By Will Dabbs, MD
The drive to hunt is as old as mankind. Whether it be for subsistence, trophies, or simple unvarnished sport, such is hardwired into our DNA. Well-heeled adventurers shell out thousands of dollars to trek around the globe hunting big, toothy creatures that are fully capable of killing them. By contrast, as a lad of 10, I pursued the deadliest animals on earth right outside of town armed solely with an air rifle, a flashlight, and an indefatigable iron will.
The Prey
Google claims that snakes are the world’s most lethal animals these days, accounting for around 138,000 human victims per annum. Rabid dogs are number two at 59,000. Crocodiles, also known as “flat dogs” in Africa, gank about 1000. Elephants, hippos, and lions collectively do in about 1,300 people in the same period. The game I hunted as a child made all of them look like housebroken kittens by comparison.
In the 14th century, some 50 million people perished due to the Black Death. This particularly vile flavor of Bubonic Plague was transmitted by fleas that themselves hitchhiked on black rats. Of all of God’s malevolent creations, none short of man has wreaked more carnage than the humble rat.
Rattus rattus is the high-brow term. Scientists tell us these Old World rats first originated in Asia before circumnavigating the globe aboard the sailing vessels of antiquity. They are now ubiquitous. They are also, as a species, unkillable. That’s not to say I haven’t tried.
The Setting
I grew up in the Mississippi Delta. My best friend’s dad sold insurance. His mom taught me third grade. They were some of the finest human beings ever to have drawn breath. As a side hustle, this man also raised pigs. This is the Deep South. Folks do stuff like that down here. He had an acre or so outside of town fenced off into pig pens and populated with the biggest swine on Planet Earth. No kidding, these things looked like giant pink rhinos. I was terrified of them.
On the little pig farm was an old shotgun house, so named for its distinctive central hallway. Were one to fire a shotgun in the front, the shot bolus would come out the back unmolested so long as both doors were open. This particular example had been abandoned some years before and was now used to store bulk pig food.
The Bait
The abandoned shotgun house in question had the front wall torn out for ease of access. The pig food came in giant sacks arranged upon wooden pallets in what had formerly been somebody’s living space. The interior was dark and eerie.
The rats were absolutely everywhere. There was shelter, privacy, and protein aplenty. It was like some sprawling, thriving rat-topia.
In addition to the obvious ick factor, these long-tailed monsters also ate a fair amount of pig food. My friend’s dad grew weary of such pilferage and enlisted the assistance of his two favorite professional hunters. Now with a holy mandate, my unwashed buddy and I girded our loins.
The Gear
Slopping the pigs was a daily chore every evening after work. Even today, I retain a mental image of the man in his dress slacks and high-topped rubber boots out doing pig maintenance. My buddy and I tagged along to hunt the rats.
My primary weapon was a Powerline 880 .177-caliber pellet rifle. Back in 1976, this lethal implement ran about 30 bucks. That was some serious coin in those days. It was, in fact, all that Santa could manage at the time. For me, however, it might as well have been a bespoke Holland and Holland double rifle.
One had to load lead pellets one at a time via a right-sided loading port. Power came from 10 pumps of the under-barrel charging lever. There was obviously some kind of safety valve that kept the thing from exploding in the face of youthful over-exuberance.
We pursued these yellow-toothed vermin deep into their sinister lair. There was no power in the house. As a result, my buddy and I saved up our yard-mowing money and each bought a plastic C-cell flashlight. These we affixed to the barrels of our pellet rifles with electrician’s tape. I was rocking an onboard weapon light long before Charging Charlie Beckwith’s Delta Force operators got the memo. Shod only in t-shirts, cutoff jeans, and Keds sneakers, my buddy and I stalked into the Heart of Darkness.
The Hunt
You could hear them scurrying about in the dark. We entered the structure side-by-side, providing mutual cover, doing a respectable job of Close Quarters Battle [CQB]—if I say so myself. It didn’t take long to make contact with the enemy.
Connecting while the quarry was on the move was an exercise in frustration. The best technique was to enter a room quietly and then sprawl out on the floor to surveil the area underneath the wooden pallets with our weapon lights. We were greeted with dozens of pairs of evil red eyes.
In the semi-darkness, the sights were little more than ballast. Managing the fall of shot was a function of experience, instinct, and repetition. Fortunately, my buddy and I had all of that in abundance. After our first outing, we were both reliably deadly out to about 10 meters.
The ideal clean kill was a .177-caliber Crosman Super-Pell between the eyes. Super Pells came in red and black tins and sported flat heads and malleable lead skirts. At 10 meters or less, they were pure, unfiltered death on the furry vermin menace.
We killed scads of those things. It was a veritable rodent genocide. We were so effective that his dad helped underwrite our ammunition expenses. I honestly don’t know if I have ever had so much fun.
Sportsman’s Etiquette
Lamentably, not all of our kills were clean. I once hit a big bull rat in the hindquarters, a glancing shot at best. Now wounded and desperate, the vile beast scampered across the room and tore past us into the sunlight, startling me mightily in the process. My buddy and I immediately gave chase.
The wounded rat dove into the tall grass in front of the old derelict house. He moved like a dolphin, becoming visible only momentarily as he leapt forward above the thick foliage. We tried to get a shot to no avail. And then he inadvertently jumped headlong into the pig pen.
Before we could react, the enormous swine were on him. They tore his furry little carcass to pieces before my eyes, fighting for every scrap of stringy meat. From that point forward, I made a point not to wander inadvertently into the pig pen myself. I also strive mightily not to ponder that episode unduly whenever I enjoy a couple of slices of nice crispy bacon today.
Ruminations
Much has transpired since those heady days of summer chasing rats around the pig farm. Despite feeding my adrenaline addiction on multiple continents, nowadays I suppose I am myself functionally domesticated. However, my happy place yet remains wandering about my rural Mississippi farm with my woman on one arm and my weapon on the other. All that began nearly half a century ago with a pair of uncouth savages tearing about a pig farm with pellet rifles, stalking rats.
