The high-ride thumb break holster and a set of Hogue Mono-Grip finger groove stocks are on the way as I type this. I was out prairie dog shooting yesterday and fully intended to do some shooting with the .357 Mag, but ran out of time.
I love giving those prairie dogs a helicopter ride with my .204 Ruger. This first picture below is of one that was a peeker at about 30 to 40 yards away. All he would give me was the top of his head to his eye and a tiny bit of his front shoulder. It is difficult to tell yourself you have to shoot high on these shots, but I managed. The center of my scope is 1.6" above the center of the bore on my Savage 12VLP so the 25 yard shots hit about 7/10" low, while 50 yard shots are usually dead on my point of aim. This guy just got plumb destroyed from the base of the skull to way down along the spine.
This poor little fellow in the photo below was sitting about 75 yards away when I squeezed off the shot. I could see him through the scope as lift off began and he started to spin and fly to the left before he left my view in the scope. Since I keep my left eye open when I shoot, I was able to see him complete his little ride with my left eye. He only traveled about 6 feet into the air and about 15 feet to the left. He was rather twisted in the middle when I found him.
The Savage 12VLP in .204 Ruger is still a great shooter. I took 49 shots yesterday afternoon and had only 6 missed shots. I hate to admit it, but one of those misses was a 25 yard shot!! Yep, I missed low! Two other misses were caused by the bullets being deflected by sage brush branches that I could not see in the scope when I shot at the same two little prairie dogs that were lined up perfectly for a double. The bullet must have hit a twig on the sage brush and was deflected about 10 feel left of those two PDs. They sat right there while I jacked in another shell and squeezed off a second shot only to have it deflected too. I finally took a look down the side of the barrel and could see that the sage brush was in line with the barrel. I cranked the side focus knob so the sage brush was in focus and could see it clearly in the bottom half of the scope--BULLET DEFLECTION via SAGE BRUSH!!! Anyway, I got 38 singles and got doubles on 5 of my shots. I had 2 chances for triples, but could not find more than 2 dead PDs at either of those mounds. So, I got a total of 48 prairie dogs for my 49 shots with the .204 Ruger. Conditions were really nice. The temperature was about 67 degrees and the wind only about 5 mph at the peak until about 30 minutes before I quit shooting. The wind picked up to about 10 mph for the last half hour I was out there.
I had a little problem with my Pac-Nor barreled .17 Remington. My bullets were either disintegrating or tumbling and not making it to my target. Out of 37 shots at prairie dogs with my Danzac coated 27.8 gr. Hammett BTHP bullets, only 29 of them made it to the target and 8 were total flyers. Some of them were hitting 25 yards short and 25 to 40 yards left of the intended target. I'm going to do a barrel inspection after I get it cleaned to check the crown for damage. I don't think it is the bullets that are flawed because I shot about 500 of these as bare bullets and did not have any tumblers or any disintegrate. It is a puzzler to me. Here's one of the unlucky PDs that got a 27.8 gr. pill from 275 yards away before the bullets started heading willy nilly all over the place.
The little bullet made a very small entrance hole as you can see by the little red spot just to the right of the right front elbow:
However, the exit wound was a totally different story.
With the flyers hitting way off, I still hit 26 single prairie dogs and had one double for 27 confirmed kills with the 37 shots. If I can throw out the flyers, I'd have 27 PDs for 29 shots. It is time for me to head down to my reloading room and do the final barrel cleaning and inspect the crown on the .17 Remington.
Thanks again all you mentors. I really hope you enjoy making people spend money
Rick is correct about the houge grips, they will tame the recoil. Enjoy! Gary
