Shooting rats around the farm is one of my favourite ways to while away autumn and winter nights. Although modern infrared and thermal gunsights have their place, you don’t have to splash out on this expensive equipment to get in on the action. I spent many years using only lamping tactics to shoot rats and rabbits after nightfall – it’s a much cheaper approach and it works as well now as it ever did.
I’ve been using the Richter Optik Gunlight and Illuminator kit for my farmyard lamping sessions over recent weeks and have been very impressed with it. The comprehensive kit has an RRP of just £89.95. It comes in a hard case, inside which you will find the compact lamp / torch, its mount, two 18650 rechargeable batteries and charger, plus a remote swich that attaches to your gun’s forend. You also get a selection of LED elements, which can quickly be swapped over to give you a choice of white, red and green light. There is even an IR module which converts the torch to an infrared illuminator for use with a digital day and night scope.
Arriving at the farm just before nightfall, I quickly spotted lots of signs of ratty activity around the main grain store. The yard was very muddy from recent rainfall, so I was glad to have a decent pair of boots on. Apart from making the going very wet underfoot, all that rain had also pushed up the water level in nearby streams and ditches, driving the rodents onto the higher ground around the farm. The new arrivals had obviously been busy as the exterior wall along one side of the grain store was riddled with their burrows.
It can be difficult to get clear shots at fidgety rats that refuse to keep still. The solution to this problem is to offer them some tempting bait. Liquids and fine particles work best as rats can’t just grab a chunk and run off with it. Breadcrumbs that have been very finely blitzed in a food processor can be a very effective holding bait, and I placed a few heaps along likely looking areas between 10 and 25 metres from where I was planning to settle in.
Eager to get cracking, and with the light beginning to fade, I set about readying my kit. Using a pile of wooden stakes as a handy workbench, I clamped the lamp to my Richter Optik Exact scope and then loaded up the magazine of my Walther Rotex RM8 UC. This compact and affordable PCP air rifle is a great choice for ratting – its rugged build construction means it stands up well to the odd bump and its side bolt driven eight-shot magazine makes for fuss-free reloading in the dark.
The RM8 is not a particularly pellet-fussy air rifle but it shoots exceptionally well with H&N Baracuda 8 pellets. While lots of shooters go to all sorts of lengths to make their airgun more accurate, the best starting point is to pair it with good ammo that suits its barrel. The RM8 / Baracuda 8 pairing is working very well for me.
With night beginning to set in, I set up my backpack stool inside a barn where I could cover the rat-infested bank out in the yard and the route the rodents were using to access the grain. My Primos Trigger Stick Tripod was placed in front of the seat to provide a welcome support for my gun. Being recoilless, the Rotex RM8 is deadly accurate when taking rested shots like this.
Darkness gradually closed in around me, prompting the resident tawny owls to start calling as they headed out on their own hunting rounds. I flicked on the Richter Optik Gunlight’s beam every so often to scan for signs of my quarry. I usually allow a gap of around five minutes between switching off and lighting back up to give rats time to settle on the bait, and it wasn’t long before I saw the burning glow of a pair of ratty eyes reflecting the red lamplight back at me.
Just as I had hoped, the greedy rodent was tucking into one of my bread heaps. Having paced out the distance between my seat and the bait spots at the start of the session, I knew the shot was about 20 metres. Working from a 30 metre zero, it needed a touch of hold-under, which was easily calculated and applied thanks to the Richter Optik Exact scope’s Mil Dot reticle.
I thumbed off the Walther’s safety catch, made a final adjustment to my aim and squeezed through the trigger. The pap from the RM8’s silencer was immediately followed by a solid smack as a well-placed Baracuda 8 connected with the rodent’s skull. The rat rolled over and expired next to the bait spot with one final flick of its scaly tail.
It wasn’t long before I was back in action as a rat settled on another of my free offerings. Again, it wasn’t bothered by the lamp’s soft red beam and, thanks to the support of the Trigger Stick and the precision of the Walther Rotex RM8 / H&N Baracuda 8 combo, it met with the same fate as the first one.
The first hour or so proved to be a busy time, although things slowed down as my tally crept into double figures. I don’t think the dwindling activity had anything to do with the rats being bothered by the lamplight, I simply think it was down to the fact that I had made a dent in their numbers. Action came to a complete standstill after the night’s total hit 13 – an unlucky number for the rats – so I decided to try another spot for a couple more hours.
Before moving on, I gathered up the shot rats ready for disposal on the farm’s fire site. Again, the Richter Gunlight came in very useful for this task. Taken out of its mount and used it as a handheld torch, it gave me a welcome source of illumination for retrieving the corpses.
I don’t do anything like as much lamping as I used to, but I really have enjoyed my outings using this back to basics approach. Apart from being less expensive than using night vision or thermal, it is also much simpler and quicker to set up.
Although the light from a gun-mounted lamp can put rats on edge – especially after heavy shooting pressure – there are ways around it, and one is to change the colour of the beam. I used the white LED for my first few outings with the Richter Optik Gunlight. The compact torch runs Cree XP2 LEDs and can cast a 250 lumen beam out to 300 metres. You don’t need that amount of illumination for rat shooting, and the focusable beam means you can make it softer – it also allows you to swap between a tight spotlight for long-range work and a wide flood for close-up tasks like reloading. I managed three or four sessions before the rats grew suspicious of the white beam, but swapping over to the red LED module soon got me back on track. When they become wary of that, I’ll move over to the green and will just keep mixing it up.
GUN: Walther Rotex RM8 UC https://www.bisley-uk.com/
SCOPE: Richter Optik Exact 3-9x42 AO https://www.richterscopes.com/
LAMP: Richter Optik Gunlight and Illuminator Kit https://www.richterscopes.com/
MOUNTS: Sportsmatch two-piece https://www.sportsmatch-uk.com/
AMMO: H&N Baracuda 8 https://www.hn-sport.de/en
BOOTS: Aigle Parcours II Vario https://www.bisley-uk.com/
