Finally made our Montana trip....

[Keith in Ga]

after cancelling in June due to rain and flooding. We've never been in August before, but they very rarely have the kind of weather they've experienced this spring and summer. Ranchers were still cutting hay, and it's still pretty green. Shooting was good, even though most of the fields we shot had been hit a lot. I did most of my shooting from a table mounted in the back of a pick-up.

Makes for a very solid shooting platform, and the 360* rotating bench was great. My two Cooper .204's performed like champs, especially with a cleaning regiment after every 25-30 rounds. Also my "wind flag" was very helpful, even though there was often different wind directions to deal with from table to target.

We even ventured over to North Dakota and shot a new (to us) field with a lot of pd's.....till we fired the first shot. After the first volley, my only targets were about 385 yds and a 20+ mph cross wind. Within a few shots, I "doped" the wind (10-12") off the edge of the pd, and started connecting. Most of the fields had the same scenario, with little to no shots within 250 yds, and the average was well over 300 yds.

We dodged this storm, which had a lot of hail and rain, but all we got was a beautiful picture.

Gotta love Montana..........

[Rick in Oregon]

Keith: Glad the trip finally came together and the weather mostly cooperated for some decent shooting. After a few seasons of those conditions, a guy starts to figure out that wind thingie too.....it sure can be brutal at times, and hard on the ammo locker too.

Gotta love those Cooper 204's .....I know from experience that the rodents DON'T! Thanks for the pics and sharing the adventure. I bet you're already making plans for the next assault........

[Sidewinderwa]

It is always great to shoot critters in Montana. You did not say if it was prairie dogs or sage rats, sounds like sage rats. On prairie dogs, we found out that shooting 300 to 400 yards works best, as they stay up rather than going underground.

[Keith in Ga]

Side... we were shooting prairie dogs. The "survivors" that made it till August were a little on the nervous side, and often didn't present a follow-up shot if you missed. My shooting percentage was much better than last year, although I didn't waste time doing an exact count. My goal was to hit all of them on the first shot, but I fell a little short on that goal.

Rick...since I've been back, I've been sorting and tumbling brass. Yesterday, I de-primed and annealed about 300-400 pieces of brass. It's nice to have something to look forward to for next year!