Yesterday was beautiful out. Mid 70's and looking like it was going to be spring soon. Snow was gone and the mud was drying. Rough week at work and a real headache. Time to do some killing. So I called a buddy of mine and loaded up the .22 Kimber SVT and the Remington VS .223 and headed over to pick him up.
He tossed his PD bench and gun cases in the back of the truck and his ammo cans and I told him to bring his .22 rifle. All he has is a 10/22 Ruger with a cheap scope on it that even the cross hairs do not line up. I told him that was fine and forget the ammo as I had plenty and was going to teach him something new.
Stopped and talked to the rancher that owns the PD ground and was assured we could go shoot and he told us of a couple other area's he had that we were welcome to shoot on also. Wow its going to be a great day.
Now none of these places dog towns are very big but their spread all over the place so after a bit of shooting you need to move or your going to be sitting there watching some empty dog towns as everyone is keeping their heads down. Gets boring quickly that way.
We arrived at the first dog town and got out the benches and spotting scopes and rifle cases and ammo. Buddy grabbed his .243 and I got out my Rem 700 VS .223 with the 6.5X20X40AO Leupold that had been sent to Premier Reticules and boosted to 4.5X40 and then set back to let my buddy shoot for a while. Didn't take but a short while and everyone in the neighborhood had their heads down. Not having sighted in my rifle since I remounted the Leupold on it and not having any targets to shoot I picked out a rock on a bank along the small creek at 200 yds and made a few shots to get me back on. Shortly after that my buddy said he had a PD spotted and he ranged it at 636 yds. I checked my drops and dialed it up and got on target and could see the dog standing up checking out what was going on. I tripped the Jewell and my buddy yipped as at that range all that 50 gr NBT did was tip the PD over and leave him flat on his back. We then got back on the spotters and shortly after that spotted another one at 585 and I dialed it up and again tripped the Jewell. Again the NBT just knocked the PD over and with a bit of leg quiver he lay still. Funny how at 300 or less you get the explosive high speed expansion of body parts causing a PD to almost explode but its quite boring at the long ranges where the bullet is going too slow and it just sort of knocks them over.
After those two we set there for about 20 minutes and did not see another dog poke up anywhere so we decided to move across the road to another dog town. When we got there I told my buddy to dig out his .22 which this got an odd look from him So we set up the benches behind the pickup and again got the spotters working which we really didn't need to do as there was a number of dogs from 40 yds out to 400 yds in plain sight.
I dug in the ammo can and brought out a brick of Wolf Target/Match ammo and loaded up and handed a box to my buddy and received a quizzical look from him more or less saying "Whats This??" I just said I was going to teach him a new trick. I loaded up the Kimber which has a Leupold 6.5X20X40AO on it with a set of Stoney Point turrets and a Harris Bi-pod and started scanning for dogs but the activity of our unloading the truck caused the close ones under 200 yds to duck and cover. This town is close to the road and gets shot at a lot.
My buddy spots on at 235 and advises me to get the .223 as this one is too far out for the .22 but I just leaned into the .22 and made a few adjustments of the scope and tripped the trigger. All my buddy could do was howl with laughter as I hit just under the PD and knocked dirt all over the PD which some PD's do have a temper. His old tail was a jerking and jumping and my buddy advised I better be careful as IF i **** that PD off any more he will come over and open up a drum of Whup-*** on me. We both got to laughing at that one and he commented on the ammo about how quiet it was. I told him it was just standard velocity .22LR Match ammo and it shoots below the sound barrier and does not get that crack that the HV bullets do and will not scare the PD's near as bad. Least not the ones at a distance.
We both were loaded up and with neither of us shooting the big guns we dispensed with the spotter and we both commenced to shooting. After hitting 4 or 5 of the PD's from 80 to 120 yds we could not get anything to poke up their heads. This was to be the signal for the fun to really begin. The field was a square 440 yds X440 yds and we were about 40 yds from the fence line and everything outside of that area was crop ground and had been plowed and kind of penning in the dog town size. My buddy had no Idea what was going to happen and I started plopping rounds out there at 300 to 380 yds with that little .22. His comment was "Wow you can do that?"
Well we spent about 2 hrs on the PD town with those .22's. Game Warden seen us and came to check our licenses as the state of SD says you need a hunting license to shoot the PD's and when he seen what we were shooting his comment was you guys are crazy. Then he sat back and started watching. He couldn't believe it either. We might of only hit a couple of them at those distances but we were shooting in a 15-25 MPH wind by this time coming from our 4:00 and it was moving us about 3' which we both rather than dialing in for just moved over about that far as compensating for a variable wind like that is really hard to dial for. We both were taking mental notes for elevation and calling it out and helping each other figure out the drops but after about 10 shots we were dropping them right in there within at least 10"s at 350 with those little .22's. The game warden just sit back on the tailgate of my pickup and watched shaking his head. He didn't think it could be done at all. But what was funnier was my buddy's running comments on how the one he just shot at was really getting mad about him knocking dirt all over him and didn't know where it had came from and how he wondered that if the dog town figured out who or what was doing it if they all would come over and whup up on him for doing it. All I can say was maybe we didn't get many dogs at that range. but you can have more fun than you can imagine just trying it. I was wishing I had my other scope on the gun as it has stadia lines and it makes using Kentucky elevation a whole lot easier when you run out of elevation in the scope.
He tossed his PD bench and gun cases in the back of the truck and his ammo cans and I told him to bring his .22 rifle. All he has is a 10/22 Ruger with a cheap scope on it that even the cross hairs do not line up. I told him that was fine and forget the ammo as I had plenty and was going to teach him something new.
Stopped and talked to the rancher that owns the PD ground and was assured we could go shoot and he told us of a couple other area's he had that we were welcome to shoot on also. Wow its going to be a great day.
Now none of these places dog towns are very big but their spread all over the place so after a bit of shooting you need to move or your going to be sitting there watching some empty dog towns as everyone is keeping their heads down. Gets boring quickly that way.
We arrived at the first dog town and got out the benches and spotting scopes and rifle cases and ammo. Buddy grabbed his .243 and I got out my Rem 700 VS .223 with the 6.5X20X40AO Leupold that had been sent to Premier Reticules and boosted to 4.5X40 and then set back to let my buddy shoot for a while. Didn't take but a short while and everyone in the neighborhood had their heads down. Not having sighted in my rifle since I remounted the Leupold on it and not having any targets to shoot I picked out a rock on a bank along the small creek at 200 yds and made a few shots to get me back on. Shortly after that my buddy said he had a PD spotted and he ranged it at 636 yds. I checked my drops and dialed it up and got on target and could see the dog standing up checking out what was going on. I tripped the Jewell and my buddy yipped as at that range all that 50 gr NBT did was tip the PD over and leave him flat on his back. We then got back on the spotters and shortly after that spotted another one at 585 and I dialed it up and again tripped the Jewell. Again the NBT just knocked the PD over and with a bit of leg quiver he lay still. Funny how at 300 or less you get the explosive high speed expansion of body parts causing a PD to almost explode but its quite boring at the long ranges where the bullet is going too slow and it just sort of knocks them over.
After those two we set there for about 20 minutes and did not see another dog poke up anywhere so we decided to move across the road to another dog town. When we got there I told my buddy to dig out his .22 which this got an odd look from him
So we set up the benches behind the pickup and again got the spotters working which we really didn't need to do as there was a number of dogs from 40 yds out to 400 yds in plain sight. I dug in the ammo can and brought out a brick of Wolf Target/Match ammo and loaded up and handed a box to my buddy and received a quizzical look from him more or less saying "Whats This??" I just said I was going to teach him a new trick. I loaded up the Kimber which has a Leupold 6.5X20X40AO on it with a set of Stoney Point turrets and a Harris Bi-pod and started scanning for dogs but the activity of our unloading the truck caused the close ones under 200 yds to duck and cover.
This town is close to the road and gets shot at a lot.My buddy spots on at 235 and advises me to get the .223 as this one is too far out for the .22 but I just leaned into the .22 and made a few adjustments of the scope and tripped the trigger. All my buddy could do was howl with laughter as I hit just under the PD and knocked dirt all over the PD which some PD's do have a temper. His old tail was a jerking and jumping and my buddy advised I better be careful as IF i **** that PD off any more he will come over and open up a drum of Whup-*** on me. We both got to laughing at that one and he commented on the ammo about how quiet it was. I told him it was just standard velocity .22LR Match ammo and it shoots below the sound barrier and does not get that crack that the HV bullets do and will not scare the PD's near as bad. Least not the ones at a distance.
We both were loaded up and with neither of us shooting the big guns we dispensed with the spotter and we both commenced to shooting. After hitting 4 or 5 of the PD's from 80 to 120 yds we could not get anything to poke up their heads. This was to be the signal for the fun to really begin. The field was a square 440 yds X440 yds and we were about 40 yds from the fence line and everything outside of that area was crop ground and had been plowed and kind of penning in the dog town size. My buddy had no Idea what was going to happen and I started plopping rounds out there at 300 to 380 yds with that little .22. His comment was "Wow you can do that?"
Well we spent about 2 hrs on the PD town with those .22's. Game Warden seen us and came to check our licenses as the state of SD says you need a hunting license to shoot the PD's and when he seen what we were shooting his comment was you guys are crazy.
Then he sat back and started watching. He couldn't believe it either. We might of only hit a couple of them at those distances but we were shooting in a 15-25 MPH wind by this time coming from our 4:00 and it was moving us about 3' which we both rather than dialing in for just moved over about that far as compensating for a variable wind like that is really hard to dial for. We both were taking mental notes for elevation and calling it out and helping each other figure out the drops but after about 10 shots we were dropping them right in there within at least 10"s at 350 with those little .22's. The game warden just sit back on the tailgate of my pickup and watched shaking his head. He didn't think it could be done at all. But what was funnier was my buddy's running comments on how the one he just shot at was really getting mad about him knocking dirt all over him and didn't know where it had came from and how he wondered that if the dog town figured out who or what was doing it if they all would come over and whup up on him for doing it. All I can say was maybe we didn't get many dogs at that range. but you can have more fun than you can imagine just trying it. I was wishing I had my other scope on the gun as it has stadia lines and it makes using Kentucky elevation a whole lot easier when you run out of elevation in the scope.
