My supply of primers I was using for this rifle had run out so I reloaded some shells with the new lot of primers. I took the rifle to the range for scope adjustment and to check the velocity over the chronograph back on May 4, 2015. After the trip to the range I cleaned the barrel and Lock-Eased the barrel. Unfortunately, I didn’t write what I had done for scope adjustment on my target record sheet so I had to take the rifle out again on June 2 and shot 8 more shots to get the scope adjusted. Again, UNFORTUNATELY, my target record sheet didn’t get placed in my log book so I wasn’t sure where this rifle was shooting, but I thought it should be OK to start out with.
I drove down to the land owner’s home and introduced myself and he told me to go ahead and have fun. I parked my pickup on the south end of the prairie dog town. The wind was supposed to be out of the SE for most of the day blowing up to 10 mph. It had been 30º outside when I left Williston and by the time I got my gear ready to go out into the PD town it had already warmed up to a balmy 32º. It was mostly cloudy, but it looked the sun was trying to peek through the clouds. I put on my insulated coveralls and had a thermal jacket under that. There were several prairie dogs just begging for some of my 39 gr. Sierra BK lead pills and I hadn’t even crossed the barbed wire fence on the south side of the dog town. Here’s one unlucky PD posing with my rifle.
A while later, I nicked the top of the back of the PD that was 140 yards away. He fell over but got back up and I could see the crease on the top of his back before he got back down into his den. I cranked the elevation knob down 3 clicks (1/8 inch clicks on this scope) and got busy
shooting at a few more PDs. I missed another one and the bullet appeared to hit to the left of the PD. I decided I had better get the scope adjusted or I’d be wasting a lot of ammo the rest of the day. About then I spotted coyote scat and coyote tracks so I took a photo of the scat with the track imprint to the left of the scat.
My first shot at the post was a tad over 1.75" left and about a half inch higher than I wanted. I adjusted the windage and elevation knobs and fired off another shot. Well, that shot was about a half inch right of my intended point of impact. I did the adjustment and shot one more shot and that one hit where I wanted it for vertical and about 1/8 inch left. I left the windage adjustment alone because the wind was blowing about 2 to 4 mph from left to right.
I walked north along the north/south fence line and was shooting targets of opportunity. By 12:00 noon, I had shot 3 shots at a fence post and 27 shots at prairie dogs. I missed on 3 shots and hit on 24, all single PDs. They weren’t lining up for doubles today. I opened up another box of 50 reloads and replenished my butt stock shell holder and put one in the chamber. I killed 10 prairie dogs with the next 10 on shots that ranged from 135 to 145 yards. It still looked like the bullets were hitting a bit higher than I intended. Before I went back to the pickup, I set up on a PD mound at 100 lasered yards from a wooden fence post and fired off another shot. Sure enough, the bullet hit 3/4 of an inch higher than I wanted, so I did 6 clicks down and called it good. I hiked back to the pickup to have some lunch. On the way back to the pickup I spotted some beautiful golden yellow blossoms.
I arrived at my pickup at about 12:35 and set my rifle in the shade and out of the wind on the north side of the pickup. I got out my lunch and decided that I’d sit in the pickup so I was out of the wind. The sun was shining and it was nice and warm inside the cab. With my stomach full it seemed like an appropriate time for a little nap. It was around 1:20 when I got comfortable and nodded off to sleep. My wrist watch alarm went off at 2:30 and I got up and finished my sandwich and had a couple cookies before getting out of the pickup. The temperature was up to 55º, but the wind was blowing out of the SE at around 5 to 10 mph with gusts to 15. I decided to head over to the west side of the dog town and work my way up north. I had never hunted that side of the dog town, but I could see lots of PDs over there. I left the pickup at 2:55 p.m. By 3:15 I had shot 10 more shots. I missed on one and hit on the other 9 shots. Five minutes later I had shot 5 more shots and hit on all 5. There was a nice fat prairie dog north of me at 187 yards. I shot 3 shots at him and finally connected on the 3rd one!!!
I moved to the NNE of that spot and shot 8 more shots and hit on 7 of those. I could see a herd of 17 horses up to the north of me so I wouldn’t be shooting in that direction. There are 2 PDs in the foreground of the photo.
There were lots of seemingly uneducated PDs up in that direction and many of them had real dark brown colored fur, but with the horses up there, I decided to save those dark brown ones for another day when the horses were off somewhere else.
I walked a little further north so I could shoot PDs off to the west of me and not have any missed shots go towards the horses. By 4:06 p.m. I had finished off the box of 50 shells I had opened just before the noon hour. I got out my last box of 50 cartridges and loaded up the cartridge holder and put one in the chamber. My temperature sensitive strip on the barrel had not lit up all morning, but this afternoon it was lighting up a bit, especially since the sun was hitting the strip and I was shooting rounds off fairly fast. It got up to 113º a couple times so I would stop and let it cool down. With the cool wind blowing, it didn’t take long for the barrel to cool off. Around 4:15 the wind seemed to die down to nearly nothing, but it picked up again at 4:30. The horses prevented me from going further straight north, so I headed off to the ENE to get to an east/west fence where there were lots of PDs north of that fence and the horses would not be in the line of fire. On my was to that spot, I spotted and shot 4 dark furred PDs and posed them for a nice family group photo with my rifle as you can see to below.
I only had 23 shells left to shoot when I arrived at the last spot I wanted to shoot from. I had PDs to the south of me, PDs to the east, and PDs to the north. It was a great spot to set up at and blast away. Most of my shots were to the NE and east and distances were from 125 yards out to 155 yards which proved to be easy shots for this rifle. I shot 22 of those 23 shells and saved one for the walk back to the pickup in case some crazy prairie dog decided to attack me. I was about 250 yards from the pickup when a group of 4 prairie dogs looked like they were going to charge me as I walked along. I got down prone, chambered my last shell and shot the leader of the group and the rest of them scattered and went down into their dens. I checked my watch and it was 6:30 when I shot my last shot. I walked back to the pickup and got my stuff stowed away inside the cab and sat down to do a count on my missed shots, my hits and think about the fun time I had just had. I had taken 4 shots at the fence post to adjust my scope, and fired off 126 shots at prairie dogs. I missed on 8 of those shots, didn’t have any doubles, but did hit on 118 singles. I hit on 100% of the last 37 shots I took so the rifle was shooting pretty decent.
I left my parking place at 6:52 p.m. and was back in my garage in Williston at 7:37 p.m. The wind had blown most of the day, but it did warm up to 55º so while it wasn’t T-shirt weather it was still bearable. I did manage to pose for my “Hero Photo” too. I’m wearing my pink elbow pads show my support for “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” and the prairie dogs didn’t seem to mind them at all.
