got something new

[4nDone0331]

I went out to one of my permissions today, its been pretty hot (temperature-wise) in my area and it isnt cooling down much at night, so I was only able to shoot for a couple hours before they were bedded down for the day.  However I was still able to get 4 confirmed ground squirrel kills and another pest that was a first for me, at least with an airgun.

I started looking for targets closer to some of the structures because there werent any more in the pasture, so I turned the power down to 1/2.  While I was walking around the arena and bull pens I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye, I stopped and saw dark moist dirt go flying up from the ground.  I thought it was just another squirrel but I didnt see any tell tale hole, all I could see was the dirt flying up.  Then the little booger popped up, and can you guess what it was? If you guessed gopher give yourself a pat on the back.  I was only about 15-20 yards from him but the angle of my shot wasnt ideal, there were some horse trailers that would have been the backstop and I didnt want to risk hitting them. So I walked around about 120 degrees from where I was standing when I spotted him, I was a little worried that he might take cover in his tunnel and not come back out but that wasnt the case.  once I got into position I only had to wait for maybe a minute before he popped his head out and started looking at his surroundings.  I held the crosshairs right over his head and let the pellet fly.  Thwapp! GOPHER DOWN! He didnt even move an inch after the pellet hit him, it was instantaneous lights out, no nerve twitches, nothing. 


I pulled him out of his hole for the pictures


and here's one of the squirrels from today. This one was the biggest at ~12", it was taken at 71 yards.


 Thanks for reading and happy hunting.

[dk1677]

Nice shooting!

[Bicycleman]

Man, that looks like it hurt a lot!
Nice shooting---71 yards, WOW.

[BenjiHunter]

Great shooting!

[Mr. Sumatra22]

Great shot. I can't stand gopher or moles. I would get them all if I could. In the first picture is that other chunk from the mole? Just wondering.

[4nDone0331]

yes it was, you cant really tell in the picture but the exit was pretty big, or at least big enough for pieces of it's brain to start falling out.  I was a bit surprised when it just came out all of the sudden but that is what the chunk on the ground next to him is.  I was using my AAS510 with 18.1 JSB's and that gopher was only about 4-5" long so relative to the gophers size the pellet was pretty big.

If you click on the picture it should enlarge it enough to see the detail better, but the problem I ran into is that I cant scroll to the right even though the picture enlarges in that direction.  My settings might be the problem though, or it could be because I am using a different browser now (chrome).  But I remember that I have done it on here before.

edit: I think you should be able to enlarge the pic on photobucket if it doesnt work on here.  Just select the picture and then click on the magnifying glass at the bottom right, when the new window comes up click on the magnifying glass once more.  Just posting this because I just figured out how to do it on Photobucket.

[pistolero]

[targettgii]

Wow you actually blew his brains out nice shooting.

[4nDone0331]

I had forgotten about the "varmint cong" LOL , thanks for that pistolero.