranny. The day before hunting season two years ago.

They disappeared from my property. Wonder what happened?

[MaryB]

Went to move my lawnmower from the shed I store corn in for the winter(I heat with a corn stove) and Mr mouse had left me a pile of corn on top of the hood! So I opened the hood and sure enough, nest on top of the engine. Got it before any wires were chewed off thankfully. This is the last summer of having to share the grain storage area with my lawnmower so I won't be battling the mice as much! Seems like every winter I vacuum a couple into the house with my corn vac system that cleans the corn and drops it into a 15 gallon tank I use to fill a 5 gallon bucket. They run around inside the tank until they get buried and die! Then I drain it into buckets and chuck the carcasses out for the feral cats to eat.

[bobthenailer]

I thought you knew better than that ! SHOOT first then do the Work ! It has happened to me many times in the past, if you work first you don't feel like shooting afterwards. that is why I switched them around.

[Artful]

Air Power

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q09cJnH5NtQ


I'd also heard of using dryer fabric softener sheets as a rodent repellent.

Might work better on mice than it does on rats, or maybe I was just unlucky and used the wrong brand.

Have heard similar stories about moth balls as a deterrent, but I haven't given that one a try yet.

- Bullwolf

Mothballs used to have that effect on skunks and rodents but they changed the chemical formula quite some time ago and seems to have lessened the effect from my observations. Would be interesting to see about the differing brands of dryer sheets.

[44man]

Loved that video! We don't have rats here, only seen 1 in 30 years when we had horses but we have field mice. Don't see much of them either. They get in the house now and then and I don't know how. Had some in the basement so I put out poison. It was gone once but when I went to get my hunting boots out of the back room, the boot was full of the stuff. They hauled it across the basement to store it in my boot! :mrgreen:

[popper]

Met a fellow at the LGS a few years back, he was looking for a night spotting scope for coyotes. I told him about the 'night vision' camcorder. Mine worked pretty good without the illuminator, at 100 yds but I'm sure it wouldn't hold up on a 308W. I'm wondering if a GoPro might work better on the scope. Sure, you can get a NV scope but? Detectors in most cameras are good in near IR, use a filter to limit to visible. I've thought about the newer BT cameras, small, light but remote display.

[Echo]

Pack rats here in AZ. Got into my RV and my '54 Kaiser had it's ignition wires eaten up. I have to leave the drawers open on my patio casting bench - found they had been roosting in there - they hate light, so leaving the drawers open keeps them out. And I leave the hood open on Kaiser now.

[Artful]

Met a fellow at the LGS a few years back, he was looking for a night spotting scope for coyotes. I told him about the 'night vision' camcorder. Mine worked pretty good without the illuminator, at 100 yds but I'm sure it wouldn't hold up on a 308W. I'm wondering if a GoPro might work better on the scope. Sure, you can get a NV scope but? Detectors in most cameras are good in near IR, use a filter to limit to visible. I've thought about the newer BT cameras, small, light but remote display.

Best I came up with is IR Laser sighted in on the rifle - seperate Night Vision Device to locate the laser dot and put on target - no recoil to the NVD

What's good is that the price of IR / Thermal is coming down - much better technology for night use.