Congrats on the new honey hole! If your farmer is anything like most of mine, he won't allow you to leave any "seed" groundhogs assuring a shootable population for next year. We had such a place three years ago, where we killed 72 hogs off a 66 acre parcel next to a golf course. The following year it was tough to scratch out just over twenty from that place. Now we can count what we kill there all year on my fingers alone
. I did manage to shoot two there on Saturday afternoon, though. This one with the .22 mag:
just under 100 yds.
And this one with the 204 at close to 200:
. Those brought me to 71 YTD.
I got a little ahead of myself with Saturday, because on Friday, I left the house at 6:20 PM and the first farm on the edge of town had poodles standing all over the place! Most poodles on that side of the farm are safe because it's unsafe to fire a real rifle there....a subdivision borders that bean field
BUT, three unlucky sod puppies "posed" for me at less than 55 yards, and the pellet rifle was put in play:
. I love that Air Arms 410!
The next farm offered two from the same position, just a few minutes apart. Both shots were in the 150 yd zone, so the 204 was the weapon of choice:
The back of the truck started filling.......
Eastward on to the next farm: This is a tough place to see hogs because the farmer left the grain stubble so high and drilled the beans in over the stubble. But there were hogs, but mostly just head shots. Maybe the stubble actually helps to keep the other hogs from being alarmed to the sound of a shot because it provides cover, and probably deadens some of the noise from a shot, whatever....but it allowed me to shoot three from one vantage point with the 204 in just a couple minutes:
I pulled into the farm driveway for a different vantage point of some other holes and shot two more with the 22 mag., but one made it down the hole with no retrieval possible, so that one didn't score. The truck ended up looking like this:
.
My hunting partner missed a fun evening, by choosing to leave for MT that afternoon! I'm sure he'll make up for it in ground squirrels though.....if his wife will let him have a turn with the rifle, that is!
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