Dispatching with a pellet gun...

I am new to raising rabbits...again, I did raise rabbits maybe 30 years ago but am coming back to it.
I just butchered 2 Sat and dispatched then with a .22 cal rifle. Is there a reason the pellet gun is better?

I have a pellet pistol but worry it may not kill them as quickly as the .22.

Pellets just cost less. A .22 is fine too- we always have a .22 as backup, loaded and ready to go.

Lowell":h3hyi78h said:

I am new to raising rabbits...again, I did raise rabbits maybe 30 years ago but am coming back to it.
I just butchered 2 Sat and dispatched then with a .22 cal rifle. Is there a reason the pellet gun is better?

I have a pellet pistol but worry it may not kill them as quickly as the .22.

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Both work fine for the job. You need to be especially careful using the .22 because it has more power and that increases the possibility of ricochet. Some of us, here in Canada, use pellet guns to avoid having to jump through the hoops needed to own a firearm. Some people on both sides of the border use pellet guns because they are inside city or town limits and cannot use a firearm there. Both are very acceptable methods of dispatching rabbits.

MaggieJ":3dcvyxx8 said:

Some people on both sides of the border use pellet guns because they are inside city or town limits and cannot use a firearm there.

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Funny you should say that, had the cops swarm the house a few weeks back, because of a report of shots fired. My brother, big black man, tried to explain to 4 cops 9pm at night, guns draw, that they seriously must have the wrong house, because no one on this property even owns a firearm.

Pretty much what was covered pellet guns or air soft guns are safer, easier to get, legal in more areas, cheaper, and also quieter. For $40 and no licensing or training I can get a pellet rifle and fire it about anywhere so quietly my stepdad (I use my mom's farm) who is totally against butchering rabbits can't hear it at the house from behind some trees in the pasture. The pellets are so soft I squished one in to a misshapen pile of lead loading it at an angle one day with just my own hand strength. That was fun taking the gun apart to retrieve but I think ricochet would be lower since they will probably just squish in to the shape of whatever they hit. They are also not lethal in most cases of accidental gun shot which is good with the dogs bouncing around while I'm shooting rabbits. While I am very careful and an accident would mean another surgery for that darn akita who's reached a $5000 dog it probably wouldn't even go through the muscle. If I get to raising larger livestock (I want nigerian dwarf goats) and have to dispatch with an actual gun dogs will be confined for safety. I'm hoping to save for a captive bolt gun though.

Thanks for the quick and helpful replies. I'm sure more questions will come up and now I know where I can get them answered!!

Bringing this back to the top. Found this while doing a search here on this topic. After looking at various methods I decided this is the route I want to go for dispatching my meat rabbits. I looked at the cervical dislocator tools from each company but I just don't want to spend somewhere from $50-$100. Perhaps if I were 'large scale'. But I already have two pellet rifles and a tin of 250 pellets is a couple bucks. From the discussion I've read in this thread it seems that it is quick and as humane as it gets.

For the folks that use pellets, do you find one in particular works better for you? I have the pointed type as well as the hollow point type.

Thank you

Hm, would be interesting what minimum energy a pellet rifle should have, but somewhere in another thread someone planned to use a .17 air pistol. Don't remember how that worked out.
I used a .22lr pistol a way back, definitly overkill, but there was quite some bloodshot meat in the neck area. Bopping works ok, and I always keep that as fast backup method if something goes wrong, but I built a spring captive bolt gun last year, and now that's my method of choice.
Only for rabbits that would freak out when being held I'm going to use my .22, 40J PCP pellet air rifle (overkill, again :roll, at minimum distance for the scope (about 4-5m)

As for pellets, I would prefer the heavier ones, with better penetration. Hollow point imho doesn't work at this energies anyway, the point of an expanding bullet would be to slow the bullet faster and creat a big wound channel in soft tissue, and reduce penetration. Ok for supersonic rifle rounds on big game, but here you just want to punch a neat hole through the skull, and if possible all the way through.

Here's what I've got on hand at the moment:

Crosman .177 7.4 grain pointed.

Crosman .177 7.9 grain Destroyer EX

Crosman .177 7.9 grain Hollow Point

I have both a Crosman 760 Pumpmaster and Bear River Sportsman 900. YT has video of varmints being taken with the Crosman 760 Pumpmaster which fires pellets up to 600fps. So at the point-blank-range that you'd use to dispatch a rabbit I would think it would do what was needed instantly.

600fps with 7,9grain would be 8,4 joules, so most likely, with "up to" lighter pellets were used, that rifle is one of the 7,5 joule class. Imho should do nicely.

I would stick to the heavier pellets, although I don't think it makes any difference in the outcome.

I have a Crosman 1088 pistol that shoots pellets and BB's, caliber .177, 8 shot magazine. It's a great gun and works well, much easier to handle than a rifle. I use pointed pellets and it works first shot nearly every time. There has been one bun here and there that require a second shot but that's just me missing the sweet spot.

The only problem I have is finding a place to get them serviced or fixed. I have two of them, one leaks at the cylinder and the other seems to have lost power for some reason. However, when they work they are great and very accurate.

Appreciate it.

So I'm thinking that the best spot, from what I've read and watched, is on top of the head just behind the ears and angled downward towards the jaw? Sound about right?

SEP board":2zc7uyb1 said:

Appreciate it.

So I'm thinking that the best spot, from what I've read and watched, is on top of the head just behind the ears and angled downward towards the jaw? Sound about right?

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Yes, or toward the nose. You can feel where the skull ends behind the ears. You want to put the gun right below that point.

Miss M":39m7xweu said:

SEP board":39m7xweu said:

Appreciate it.

So I'm thinking that the best spot, from what I've read and watched, is on top of the head just behind the ears and angled downward towards the jaw? Sound about right?

Click to expand...

Yes, or toward the nose. You can feel where the skull ends behind the ears. You want to put the gun right below that point.

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Thank you. I'm looking at next week so we'll see how well it goes. I have two pellet rifles so I'll have the second one ready to go just in case there is a problem with the first one. I don't anticipate a problem though. These rifles are capable of 600-800 fps and cleanly dispatching small game at distance so point blank shouldn't be an issue unless they move at the last second.

Hm, my second is the back of my Glock army knife, essentiallay a flat steel bar with a good grip, if I have the feeling that something went wrong I whack the head several times, that's way faster than grabbing another gun.

Dispatched the kindle this morning. I used a Crosman Pumpmaster 760 with Crosman Destroyer .177 caliber pellets. This rifle can be pumped up to 10 times with a minimum of 3 pumps. I chose 8 pumps and it delivered an instantaneous kill each time. There was the expected twitching and kicking for perhaps 20 seconds or so but the eye test showed they were dispatched as soon as I pressed the trigger. There were no exit wounds that I saw so 8 delivered an instantaneous kill without over-penetration. I don't know if 8 was the magic number for this particular rifle but I stuck with it for each dispatch.

This may or maybe no help but here it goes. I have only dispatched one rabbit so far. As test of my ability and the family willingness to eat the meat. And the wife being the biggest problem for me. And her words after she tried the meat was " that was the best meat she has had". I fried it up with no seasoning due to I wanted a true taste test. The kid and I loved it also.

As far as the dispatch method would depend on how much of the rabbit you really want to use. The broomstick method is what I used. It is a quick clean kill, the rabbit was dead before it knew what was going on. The only problem to this method is that it bruises the meat on the top portion of the neck. The pellet gun is going to destroy the skull so no saving that. The best method I saw used was a stunning blow to the back of the head then hung and throat cut asap. This would save the skull and neck meat.

Here is the video that I am referring too. For the best saveable amount.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotatio ... OkXszeclxs