2018 Trip #6
Yet another one day trip, I didn’t plan it that way. Headed to a ranch I had stopped at over a month ago to check out. The weather then was not good, we didn’t even go to the field. We (Ash and myself) moved 65 miles South to another new ranch. We did much better because the wind was under 30 mph and the sun was out. You only have to move 50 or 60 miles in Colorado to have completely different weather.
The ranch manager and hand were really glad to see me again. They told us (Tom Fisher and myself) about how the prairie dogs had taken over a corner of one of their fields in just a couple weeks. Lots of pups, OH! BOY!!!
We didn’t get on the field until nearly 11:00 AM, it’s over a three hour drive from Denver. We had to leave before 6:00 AM because of Denver traffic. Stopped in Limon, Colorado for breakfast. And once we arrived at the ranch of course we had to talk awhile at the ranch headquarters before he took us to the field. But that all worked out because “YES THERE WAS Lots of pups”.
The rifles I decided to use this trip was my 17 Rem FireBall (close range) and 223 AR for everything else. I was hoping I wouldn’t have many real long range shots, and I didn’t. The 17 Rem FireBall is a real pleasure to shoot. No recoil and doesn’t heat up hardly at all. But it does have its problems, you can’t put enough ammo in the five round magazine and a bolt action is really slow. I started shooting my AR 30 or 40 times and switching to the 17 and then back after the AR cooled a bit. At times there would be 6, 8, or more pups on a single hole; you can’t shoot fast enough with a bolt action. I shoot with a brass catcher on my AR so I can shoot 30 or 40 rounds or more before it needs emptied. I could clean a whole hole before I had to let the AR cool down for the next hole.
We headed home around 3:30, Tom decided he didn’t want to stay overnight. We didn’t get to the second ranch I wanted to go to or the second dog town on the ranch we was on. OH!! WELL!!!
We shot a total of around 465, me 253 of them. I use a lap clicker to keep track of my count, Tom didn’t. I know I still missed some because I’d empty 15 rounds from my mag and then put in my number. I had several doubles, I don’t think I had any triples.
Hopefully I’ll get to Wyoming the next week or so for three or four days of scouting and shooting.
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