Too Many Gophers

[manbearpig]

Thats not me. It is actually a friend we used to shoot with for a number of years. He was a bit wierd from too much exposure to hippies in his younger years. The sticks were a big step up from the mini bean bag chair he used to bring out to the field. I think it was lime green.

after examining those again i just realised he has a beanbag strapped to his ass, hehe. lime green must have been pretty funny looking, but at least noone will mistake him for a groundhog

Personally I prefer to shoot prone for longer distance stuff. I find it much more stable and headshots on a gopher at 80-100 yds requires stability. For closer range stuff I tend to shoot kneeling.

Also shooting prone in long grass is frustrating.

i can imagine its a lot harder with squirrel-sized gophers, but you have thousands of targets so you have the luxury of picking your shots
first i bought a short Harris swivel bipod, but quickly realised its useless in Ontario. often in a less than perfect spot you end up looking at a tuft of grass or mound 10 feet away from you if you get down prone. sitting/kneeling seems to be the best compromise with the grass/uneven ground.

often i dont have the luxury of taking too long for a shot and just quickly snap off a shot at center mass. looks like you guys have several miles of open space where you can just sit and take your time to line up shots, but where we hunt we have to hump through farmland that is constantly interrupted by a fencerow, lines and piles of stones, treeline, hills, etc. so our shots are often much closer.
once in awhile you come to a spot where you can sit up on a hilltop and get some shots off at some groundhogs down below or across against the side of another hill, but there arent that many groundhogs so the best youll get is a half dozen before you are back to walking again. often our spotting distances are pretty close - and when you see them, they often detect you so you have about 3 seconds to aim and fire before they are down their holes. about a minute later they may pop up in another hole to have another look at you, but after that theyre gone for longer than its worthwhile to wait. you get another chance at them on the way back to your truck, but thats it.

so many times i have to worry about too close shots more than i do about too far ones... and most are in fencerows piled with stones where its not safe to fire a rifle because of ricochets. its gotten to the point where this year were talking about packing a shotgun along for the close-up fencerow shots, or the shots where you top a rise and theres a groundhog 20 feet away from you and you have a split second to fire or its gone for good.

 

[K98ACTION]

Cause the last thing land owners want is everyone and their dog dropping by to ask permission to hunt. Especially when they don't know you from Adam.


Which is EXACTLY the message they want you to get. NO HUNTING!


Might I suggest a few less cups of coffee during the day? And yes you are wrong.

THANKS Suputin For confirming exactly what I've been saying about a lot of land owners not letting the hunting community hunt on their property. So when they get a varmit/pest problem, like I said screw them.

Why did we have to waste so much time and effort here just to agree in the end... lol..

I love Coffee

 

[Donny Fenn1]

Yep, pretty tough when I call a spade a spade eh! But if you let people hunt on your land, then my cackle was not meant for you. I want to hear from land owners that don't allow people to hunt on their land as a point of principle.

i use Pheasants Forever signs that say "no hunting without permission"

however neighbors that had similar signs had guys shooting on his land and when approached by the landowner (who had never seen the dudes before)
they respoonded along the lines of "permission is implied by the sign"

the signs changed the next day

 

[manbearpig]

WTF?
how is permission implied by the sign?
god i hate smartass trespassers. its a shame theyre armed, otherwise it would be pretty amusing to just sic the dogs on them.
'release the hounds'!

 

[Suputin]

i can imagine its a lot harder with squirrel-sized gophers, but you have thousands of targets so you have the luxury of picking your shots

Don't kid yourself. While we have lots of targets, gophers don't just sit there and wait to be shot. Often they are running around. They often move then stand for a few seconds then move again so you have to get on them and get the shot off quickly or they are gone.

and most are in fencerows piled with stones where its not safe to fire a rifle because of ricochets.

If you use high velocity frangible varmint bullets like the Ballistic Tips or VMax you shouldn't have to worry about ricochets as they just blow up on impact.

 

[BBB]

You're right Dan. Actually I've seen marmots before on the Country Club golf course in the Old Man River valley in Lethbridge years ago. I'm not sure if any are still there though. I've also heard that at times there are prairie dogs in the far SE part of Alberta. I just wish that we had the numbers of the bigger critters like we do "gophers." The farmers and ranchers would probably shoot me for saying something like that though

Hoary marmots are on the no-shoot list here.

We've got the odd groundhog kicking around too (I've seen em) but not what I'd call a huntable population. You can shoot em if you find em though.

 

[Why not?]

.....id love to try a .308 with handloaded super-light varmint bullets but apparently theres a caliber restriction in much of the area we go to shoot so i guess ill have to pick up a .243 or .22-250 if i want more oomph.

When I was living in Ontario, 40 years ago, we used to hunt them with 270s and 90 gr Sierra hollow points. Let's just say, they worked great!

Best part was they worked great for deer, bear and moose with 150 gr partitions, too.

Ted

 

[blacksmithden]

 

[t-star]

Don't kid yourself. While we have lots of targets, gophers don't just sit there and wait to be shot. Often they are running around. They often move then stand for a few seconds then move again so you have to get on them and get the shot off quickly or they are gone.


If you use high velocity frangible varmint bullets like the Ballistic Tips or VMax you shouldn't have to worry about ricochets as they just blow up on impact.

but then there's always that one sittin on top of a mound BEGGIN to get it- i've passed him up as being too easy

 

[rdelliott]

i loathe yuppies that move out of the city, buy a swatch of farmland to build their city-style dream home on, then start #####ing campaigns against their new rural neighbors for their traditional and necessary practices like controlling groundhog populations.

Hey, we yuppies aren't all that bad. Some of us get jobs where we can telecommute, move out to the sticks, buy an existing house, marry a country girl, get gunned up, start hunting, start educating our poor unfortunate still-urban friends about guns and hunting, and wish we had some ground hogs around so that we could shoot them.

Why do we do this? Because we can't stand yuppies .

 

[whammy]

Hey, we yuppies aren't all that bad. Some of us get jobs where we can telecommute, move out to the sticks, buy an existing house, marry a country girl, get gunned up, start hunting, start educating our poor unfortunate still-urban friends about guns and hunting, and wish we had some ground hogs around so that we could shoot them.

Why do we do this? Because we can't stand yuppies .

haha, I hate to admit that I'm a city slicker, because nothing about what i do/how i dress/what i drink makes me seem like one. Just hoping one day to be able to follow that dream of getting out of the city for good.

 

[Suputin]

I'm a city slicker all my life but we have an open mind and a sense of adventure and have found country folk to be straight shooting types we can get along with. As long as you respect the land owner's rules you get permission to access the land for as long as you want.

 

[whammy]

I'm a city slicker all my life but we have an open mind and a sense of adventure and have found country folk to be straight shooting types we can get along with. As long as you respect the land owner's rules you get permission to access the land for as long as you want.

If they are real country folk, then i totally agree with you, no problems. If they are a yuppy, it seems they dont like guns/they love gophers?

 

[toomanyhobbies]

Lived in the city the last 30 years, still a country boy.

 

[Logo]

Suputin are you out around that Black Diamond area? cause I'd definitely love to shoot wherever you were at at. My friends like getting in close to paste gophers but i can't get over watching a gopher do a bullet propelled flip through my scope from 150 yards

 

[Suputin]

The land we shoot on is about 3 sections between Millarville and Black Diamond.

 

[rdelliott]

haha, I hate to admit that I'm a city slicker, because nothing about what i do/how i dress/what i drink makes me seem like one. Just hoping one day to be able to follow that dream of getting out of the city for good.

Dude, go for it. Getting the hell out of the city was the best decision I made in my life.

 

[mikeelliot]

Dude, go for it. Getting the hell out of the city was the best decision I made in my life.

Thats a big 10-4, moved from a city of 110,000 + to a town of 12,000....love the small town way of life Much slower pace, no stress, no traffic.

It is nice being only 45kms from a big city though.

 

[whammy]

Ya, Its the plan, gotta wait until im done university, and have some cash saved up.

 

[Corp. Punishment]

Btt