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Old 07-28-2009, 03:42 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 3 of 6

Here’s the wee bit of shade I found. I placed my cap just on the right edge of the opening in the bushes where I shot 10 shots with the 30 gr. Starke HP reloads. The wild bergamot flowers were in the bushes right behind this shady spot.



It was 1:05 p.m., so I started my walk back to the pickup with five more 30 gr. Stark bullets to shoot. I had lots of noisy prairie dogs just begging me to shoot them. I obliged several of them. Here’s the last one I shot. He was about 75 yards away when I squeezed off the shot and he was blown back about 12 feet. If you look close at the top of the mound opening, you can see large chunk of his insides.



Here’s a close-up of the parts of the prairie dog lining the mound opening:



And here’s a look at the exit hole left by the 30 gr. Starke HP Red Prairie Varmint bullet:



I managed to bag 13 single prairie dogs, one double and had one missed shot with the 30 gr. Starke bullets. The total body count for this first part of my hunt was 53 prairie dogs for 54 shots.

I arrived at the pickup, stowed my empties, cased my Lilja barreled .17 Remington, and checked on my ammo for the Savage 12VLP in .204 Ruger and discovered I had only 37 of the 39 gr. Sierra BlitzKings left to shoot. I had shot a total of 2,567 rounds through this factory barrel and I haven’t been loading hundreds and hundreds of rounds for this rifle because I thought the barrel would be losing accuracy sometime soon. I really can’t say it has lost much accuracy, so I loaded up 100 rounds of 39 gr. Sierras the day after this hunt. I guess I will have to keep the brand new super match grade 1 in 11" twist, 4-groove Pac-Nor barrel I have for it waiting for chambering and installation a while longer.
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Catch ya L8R--Silverfox

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