A sub-12ft/lb airgun paired with a night vision scope provides a highly effective means of controlling rats around farmyards and even in the garden. However, there are times when the fidgety nature of these disease-spreading rodents can make incredibly frustrating work of shooting them. Bait can provide the solution.
Offering rats a free meal is often all it takes to persuade them to stop for long enough for you to take an accurate shot. Apart from ensuring a stationary target, free offerings of bait can also help you to encourage rats to linger in places where they offer safe shots. Also, if you don’t have a fancy night vision scope with a laser rangefinder, you can pace out the distance between your bait spots and your shooting position and know exactly what distance you’re shooting over when rats turn up to feed.
Using bait for rat shooting can be as simple as grabbing a handful of whatever it is they are eating on your shooting permission – maybe corn or animal feed – and placing one or two heaps of it along their runs. There are usually better options, though, and smelly baits often give the best results. It is also important to use bait that is either in liquid form or very small particles – otherwise, rats are likely to grab a mouthful and dart off.
Convenient baits for rat shooting include barbecue sauce and garlic mayonnaise. Both these baits are clean and easy to transport in their plastic bottles and squirting a few dollops along rat runs couldn’t be simpler.
Over recent years, I have had brilliant results using breadcrumbs. All I do is take stale slices from an old loaf and blitz them in a food processor. I make my breadcrumbs really fine so rats have to stop if they want to get a decent mouthful. I was surprised by just how quickly rats home in on breadcrumbs, and they have worked well wherever I have tried them. I usually transport my breadcrumbs in a freezer bag, and they can be stored for ages in the freezer.
Below top: Breadcrumbs make an excellent rat bait that is clean and easy to store and transport
Below bottom: This rat was shot after it fell for the attraction of a pile of breadcrumbs
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Cat food is one of the best bait I have ever used for rat shooting – the rodents just can’t resist its smelly, fishy aroma. This is another bait that needs to go through a food processor to turn it into a runny soup that rats have to stop to eat.
Preparing liquidised cat food is a smelly job, which doesn’t always go down well in a domestic kitchen. My usual ruse is to prepare large batches when my wife isn’t around and store them in the feeder ready for my shooting trips. I usually keep liquidised cat food in old plastic drink bottles. This tends to keep the stinking oily liquid contained until I squeeze it out in small heaps around ratty areas.
Below top: Store liquidised cat food in a plastic bottle and it's clean to transport and easy to squirt along rat runs
Below bottom: Shot rats around a productive heap of liquidised cat food
If you are prepared to pay for a highly effective rat bait, Rat Jam – available from Practical Pest Control on Facebook – is well worth a try. I was sent a bucket of this in the post for testing last year and it really did work. It appears to be a fermented blend of small grains and other syrupy goodies, and the resulting slop is irresistible to rats.
Whatever bait you decide to try for your rat shooting outings, you need to put it in places where rats are active – it won’t simply lure them out to places where they don’t want to be. For best results, place it close to their burrows or along busy runs – and remember to ensure there is a safe backstop behind your bait spots.
Using bait to stop skittish rodents in their tracks is a simple and highly effective way to shoot more rats with your airgun. Give it a go – it can be an absolute gamechanger.
Below: Rat Jam is a readymade bait that rats find addictive
Article first published 30th September 2025
