During the month of May - 2010, I
was in Alberta Canada hunting Black Bear.
Now I am not going to tell you a story about there being 50,000 Bear in
this one Area of Canada. I’m not going
to tell you about all of the Bear in the different color phases (blonde, chocolate
or cinnamon) that I saw. I’m not going
to tell you about having Bear trying to climb up the same tree I was sitting
in. I’m going to talk about all the fun
we had shooting 22’s every morning before the afternoon Bear hunt.
When I was a kid, I thought
the most fun in the whole world was to go out and shoot either Rabbits or Varmints. Back in those days, Deer hunting was for the
meat. If I was able to shoot a nice Mule deer, we had a supply of meat for the
winter. The deer hunting season was
short, just two weeks and when that was over, most hunters would put away their
30-30 or 30-06 rifles until the following year. After the season ended, I was always looking
for a way to be able to go shooting. I
knew of areas in the woods where plenty of rabbits and squirrels hung out. I also knew of several great areas in the plains,
where the farmers wanted you to come out and shoot prairie dogs and ground squirrels. If I was lucky where the prairie dogs were,
you could find an occasional coyote, and there was a two dollar bounty on coyote. If I could happen to get two or three coyotes
I could pay for my weekend of shooting.
I had a good 22 rifle which
my mom had bought for me and it was great for rabbits and squirrels, but
anything out beyond 100 yards was pretty safe.
The coyotes seemed to know my range and would hover about 150 yards away
picking up the ground squirrels I had shot.
I needed more rifle and a longer range gun. I decided to build my first wildcat caliber
and selected the 17 Ackley Mag. Now this
rifle was great, it would vaporize the prairie dogs and ground squirrels out to
400 yards and the coyotes never had a chance.
There were a few problems with this caliber though. First, if you shot anything that you wanted
to keep and eat, forget it, there was not enough good meat left to make a
sandwich. Second, the barrel fouled or
got dirty after about 15 shots. So I
would have to clean it before the accuracy would come back. Third, it took special cleaning tools to
clean a 17 caliber rifle. The cleaning rods were so small in diameter that I
was always bending the cleaning rod and that would end my shooting for the day
or weekend. The last problem was finding quality 17 caliber bullets. All of the ammo I shot, I had to make and
finding the bullets was getting harder and more expensive all the time.
The next rifle I started
shooting was a 22-250 which I borrowed from a friend. This rifle was the perfect answer for my
weekend prairie dog shooting. I could
hit dogs out to 400 plus yards and could hit a walking coyote beyond 300
yards. I could shoot 40 or 50 times
before I had to clean the bore and ammo was easy to make or I could even buy
factory ammo if I had to. On a good weekend, I could make money with this rifle
by shooting 4 or 5 coyote. My normal
weekend shooting would be to take out my 3 favorite rifles and set up above a
dog town and blast away with the 22 at the close targets. Later when the ground squirrels would get
smart and not come out at 75 or 80 yards, then the big guns would come out and
I could shoot 200 rounds of ammo in a good day.
The coyotes were curious about the shooting and wanted to get a free
lunch and would come around to see what they could snatch up. Any coyote that would stop for more than 5 or
6 seconds would be mine. I soon learned
how to shoot the smart ones that would never stop and just slow to a walk. I would try a few running shots but that was
just a waste of good ammo.
I started remembering all the
fun I had when I was a kid on the first morning after arriving in Bear
camp. One of the other hunters asked me
if I had ever shot ground squirrels. I
told him I had, but it was a long time ago.
He said he and his wife were going out to shoot some and asked if I
wanted to go. He armed me with a bull
barreled 22 with a very old 4 power scope and we hopped into a Suzuki 4 wheel
drive and headed out. We didn’t have to
drive far before seeing all of the holes in the farmer’s fields. There must have been thousands of ground squirrels
in this area. The squirrels had done so
much damage there was no way you could ride a horse in these fields. I was surprised that the cows had not broken
any legs in the holes. The sun came out
and the squirrels started popping out of their holes. I became a kid again. Any squirrel out to 75 yards would never make
another hole in the ground. We had 2
rifles so we would take turns with 2 shooters and one driver. Between breakfast
and lunch we could easily rack up 100 or more ground squirrels.
We would hunt bear in the afternoon. From four to about ten every afternoon you
would sit in a tree and count the bears coming into the bait. I was lucky enough to shoot a very nice
cinnamon colored black bear on the third day of a six day hunt.
After I shot my bear, I had to do some
filming to finish up a TV show, but as soon as I was done I was out in the
fields shooting ground squirrels. On the
last day of the hunt, I spent the whole day blasting away with the 22 and had
managed to shoot up 400 rounds of the outfitters ammo. I had 5 bullets left when I noticed a lone coyote
coming in at a trot. He had his eye on a
new calf that had been born that morning.
As he closed the distance on the calf, I set up rock steady on the hood
of the Suzuki. The coyote made a fatal mistake;
he stopped at about 80 yards and looked straight at me. Well, he never bothered the new born calf.
There are some great calibers
for Varmint shooting. I would lump them
in to three categories short range, medium range and long range. For short range shooting nothing beats a good
22 LR. A 22 Mag or 17 HMR are just as
good, but cost a bit more to shoot. For
middle range shooting out to 300 yards I like a 223 Rem. A 222 Rem. or 17 Rem. or even a 6x45 work
good but again 300 rounds of daily shooting can cost a lot more. For long range shooting beyond 350 yards I
think the 22-250 is King. I also like
the 220 Swift or even a 243 Rem. or a custom built 6mm-284 would be great for
super long 600 plus yards. None of these
rifles are cheap to shoot, but if you want consistent kills at 400 or 600 yards
you need a fast, flat shooting rifle.
