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Old 07-28-2009, 03:41 AM
Silverfox Silverfox is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: NW North Dakota
Posts: 1,243
Default 7-22-2009 PD Hunt

Part 2 of 6

Here’s a few of the prairie dogs I shot from my perch behind the old fallen dead tree trunks which is marked with the yellow arrow.



Here’s a close-up photo of those prairie dogs. The adult in the middle was HUGE!!!!



I finally shot the last of my twenty-two cartridges loaded with the 25 gr. Hornady HP bullets and had hit on 20 singles and one double with one missed shot. I took out the fifteen 25 gr. Starke HP reloads and started shooting those at about 11:40 a.m. My first shot was a miss and I knew then that I had shot high. That prairie dog didn’t even flinch at the first shot, but gave me some nice red mist on the second try. Unfortunately, when I opened the bolt to extract the empty casing, the casing was stuck in the chamber. I gave the rifle three or four minutes to cool down, hoping the casing would shrink enough to enable me to eject it, but that didn’t work. Well, I have had this situation happen before and carry a .17 caliber cleaning rod in my pickup, but it was almost a half mile back to the pickup, but the trip had to be made. I got the cleaning rod and made the trip back to the rifle which was resting in the shade of a tree and popped the casing out. I had to use the rod to remove four more casings from the chamber before I finished shooting the last shot with those reloads at about 12:15 p.m. I had managed to bag one double, 12 singles, and had missed two shots—both right over the top of the intended targets.

Here’s a photo of another shady spot I did some shooting from that day. As you can see there sure weren’t many leaves on this tree, but between the branches, the few leaves and the trunk of the tree, it did provide some shade. This is the “shady spot” where I got a temperature reading of 90.5º right where you can see my rifle’s silhouette.



The last shells I was going to shoot were the 30 gr. Starke HP reloads. I only had fifteen of these reloads to shoot. I had a pretty stiff load of VVN-540 powder in these casings that moves these bullets out at 3,900 fps!!! This has been my coyote load for fall and wintertime temperatures in the Lilja barreled .17 Remington. I was a little leery about shooting them in this heat, but being a dumb Norwegian, I decided to take the chance. I took my time between shots, not wanting the barrel to heat up too much and I definitely DID NOT allow a loaded round to sit in the chamber and cook before shooting the next shot!!! I walked over to another spot that afforded me some shade and discovered the lavender blossoms of very nice looking wild bergamot flowers. Plains Indians made tea from this plant to treat intestinal ailments and skin eruptions. The foliage has a minty smell and can be used to scent closets, drawers, pillows etc. The wild bergamot is also used in the popular Earl Gray tea.

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Catch ya L8R--Silverfox

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