In the early 20th Century single-shot bolt-action and rollingblock 22s became inexpensive enough for for every family to have one. The main targets were owls and hawks because they preyed on chickens at a time when these fowls were a very important food source. My family in the 1950s had a horror of hawks and would drop everything to get a shot, even though I never saw one bother our chickens. So many hawks and owls were killed in the 1920s that rat populations exploded in Erath County. Individual farms held rat-hunts that yielded hundreds. The August Stephenville Tribune reported in 1920 that Bob Croft had all 72 of his recently hatched chicks stolen during the night. A search discovered that rats had packed all of the chicks into a nearby stump; eleven of them were still alive. A mostly ignored article later that month reported that “Harper Herring’s Stephenville barn is not overrun by rats as are so many other other area barns. He recently found out why – two screech owl nests – each containing two young owls. Each nest was provided with a heap of rats for them to feed on.” A county-wide rat-killing contest held the following April in which $50 was offered for the most rat tails collected. The winner was from Huckabay with 6,800 tails. Stephenville Tribune