Third weekend out ground squirrel shooting. Temp in the low 70s, and the number of them are increasing dramatically.

Switched to hollow point bullets in the 223, and first time using a 22/250 today. No wonder this gets addictive every year.

Hit them square and its 5 feet in the air, and they come down in parts. Walking the field, found squirrels parts laying around without being able to find the main carcass. Drew in a lot of crows to eat the remains.

However also drew in some Perigen Falcons, and a Bald Eagle, with was super cool. It is sure a lot of fun, but I still wish Oregon had prairie dogs.

I still marvel at the mechanics of the scope and the accuracy of a barrel when you make a hit at 300 yds plus on something the size of a pop can. YOU almost feel sorry for the little buggers until you see another one eating on the one you had just wasted a few minutes ago. Wasting one, eating another wasted one, is getting to be my favorite thing about it.

Hopefully the populations of squirrels will be exploding where some of the other members live, and then you can get out and have as much fun as I have been having. Sure makes the day pass too darn quick is all I have to say.

Cheers and good shooting.
Seafire

Seafire: Oohh you dickens! Out early and often! Good for you! I may shoot Squirrels tomorrow as they are predicting 69 degrees (by far the warmest day of the year so far).

I do need to verify the zero on my 3 main Gopher Getters and may do that today. I am waiting for a phone repairman as I write! Sunny and cool here now about 35 degrees and only a 5 MPH breeze.

Yes I agree with you on the amazing accuracy of todays modern Rifles. Along with the wonderful bullets we have now and the great consistency of our scopes! Makes for more fun and more humane kills for sure!

I am an amateur bird watcher myself and really enjoy the Falcons and Hawks. The area I live in has an amzing population of Ospreys, Eagles, Hawks and Falcons. Get out your atlas and look up the community of Box Elder, Wyoming as several years ago while Mule Deer Hunting near there I and my partners got to watch a Gyrfalcon Hunting there. We saw this very rare bird three days in a row. Next go to Angela, Montana and near here we were Antelope Hunting one early October during the Sand Hill Crane migration. I came over a ridigeline above a remote pond/slough that was about 1/3 mile long. There in the midst of several hundred feeding Sandhills was a lone Whooping Crane! The only one I have ever seen! I watched it through my spotting scope and noted the colors of the bands on its legs (one band on each leg but different colors). I reported that sighting to the Montana F&G folks (as requested in the Hunting regulations).

Another kind of rare bird (that I nearly shot to death) was also over in eastern Montana. It was early summer and I was Prairie Dog Hunting a few years back. The mirage was bad that day and I was lining up on a Prairie Dog about 300 yards out and dealing with the blurred and dancing image of that dog as best I could. Just before I touched off the shot at this "Prairie Dog" it flapped its wings! Yeah I had lined up on a Burrowing Owl and its color and size matched a Praire Dog at that range! Not only that it was standing on the lip of a Prairie Dog mound. I notified my partner/spotter and we were extra careful from that point on in target identification! I have seen several Burrowing owls in the field before and since but that one nearly ate some lead!

Keep after em!

Hold into the wind

VarmintGuy

(insert maniacal laughter here ...)

MUWAHAHAHA!! Spent a glorious morning in the bright sun and cool breeze murdering God's adorable little fuzzies. Funny, VG my phone's out too! Great part about Montana, though. No one gives a rat's ass when the phone's dead.

FWIW, I've found my 17HMR's are far from brush guns and any rat behind the smallest tuft of grass is safe. I shot this morning a couple pastures still tall with the winter's dead grass so I mostly used a .223 Savage loaded with 35gr V-Max's and 12 grains of 2400. (See maniacal laughter above). The nice part is that they get thru to the rat and don't seem to riccochet any worse than the 17's! Gives me a way to use all that "retired" .223 brass from my service rifles too.

Life is good

Mark

We're having fun in the central valley of California also. Although the grass is so long right now the little buggers are hiding in it.



EDIT: We have a resident Golden Eagle and a Juvenile Baldy on the ranch I shoot on that both sit on a hill and watch me shoot. When I load up to leave they fly down and start cleaning up.

My pop shot a squirrel with his 222 that a red tail hawk must have been diving at. The body few up in the air and the hawk caught it before it hit the ground. Best shot ever. His favorite squirrel shooting story.

Yeah V.G. I know about those Owls in Montana looking like prairie dogs standing up at 300 yds or so. I shot one last summer near Billings, and was lining up on a second one, when it took wing and flew away. That is when my buddy and I walked out to what I had shot, ( he had shot at it 3 times and missed, so he told me to see if I could hit it, which I did)
Sure enough to our disappointment it was an Owl. Felt real bad about that.

Funny you should mention Whooping Cranes tho, I know what they look like since we had a batch of them when I lived in Minnesota. ON the way back to the Main Hwy, ( if you can call Rt 140 a main highway), I passed about 8 of them in a field about 20 yds, from the road. You figured they would be in water instead but they were not.

Also after I left the field I was shooting in to go home, a mile up the road, I spotted 12 plus Mule Deer Does all bunched up together in a small gully. Then 20 miles away, saw the same thing again, but a ground of about 20. Both times they were bunched up like they were kids in line at school or something.

It excited me,since our deer population is down horribly here in Oregon.

Hope the weather to go out gets there soon. It was 81 degrees here today at 3 pm, so it should be heading your way. Keep us posted when you get out there.
Cheers and good shooting
Seafire

Ted,,

That is a great story. I bet that would have been something.

I did get a good chuckle when I shot one squirrel with the 22/250 Blue Dot load, and I did not see him, and then the thought went threw my head I must have missed him and that he dove back into his hole.

As soon as that thought passed quickly through my head, still looking thru the scope I saw the squirrel flying straight down from above the scopes field of view, in a bloody mangled red mess. He blew straight up in the air, and landed straight back down. Sad for the squirrel,, as the things never knew what hits them, but I had to chuckle. The thought in my head and then he falling back into the view of the scope like that was both humorous and ironic.

Cheers and good shooting
Seafire

I've seen that same thing! I know I hit it but there's no pieces until they start raining down back through the scope's field of view!