Nutria with the Henry .22

[Scoter]

My son put his Henry to work on some nutria in eastern NC last week. Ended up with around 30 of them. I wish there was a $6 bounty on each tail like in Louisiana.

henry22.jpeg

[HenryFan]

I thought they were a Louisiana problem, I did not know they have spread east.

[daytime dave]

Nice work on them. We have friends in NC who say they can be problematic.

I'm curious. Can / do you eat them?

[Cowboy Gun Fan]

They could be what we once had around here in SW Virginia. My cats did not like them, lol. Didn't have many, but I did not know what there were. No one else knew either when I tried to describe them. I don't mind that they are long gone.

[markiver54]

Good on your son for eliminating problematic vermin.
Welcome to the forum.

[Mags]

My son put his Henry to work on some nutria in eastern NC last week. Ended up with around 30 of them. I wish there was a $6 bounty on each tail like in Louisiana.

I'm curious what brand and .22 ammo type is being used? Always an outright kill?

I used to use CCI .22 MiniMag on nutria here. I never missed one, but the kills weren't always immediately deadly. Sometimes they would suffer bawling like cow. I could sometimes see the bullet exit the nutria leaving a bloody tracer through and under the water. I once shot a nutria that ran off leaving behind the lower jaw bone. I've since decided that .22 was not the best for taking nutria. I now use a .30-30. There have been no suffering nutria since, they are one and done.

[RetiredSeabee]

Must be the Muskrat’s bigger cousin. We had muskrats in south east Virginia when I was growing up. They weren’t much of a problem that I knew of.
But I can see where a version of them on steroids could be troublesome.
I think the new CCI uppercut 22 lr. Might be a good round to put them out of your misery.

[markiver54]

I remember muskrats as a boy living on the east coast.

[BrokenolMarine]

We had issues with Nutria our last years in VA, fishing in the reservoirs, lakes and even ponds around us. Our friend owned a 500 acre Black Angus farm and the Nutria were destroying his four ponds on the farm, digging into the dams at the water lines. He told me to shoot every one I saw. I always had either the .45 or .40 along for Coyotes, as they would take a calf if they could get them young, away from the moms, and they were fair game as well. The main pond held trophy bass, so in exchange for permission to fish his farm ponds, we performed some vermin control.

The reason we loved the pond so much, Tina's trophy bass, 25-1/4".
Yes, catch, photo, and release. She caught the same bass about a year later at 26". Markings matched exactly.

twenty five and a quarter inches.jpg

(I caught a 28" bass in the pond!)
One of our Charity Volunteers, that boy could cast like a pro at 16!

farm pond 111226 057a.jpg

Look along the bank behind him. The dark circles you see in the leaves are nutria tunnels, and there are more at or just below the water line. When we shot them, we dropped them in the pond. They didn't go to waste. The catfish and turtles made quick work of them.

[Mags]

...
I think the new CCI uppercut 22 lr. Might be a good round to put them out of your misery.

Not sure how those would work out in a rifle. They are optimized rounds for pistols with barrels 2.5 to 4". I might have a concern with the nose skiving of the bullet causing them to expand prematurely while still inside the longer rifle barrel.

[update:] I did find a video by plinkster-22. Most of the video is about shooting in semi-auto 22s. He did briefly shoot the upper cut out of 16 inch barreled rifle. At the end of the video he shared the gel results. The bullet petals pretty much disintegrated on impact. He indicated he thought, out of a 16inch barrel, the bullet was traveling 1400fps.
These might shred a nutria killing it outright, putting 'them out of my misery'.

So now to find some, so far nobody instore or online has them that I can see.