22 hollow points not enough!?!?!

Jay T

Jay T

CGN Regular
Rating - 100%
13   0   0
Location
on the fine line between hard and stupid
Went prairie rat shooting tonight with my trusty browning trombone witha 4 power scope. Nice little shooting gun. anyway to the point of all this, I shot a rat at 70m he flipped head over heels. Good hit right? wrong...much to my suprise as i lowered my rifle to chamber another round to get his friend he stood up and scampered away!!!! I couldn't believe it!! went to where I shot him and sure enough there was a little blood on the sand but no rat. Is there some sort of super rat out there I don't know about because the next one I hit just under the chin and blew out the back of his head scamperd about 3 feet after a winchester super x hollow point blew the back of his head out!!Do I need more gun? .22 is so cheap and I would hate to think that prairie rats are that strong that they can survive being hit like that.
 
meh, if your blowing the back of theirs heads off, the .22 seems to be working and the escape is just some kind of superman.

now if you want to blow the teeth clean through thier a$$hole, step it up to a centerfire varmit rig, although it will be just as fun, its gonna cost a lot more.
 
Unfortunately unless you hit the brain or the nervous sys. they usually can make it into their hole which is what they are programmed to do if there is any danger. This means that they die in their holes and some may suffer alot, some not for long. This of course only applies to the .22 and at longer ranges the .17 rimfires and the .22 mag. Varmint cal. centerfires and even larger cals. with slow moving bullets that don't expand much don't have those problems.
 
For the family down the hole it's like they ordered some food for delivery.
 
i use the winchester 40 grain power points and the american eagle hollow points .most of the time i shoot them in the upper chest . i like it when i can here that whoomp sound . i like that .they dont run to far when hit with one of those .
 
I have pretty much gone to my CF's for squeaks unless they are over running me then the 10/22 with 25 rd mags comes out. The terminal effects of the hornet, 223 and especially the 204 are deadly. was using 32gr vmax's on sunday, bits of gopher flying every where, most pieces didn't make it down the hole;)
 
Unless it's a head shot, or your turn them into Salsa with a center fire, they expend their last breath scampering down a hole.
 
Use Hyper Velocity ammo. I like the Quick Shok ammo. The bullet breaks up on contact, and is really, really hard on em. Fewer ricochets as well.
 
Well went on line and priced a new 204 and well let's just say that I will stick with my .22 for now. Maybe a .223 in the future but with prices the way they are I will put up with 1 or 2 getting away down their holes. Gonna try some different ammo maybe tonight or tomorrow. Plus grass is getting long and it is getting harder to see the little buggers unless the cross a path.
 
I doubt he survived. One of the nice things about a 22 rimfire is the ability to shoot all day long as much as you want. Its pretty hard to overheat a 22. For that reason, I can't see wanting to do much shooting with any other cartidge on gophers.
 
Probably blew his shoulder out, he would have died shortly thereafter, nothing to worry about in case of varmint ..... It's not as it you deliberately made it suffer.
 
We had a marmot problem at the farm I grew up on sometimes and i either used a .22 or a 12 gauge. They were considered ok to shoot there but not so much the deer rifles. The .22 lost it's fun after a while so I started buying 3" slugs, 000 buck etc. Sure it's expensive but we usually only shot a few at a time so it was worth it and it was way more fun than the .22 bolt action.

Ryan
 
I use the opposite philosophy with prairie rat assassination missions. I use the Federal bulk pack 36 gr hollow points in my .22 and I find that because it moves slower the bullets open up very nicely. If they moved too fast they would just punch right through the little squeaks.
In all honesty though, most of my shots are at the 30 yard mark MAXIMUM! I rarely reach out past 40 because I have a semi auto. I'm looking at buying a Browning T bolt for the longer range stuff.
No question the .223, 204 and 22-250 are the ultimate in varmint destruction, but the cost...
 
Reloading cuts the cost--I was at my bro-in-laws dairy farm last weekend--used up 25 rds .17 fireball, 125 rds .221 fireball and 550 rds federal bulk pack .22rf's--ranges from 10 feet to 150yards--most at 50-100 yards--body count in excess of 300. I had to keep my rate of fire down with the .221 to keep the barel reasonably cool. Best gopher hunt I have had for several years.

44Bore
 
i have shot many, many columbia ground squirrels and IMO the winchester super-X hollow point is the best 22 shell that i have tried. head or chest shots and they tend to do the "chicken". best shot is right in the middle, there seems to be more resistence for the hollow point to open up and the gophers tend to fall over right there.

strange things can happen though, once a gopher escaped down it's hole and i went to investigate and it's tail was laying there in the dirt. another time i shot one (and thought i had a good hold) and it just started to go towards it's hole and acting confused. i went and caught it and it had a bald spot on both sides of it's neck where the bullet had passed through, no blood or anything, it lived for hours (and probably would have fully recovered but the dog ate it).

these days i tend to leave the gophers alone for the badgers.
 
Typical for the 22 rimfire when shooting gophers. Most make it back to some hole and perish under ground. Some of the high velocity stuff anchors the little fellas better. I have shot them in half with my 222 Rem and watched gophers drag themselves under ground. Tough critters they are at times!
 
22

2fat2fly said:
Use Hyper Velocity ammo. I like the Quick Shok ammo. The bullet breaks up on contact, and is really, really hard on em. Fewer ricochets as well.
Click to expand...

I saw that quik= shok ammo work for the first time ever in may in Sask, thought mt bud was using 22 mag, it was so destuctive. had to get me a couple bricks of that. FS
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom