Night Time Varmint Hunt!
If you want to shoot varmint, grab a light and get out while they're out!
                                                                                         Jim Chapman
In this series of photos you see a large male beaver that was sitting out in the middle of the slough feeding, in the second frame you see the reflection of a .25 caliber pellet as it drops right down the ear. In the third frame he rolls over dead on the spot, no motion or kicking it was a perfect kill shot on this big 65+ lb animal
It makes sense that if you want to hunt animals or control pests that are active at night, you have to be out at night to see them. Hunting game animals with artificial lights is illegal almost everywhere, however a large number of states allow pest and varmints to be shot at night with the use of lights. And it is both productive and a lot of fun.
   I had an invite to meet up with a couple of friends (Terry Tate and Eric Henderson) out in East Texas for a nightime varmint shoot on Terry’s property. The feeders and corn bins were being raided by raccoons and possums, and his stock ponds and dams were being torn apart by beavers. Our method was to cruise the area in a utility with a spot light, and when we saw eyes in the trees or a shape running through the fields we’d jump out and take off on foot.
   It works well to hunt with a shooter and a spotlighter because you can cover a larger area and cycle the gun, aim, and shoot without loosing the visual contract with your quarry. We had a blast bouncing down the road, and quickly spotted a possum hightailing it across a pasture. But as the night progressed we found more possums, lots of raccoons, and more beavers than I’d ever seen before in such a short span of time.
We drove into the areas on a small ATV the got out and patrolled the waters by foot searching for these destructive wood eaters. Out on Terrys property they have caused extensive damage due to undermining the stock ponds, burrowing into the dams, and gnawing down the surrounding willow trees.

The rig I used on this trip was my .25 caliber Marauder in the Chavka laminate stock, with Terry controlling a handheld spot light. This is a legal means of shooting varmint and pest species in Texas, and is very effective!
Lights are a requirement for night time hunting in most cases; some times when there is snow on the ground there’s enough ambient light from the moon and stars to shoot without artificial light, but generally either a handheld or scope mounted light is used. A red or amber filter seems to be less disturbing to the animals, but still causes their eyes to glow. Since this hunt I’ve been using the BSA Laser Genetics hand held and scope mounted lights, and these things are incredible. There is very little attenuation of the highly focused light, and varmint and predators don’t seem to realize their being lighted up. One of the cool things about a light is that it’s easy to watch the flight of the pellet as it leaves the gun on route to its target.
I switched over to the Crosman Nitro Piston .25 caliber to shoot this possum as he ran for cover. This spring piston airgun has enough power to take a medium sized animal, and I shot both possum and raccoon with on this outing.
.22 and .25, springer and pcp, all worked well as long as the shot was good, head shots worked best. All of these pest species are very tough!
Terry Tate used his Marauder .22 with a scope mounted light to shoot three possums in a row ... a time when a multishot has some real advantage. These animals can be tenacious, but three well placed head shots did the trick!
The sheer numbers of varmint on this property blew me away. One night we shoot seven or eight raccoons, five possums, and four beavers. We had been trying to bag a coyote or two but nothing came into the call, I wonder if it was the scarcity of coyotes that led to the high populations of everything else?
There were a lot of coons around, they had been ripping up the feed and corn bins, getting nice and plump along the way. Lamping up in the trees was the most productive approach for raccoons. You sweep the light through the branches from a hundred yards away looking for the glow of eyes, then move over to the spot as fast as you can for the shot. This big old boar raccoon was about 40 feet up and dropped down stone dead with a well placed head shot.
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