As it's early season, I left my 204's at home and used small case varmint calibers, using only about 18 grs of powder. We both took our Cooper Furballs (221 FB), .17HMR's, and I also took my beloved Cooper 20 Vartarg.....a ground squirrels worst nightmare. The weather cooperated for this time of year, with mostly sun and 41*F temps. We were not disappointed, as the rats were running about everywhere.
Here's a look at both of our benched Cooper Furballs. We were both shooting the Nosler 40gr Varmageddon, and the flying rats were a testament to their effectiveness......the "launch factor" was most enjoyable!
My Cooper Phoenix Furball on the bench:
And Steve's Cooper Furball (Montana Varminter):
The smile on Steve's face says it all. That's a sure sign of a rat that just went skyward!
Steve took some great slow-mo video of rat launching, and should have the videos edited soon. Once done, he'll post some of the fun here, so look forward to big grins at home when viewing. Film at 11:00......
This early in the season most all of the rat patch is still brown. That will change in a few weeks, so right now the little buggers are hard to see against a brown background. The view at the south end of this field has a great view of the snow-capped Steens Mtns (note the rats waiting for their turn):
Nothing fancy here, set up bench, load rifle and have your way with Skippy and his pals:
The dinky little 221FB, locally known as the "Furball". Amazing performance from such a small case. Any rat inside 400 yards was in deep doo-doo:
My come-up chart on the little FB sure looks a lot different than the ones on my 204's. But it's nice not having to burn upwards of 28 grs of powder to get the job done, when 18 grs will do the job quite nicely:
Looking downrange in the morning:
When a tad more range is in order, time to reach for the mighty little 20VT. In this case, my Cooper VR.....a veteran of many, many rat shoots. Skippy really hates this baby!
As always, I had one of my Kimber .45's set up with the Kimber .22LR conversion unit. This pistol accounted for the first kill of the weekend out the truck window on the way to setting up our benches. With WW Power-Point HP's loaded, it's one shot, one kill virtually every time:
The little Sig P938 is one of my new CC weapons. Amazing little 9mm pistols the size of most .380's. I could roll pop cans at 50' easily with it, as Sig put full size pistol sights on these little wonders. It will outshoot my Glock 43, and that's saying sumthin'.
Got home and tumbled all my fired cases, so if fired cases are any measure of fun in the rat patch, here's my measure of fun:
It was a good weekend, now looking forward to some green-up and more squirrels coming out to play. Already planning the next outing. Gads how I love this time of year!
I can see and tell. Thanks for sharing this trip. Looking forward too the videos. Bill K 
