First gopher

tfl said:
GrantR You shot one with a 45-70 ? The poor bugger must have thought the sky was falling. LOL
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More than one, actually ... and I doubt they had a chance to think of much of anything, when hit squarely with a 405 gr. slug ... they absolutely disintegrate! :eek:

To perhaps illustrate what I'm getting at, my most "memorable" gopher kill with the .45-70 was one I spotted standing on the top of a dirtbank, maybe 30 or 40 yards away. It was one of those "breezy" Alberta days - i.e. a strong gale blowing - and the gopher was directly upwind. You guessed it ... without thinking, I blasted the little bugger ... and immediately got a faceful of "mist" and "bits" ... YECH! :(

Learned my lesson on that one ... :rolleyes:
 
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Mitchell, how far is Heisler from edmonton? Im looking for good areas within 1-15.hours from edmonton. Man I'm getting excited to shoot gophers.

Buddyholly- we're lucky, we don't have rats in Alberta. I have never in my life seen a rat. But i would shoot them too :D

My old man is in his late fifties, and when he was younger there were no gophers in sweden, but tons of rats, so him and some buddies would sit at a garbage dump with .22s and have a hayday shooting all the rats.
 
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Throttle ...

If you're really willing to drive as much as 15 hours from Edmonton, c'mon down south - we're positively over-run with the rotten little rodents!

(O.K. ... so it was a typo, and you really meant 1.5 hours .... just couldn't resist. ;) )
 
i'll go anywhere within 150 km to find a good field. I have been shooting the same field since i was about 12. but this year we hit it so hard. I'm guessing 300+ every day for twice a week this summer (I don't know how many an average field has, or if that's possible, but we killed tons).

I gotta find some good fields. :D
 
GrantR said:
More than one, actually ... and I doubt they had a chance to think of much of anything, when hit squarely with a 405 gr. slug ... they absolutely disintegrate! :eek:

To perhaps illustrate what I'm getting at, my most "memorable" gopher kill with the .45-70 was one I spotted standing on the top of a dirtbank, maybe 30 or 40 yards away. It was one of those "breezy" Alberta days - i.e. a strong gale blowing - and the gopher was directly upwind. You guessed it ... without thinking, I blasted the little bugger ... and immediately got a faceful of "mist" and "bits" ... YECH! :(

Learned my lesson on that one ... :rolleyes:
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Thats funny, I just bought a 45/70 a 22-250 and had a 10/22 for awhile it sounds like fun but the only varmints in northern B.C. are coyotes. Although I saw a wolverine last week chewing on a road killed moose on the alaska highway.
 
Mitchell said:
One field that my father and his two firends and I went shooting on last spring we shot over 1500 rounds of .22 and .22 mag and probably killed 1000 gophers in one day and this spring there will be that many again.
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:eek: :eek: :eek:

INFESTATION!!
 
BuddyHollyDied said:
Hehehe...yeah what JD said :D :D

But. I do try to avoid shooting the striped gophers if they are near the yard, if you have striped gophers around the yard, chances are good that you don't have rats.
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I've never heard of that before. Any idea of why the two aren't in the same area?
 
Anglinfool said:
Nope. Ground hogs are alot bigger.
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And they will chew your face off if you get too close to them. A truly frightening and often underestimated killing machine. Approach with extreme caution.
 
Poor, cute little gophers!:D There are few things to do as satisfying as a good warm afternoon spent with a couple of good friends shooting gophers. A thermos of good coffee, maybe a sandwich. One of these years I'm going to try to get out to Gull Lake or thereabouts and stay for a couple of days and shoot gophers. There are millions around there. Poor, cute little worm infested gophers!:p
 
Yeah I also don't shoot the striped ones, they tend to be small in numbers, and they kick out the other gophers. And gophers can/will bite you if you grab them, so wear good heavy gloves... I found out they bight through the thiner skinned gloves quite easy.
 
kjohn said:
Poor, cute little gophers!:D There are few things to do as satisfying as a good warm afternoon spent with a couple of good friends shooting gophers. A thermos of good coffee, maybe a sandwich. One of these years I'm going to try to get out to Gull Lake or thereabouts and stay for a couple of days and shoot gophers. There are millions around there. Poor, cute little worm infested gophers!:p
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Let me know if you ever go and do that......I will try and make it out and we can make a good time of it :D

My cousin has about 8 sections of land out that way....as well, that is where most of my family lives :D:D

All told I can find about a township of land we can go on a killing spree on :D:D

All within ~~45 minutes of Gull Lake ;)
 
they are / were out in fine fashion thisaft around hear. think i acounted for around 70 or so today. pritty easy. spent the aft in the truck, in the pasture.
 
Another dirty stinking rotten blizzard here today. Man I am getting so sick of snow. At least it isn't very cold though.
 
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