An Afternoon Well Spent

Fella's;

The wedding is over!  The people are gone!  The furniture is back in place & I got the afternoon off to go gopher shooting!  This afternoon was a serious mental health moment.

Took the Savage, with the new Bushnell Legend scope out & thought to see if my work had produced any significant improvement in the accuracy. 

I took about a 1.5 mile hike around  a large field that's always produced thousands of gophers.  Darn few to be seen.  I don't know what they've done for controling them, but it works.  Drat!  I got my hits, & also ran across a badger.

I was using the last wheelset of a large circle irrigator as a hide/rest & noticed it running from my right to left & angleing in to me.  They can move a lot faster than you might think.  Most folks think of them as a sort of waddling beast - not so, they can flat move.  It got to a large hole area about 60 yards out from me.  Ducked in & turned around outta sight & then stuck its head up looking back the way it came from.

Bang.  It must've cocked its head to the left ( right ear higher than the left ear ) at the shot.  The bullet went in a touch low to the line between the eye & ear & exited the crown of the head.  It was a pretty easy shot on that large an animal.

On the gophers though, no significant improvement.  This is still a 50 to 75 yard gun at best.  I'll keep fussing at it, but I'm not going to spend a whole lot of money on it.  I've got other, more accurate .22's, I just want to see what can be done with a sort of bargain basement type .22.  Of course, its an LHB.

In any case, it was a very enjoyable afternoon.  Wish some of you could have made it & kept me company.

900F

Edited by CB900F

Orion;

Yup, a Savage MKII in .22LR.  Left hand bolt, topped with a Bushnell Legend 5-15 A/O mil-dot scope.  The only thing I don't like about the scope is the easy-turn European type ocular focus.  Way TOO easy to turn.  Corrections will be made to that little item I can assure you. 

The first thought is to go to the Cat House & see if the proper size O-ring can be procured.  For those of you who don't know this, your Caterpillar Tractor Dealer is usually THE best source of O-rings in the area.

Just ahead of the ocular adjustment ring is a groove that a properly sized O-ring might very well fit in.  With the friction thereby provided, things might stabilize.  Or, at least, that's plan A.

All-in-all thougth, I got some time to myself without having to worry about in-laws, out-laws, egos, or feelings.  Some nice exercise on a very pleasant spring afternoon with good sun, blue skies, & a very mild cool breeze.  Things went as well as could be expected & that's always nice.

900F

CB,

Whoa, you got me rolling on the flour.  Going to a Cat house to increase friction has a whole differnt meaning here in the East.    

Funny how a good scope on a 22rf will make the rifle accuracy show up.  I did a Unertle on a Win m69 a few years ago.  The rifle was pretty accurate on the mat with a peep and at 50 feet indoor.  Taking it out in the field at 50+ yards showed the scope/eye were better than the rifle.

I have Bushnell 3-9 on a Marlin 22 mag as my walk around groundhog gun.  It is ok on ground squirrels to about 90 yds.  Bigger targets like ground hogs are good to about 140 yds.  I've been tempted to get a Remington 513T, most have shot out barrels. And put a really good new barrel on it.  I've also thought about the repro Win52 sporter, but those barels are a little too thin, I think.

BEAR

 

I was shooting ground squirrels in Idaho a couple weeks ago. Used a 10/22, 22" bbl., with 3-9x bushnell. Had some shots around 100 yds. Lots of fun but, not as many as last year. Shot 3 badgers last year too. Hope to be going back in 3 or 4 weeks and give it another try.

  Wow open fields. I miss those.

Now that is some nice wide open space to shoot in.

The elephant rifle might just make me consider that I don't worry about recoil.

CB there is nothing like hunting and shooting to releive stress.When I am under pressure twenty or thirty down range with 375 H7H gets my mind off anything else.

Macca

good question!