Part 1 of 6
I got up a little earlier than usual (OK, only 15 minutes earlier) to make a little longer trip than my usual 40 to 60 mile trips and headed out to a couple of prairie dog towns on private land. I got my pickup parked in the shade of some trees by 9:10 a.m. I uncased my Lilja barreled .17 Remington and took out three different loads I’d use today. This was going to be the last time this rifle fired rounds through the .17 Remington barrel and I had 56 rounds of ammo I wanted to shoot. I had some 25 gr. Hornady HP reloads and these casings had not been fired in the chamber of this rifle, there were also some 25 gr. HP Starke reloads and some 30 gr. HP Starke reloads.
I wanted to fire some of these rounds to see where they were hitting. Since there were cattle walking around my pickup and the spot I was going to set up to shoot my target from, I decided to take my rifle and my bean bag rear rest with when I set up the target box. I set up my target box at 100 yards and walked back to my shooting spot. First thing I noticed was my bean bag rear rest had been left by the target box. I walked out and got the bag and walked back to my shooting spot. By the time I got back to where I was going to shoot from, four yearling Black Angus heifers had wandered over to my target box and were checking it out. I walked out to the target box and shooed the cattle away and walked back to my rifle. Once again, the cattle were curious and were back over by the box again. This routine went on a total of four times before I got them chased far enough away so I could test my ammo. Before I was done testing the three different loads, I had walked 1,600 yards!!! I probably should have taken a nap after that, but decided to go shoot prairie dogs instead. I did manage to shoot two prairie dogs while I was checking the POI of my ammo.
Here’s a photo of my pickup parked in the shade of the trees. The cattle were lying in the trees to the right of where you see the pickup. This is the same grove of trees where I killed a rattlesnake back on June 12, 2009, on my first trip to this dog town this year. I didn’t want to get too deep into the grove of trees and take a chance on meeting up with another rattlesnake in the shade of those trees where it is hard to see those buggers.
The 25 gr. Starkes were hitting 1.25" high and on the money for windage. The 25 gr. Hornadys were 3/8" left and about 1.25" high, and the 30 gr. Starkes were 3/8" left and 1.50" high. I just left the windage and elevation knobs alone and adjusted my aim. Most of my shots were under 200 yards, so this wasn’t a rocket science deal to make hits with the three different loads without changing the windage and elevation settings.
This rifle, with a Remington 700 BDL short action, is going to be fitted with a new stainless steel Lilja barrel with a 1 in 9” twist and 4 grooves next week. The new barrel is one of the “in-stock” Remington Varmint contour barrels Lilja carries and it took about 5 days from the time I called in my order until it arrived at my door!!! I have been very happy with the #5 contour Lilja barrel presently on the rifle and wanted to give another Lilja barrel a chance. The new barrel will be chambered for the .17 Tactical caliber with a reamer a member of one of the Boards has graciously consented to let me use!!! Now that’s a very kind deed and I am very grateful to this gentleman for the use of his reamer and all of the excellent advice he has given me.
I had spent over an hour checking out where my ammo was hitting and chasing cattle away from my target box, but I was on my way and shooting prairie dogs at 10:21 a.m. Here’s a photo of a couple of the first victims of the 25 gr. Hornady HP ammo.
While I was snapping the photo above, the rancher who owns the cattle in this pasture came driving up. Unknown to me, he rents this pasture and did not know I was going to be in the pasture shooting prairie dogs. I introduced myself to him and we had a friendly conversation. He asked me how many prairie dogs I had shot so far and told me he’d sure like to have me shoot all the prairie dogs I could on the east end of the town because they keep moving closer and closer to his land and then he has to poison them. I told him I’d shoot as many as I could. He wished me good luck and said he’d be getting out of my way so I could get busy exterminating prairie dogs.
The temperature was getting hotter and hotter and I looked for spots to shoot from where I could be laying in the shade. I didn’t check the temperature very often, but around noon while in the shade of a tree I had my thermometer laying on my backpack and it read 90.5º!!!
Here’s one spot, marked with the red X, where I was able to get behind a couple of fallen trees and in some shade and I managed to shoot a pile of prairie dogs from this shady spot. I was able to rest the legs of my bipod on the log that is horizontal and rested my elbows on the log that is just behind the horizontal log. It worked better than I expected.
