A little light work

The ratting season is in full swing, when the farmyard offers easy pickings and decent night-vision kit helps Mat Manning clean up

- Mat Manning

Late autumn into early winter is when my farmyard ratting rounds start to really pick up. It’s a very busy time, when I put in regular night shifts in an effort to keep the annual influx of rodents at bay, and it seems to come around quicker every year.

A sub-12ft/lb airgun really is the perfect tool for controlling rats around farm buildings. It’s quiet and its relatively low power means that, with care, it can be used in confined spaces and close to livestock and machinery. How far you need to go in terms of technology and outlay boils down to what you can afford and what you need. A cheap, spring-powered airgun kitted out with a scope-mounted lamp will do a perfectly good job at thinning out an infestation of rats. But a recoilless PCP (precharged) coupled with night-vision optics will do a far more efficient job.

Splashing out £1,500 on a top-end airgun, then the best part of £1,000 on optics, just to whack a few rats probably sounds preposterous to most people — and, in many cases, they would be right. There’s no point in bankrupting yourself in the name of pest control, but investing in this kind of gear can be justified if you do a lot of ratting and can afford the outlay, without sacrificing more important things.