Background, today is Nedra's and my 40th. wedding anniversary.

There were reports, yesterday evening, of a big GH living in a burrow
with two big holes in the middle of the back pasture. This is a hazard.
I accepted the mission to take-em-out.

Plan A was to set the Rapic Acquisition Shooting System RASS in the back
of the RTV (AKA the War Wagon), park in the shade, read a
book, sip coffee, and wait for the LFT (little furry terrorist) to
appear. Now this is a pasture that is ~300 yards long (wull ... how
about 933'?). The primary target's burrow is only about 50 to 60 yards
from a very nice place to take a stand.

Thinking about that, I thought that since the RTV would be tied up with
barn duty, I might just don me orange hat, walk down there with the
Hornet and the shooting sticks early this beautiful AM, and see if he
was morning type. So the War Wagon did not get used ... this morning
anyway.

I've not used the shooting sticks before, so I got set up, loaded a
round, set the trigger, put on the safety, and looked around. Beautiful
morning. Perfect temp, not too humid, sun creeping across the pasture,
bit of sparkle from the dew. After a while the birds and other animals
began to make their normal noises as my presence became an accepted part
of the environment. I took practice sets from time to time to
experiment with how to use the shooting sticks. Took trial sights on
the clumps of brown grass from the most recent pasture mowing.

After some time, not sure how long, might have been 15 or 20 minutes, I
decided to use the scope and see what I could see farther up the
pasture.

I think I see movement? Yes, Movement! Just into the grass along the
left woods line about half way to the other end of the pasture, what is
it? I turned the scope to 6x and waited. It might be a rabbit? Ah ha!
A head, then a body, Houston, we have GH! A big fat GH.

This is going to be a long shot for me - I feel some trepidation - I
think I better do some thinking here. The GH is in grass where as big
as he is, if he lies down, he is out of sight. Can't trust the 35g
bullet going through grass. Need a clear shot. I felt my pulse picking
up, so I counseled my self a bit, relax, take your time, resume regular
respiration and heart rate. He is moving in a relaxed fashion,
nibbling at tasty morsels, heading generally toward an up slope that
faces sort of toward me. The grass is much thinner on that slope, and I
think that if he gets there, I will have a lot better view of him and no
grass to shoot through. I'm thinking, this could work if I'm patient. I
decide that is the plan. It's good to have a plan.

I move laterally about 6' to the right so I have a better view of the
prospective target location, get set up again, re-acquire the GH - which
takes about 30 seconds if it matters. Yup, he is moving slightly away
from me in a rt to left direction working his way across the pasture,
still nibbling at tasty morsels along the way.

Range? I look, do some estimating, figure it is some place between 140
and 160 yards (I still haven't taken the "wheel" out there to measure
it, but I will). The Hornet is sighted for POI=POA at 100 yards. I
know it has to shoot an inch high at 100 to be POA at 160, but the scope
doesn't have target knobs, so I decide that if I put the horizontal
cross hair at the top of his back, which would be about 1-1/2 inches
high, I ought to be OK. I adopt that idea - add it to the plan.

After some period of time, which seemed like forever, but was probably
not more than two minutes, he had moved into what looked like the
beginning of a 10 to 15 yard long region of the slope that should be as
close to the perfect place as he was going to get. I got lined up on
him, not as steady as the RASS would have been, but not too bad. I was
steady enough to be able to keep the cross hairs within an inch of where
I wanted them. Turned the scope to 9X (after which I didn't look so
steady), snicked off the safety, got the cross hairs in position, he
moved, I waited tracking him, pretty sure he would stop again, finger
off the trigger completely (The CZ has the very light single-set
trigger). When he stopped, I took a breath, held it, squeezed ... BANG!
He dropped right in his shadow (I never lost sight of him, got to see
the impact). I mean he didn't move an inch. Not even any foot movement
that I could see. I racked in another round just in case. Kept
watching, no movement at all for probably a minute, after which my
patience was all used up. Got him!

OSOK.

I paced it off - it was 145 pretty good sized paces from the pasture
fence to the corpse, plus another 7 yards from me to the fence. Turned
out it was a really big fat female. When I got the golf cart for the
retrieval mission, I couldn't grab her by the foot, it would slip out of
the forge tongs, had to grab her leg. I didn't weigh her, but she was
every bit of 9 or 10 lbs.

I'd put the cross hairs on top of her back a bit behind her shoulders
(as best as I could tell) with her angled maybe 20 degrees up hill and
maybe 10 degrees away from me. The shot went in centered vertically
(about an inch below the aim point) right behind the shoulder, she was
big enough that the 35g V-MAX (which left the barrel at 2,900 fps)
didn't exit. That will do.

All in all, that was a heck of a lot of fun. Soon as Nedra returns, I'm
going to put the RASS in the back of the RTV and head back up there.
I'll bet there are half a dozen GH living in the woods around that
pasture.

The CZ527 Hornet is a heck of a good rifle for this sort of hunting.

Am I pumped? HooooYEAH!

That was before 0800. Later on I put the RASS on the RTV and headed out
to see if anything else would show up. It didn't.

While I was out there the second time, I heard a rifle shot back by the house. I waited
and sure enough, my cell phone started to vibrate. Nedra had shot one
out the dinette window with the 93R17FV (.17HMR). She spotted it from
the sewing room window as it scampered across the freshly graded area to
the right of the new road I'm building to go to the barn. It went into
the rock pile next to the bird feeders.

She reasoned it would come out of there in a short while and head for
the clover on the edge of the yard, so she came downstairs, rounded up
the dog and cats and shut them in the laundry (so they wouldn't jump on
the window sill while she was shooting), got the rifle out of the front
closet, the clip of ammo out of her kitchen drawer, put the rest on the
table, opened the window and waited. In less than a minute, according
to her, the GH came out of the rocks and paused - he was almost exactly
50 yards out from the muzzle at that point. She put the cross hairs on
him just behind his head, squeezed off a round and dropped him in his
tracks. The .17HMR shoots within 3/8" of line of sight from 25 to 115
yards. No need to do anything but put the cross hairs where you want
the hole and squeeze. How cool is that?

We got his and her ground hogs to celebrate our anniversary and didn't even plan it in advance. I love it when that happens.

Fitch

Great report Flitch!

Thanks

Very well done.

It sound like both of you had an excellent hunting and shooting day.

I was able to kill my first "northern GH" a couple of weeks ago here. I have shot many south of here where I grew up, but they are rare in this area of Wisconsin.

I was walking out to my "big shed" when I saw some movement in my pulp wood pile that was about 30 yards away. I stopped and watched for a minute and to my surprise a GH emerged about 5 feet up in the pile and looked at me. I froze and after he crawled back into the pile, I retreated and got the 22 that is always loaded for pine squirrels and any other varmints that may happen by, and set up on the edge of the shed waiting for his return.

It wasn't long and he crawled out on a log to sun himself and it was his last sun bath. I delivered a head shot that we were both satisfied with.

Up to 50 yards the old Marlin with the micro groove barrel doesn't miss.

I feel your pleasure.

Jim

Don't you just love it when a plan works out? The shooting too.

Very Good Story! Well Done. I love reading others well written hunting reports. We neeed more reports like this. I used to look forward to when VG would post a new one but alas is no longer a member.. GOOD JOB!!!

Thanks guys.

I've gotten two more, since then but they were just two more in the back yard, one at ~50 yards, the other at closer to 70 yards, both with the .17HMR.

I'm working on getting permission to hunt on a big farn about half a mile down the road. If I'm successful, that ought to yield some fun shooting experiences. If it does, I'll post them.

Fitch

Sounds like love to me!! Thanks for sharing Fitch.