SmallCaliberCentral

I'm leaving this evening for a few days in the rat patch. Can't wait to get the Savage 204 out & start the flying lessons for skippy. Sounds like the ranches we'll be hunting have a good number of dogs, should be a hoot as we're taking 2 newbies out. I'll let 'yall know how it goes when I return.

I hunted SD about 2 weeks ago. I hunted public land and had done some internet scouting and had to look around a bit, but when I found them, it was insane. The population density is something to behold and dwarfs what I see out west. I couldn't keep my guns cool enough. Shoot for 5-10 minutes and wait for 10-15 minutes for guns to cool and repeat.

Wes, remember to take your camera. If you come back with no pics, ........"it didn't happen".......

Have a grand shoot, and keep those barrels cool!

Good luck! Getting a good town going is one of the most fun things you can do.

Photo's, photo's on your return, Please. We like to see the acrobats in action. Bill K

The dog hunting was was quite good, although the larger pastures must have been shot in the not too distant past...the dogs were fairly well "educated". One of the pastures we hunted was quite small, about 100 acres, it took the 7 of us over 5 hours to make one "sweep" and still avoid having cattle in the background, target rich environment. With such a small hunting ground, we were not able to get the long shots some of the others here experience, but having the Savage on it's maiden voyage in the rat patch, I was happy with the results. My longest confirmed kill was 387 yards with the 32 gr. v-max on top of 30.5 grains of CFE223 and shooting with approximately 25 mph. quartering wind. Because we had to walk nearly a mile to get to the "promised land" our shooting benches consisted of tripods & bag chairs, still fun non the less. Still trying to recover from my week back at work so pictures will be forthcoming, no video though as we're still working out the details on creating quality footage. Stay tuned.

Sorry about the link for the photos from our hunt, I haven't figured out how to get the pictures to show up when using Google web albums.
https://goo.gl/photos/dHT6NpxTHNZQSDmSA
The last photo, was a dog shot with the savage from approximately 250 yards. It took a little time to find what was left of the dog.

Well Wes, it appears from the photos that a grand time was had by all. Glad your crew landed on fertile PD land and had decent weather, which can make or break a PD adventure.

Interesting way of going about it......wooden tripods and stools, but I'm sure the rats didn't notice they weren't being launched by benched rifles. Whatever works, and it appears it worked quite well indeed.

Thanks for sharing the adventure.

Looks like you guys had a lot of fun. The grass looks a little taller than when I was there. I've never tried to shoot from a chair and tripod. I've done the standing tripod and think and struggled with dogs over 200 yards. The best thing about SD pdog hunting is you can shoot over your vehicle and from the road. I didn't have room for a bench, so I shot over the hood of my SUV. With a bipod and rear bag, it works almost as well as a bench.