Jack's first .22

As I have stated in a previous post, I bought my son his first .22 for his 9th birthday. It is an inexpensive little NEF single shot .22LR with open sights. I had great hopes for this gun, as a kids first gun is a momentous occasion. We went to the range today armed with a box of .22 ammo, a big box with 3" round targets pasted to the side & a nice summer day. I gave Jack all of the prerequisite safety lectures I could think of as he was sitting down at the shooting bench until I felt I was starting to nag him too much. I showed him how to break open the barrel to insert a round into the chamber. I then had him close the barrel and engage the safety. As he sat there beading down one of the small 3" targets I had him try to pull the hammer back with his right thumb as he shoots right handed. This is where the trouble starts. The hammer is so stiff that he is unable to pull it back with just one thumb. He need to either use both thumbs or the palm of a hand. I know that he will grow into it and figure out the pressure it will take to depress the hammer. He takes his first shot and shoots high of his intended target. The second shot reports and he has hit the highest target on the box. I am thinking that was a good shot, from what I believe he has hit where he was intending on shooting. But, he looks up and says that he was still aiming for the target below the one that he had actually hit. I kind of disregarded his statement and asked him to shoot another shot at the lower target. Sure enough he hits the upper target dead on. It looks like the gun is shooting about 6" high and 1" to the right. I took the gun and and fired 2 quick shots at the lower target and for me it is shooting way high and to the right. So, I grabbed my limited supply of gun smithing tools from my truck and brought the sight down to where I thought it should be and moved it over to the left about an inch. I then fired off 2 more shots to see where it was hitting, and repeated these steps 3 more times before I got it to where I thought it should be shooting. I got Jack back over as he had been chasing Grasshoppers around for the past 1/2 hour, as I messed with his gun. He shot a couple more times and the shots were still hitting about an inch high for him. But, the damage was done and he was not going to sit around and let me fiddle with it anymore, his attention span was screaming at me! So, we left it at that, with a mental note that the gun is still shooting high at 20 yards. Jack thinks that we need to invest in a fixed power scope for his gun, he is probably right, but that will have to wait until a Christams present I think. I have posted a slide show to the side of our outing today.

Time to kill in the prairie.

I was trying to find something productive to do this last weekend. I tried to get my son to go shoot .22’s with me, but he had other plans and wanted to go see a kid’s movie. The weather was not very nice, so outside projects were off. I decided to grab my Savage .17 HMR rifle, which is in a tight race to becoming my favorite little gopher / all around gun, and head out in the prairie and see if I could scare anything up. So, I set off thinking I would head out south and see if there were any gophers around and if the grass wasn’t too tall yet to see them. The roads weren’t too bad, as it had rained pretty well the previous night. I got to my favorite gopher spot and discovered the grass was indeed too tall. I was able to see a few gophers darting between cover and was able to make a couple decent shots. I grew tired of this and my mind began to wander at what else there was to do that day. I reached behind my seat to see if my binoculars were still in there from my last hunt that seemed like eons ago. They were indeed there, so I decided a little scouting trip for Antelope was in order, as I was in the area that I have drawn an either sex antelope tag. I drove a couple more miles south and pulled off on a good ridge over looking a deep basin with a good water source in it. I got out and walked down the ridge about a half mile and sat down to look the scene over. I immediately saw 3 different herds with average bucks in them. Each herd had about 8 or 9 does with several fawns and then the 1 average buck with some smaller bucks mixed in. I sat and watched these herds for probably half an hour until I saw another herd come over the ridge probably a mile away. I couldn’t tell but I thought I could see an outstanding buck with this herd. I let them come as close as they were going to and then I climbed back over the ridge out of view of this new herd. I walked down around the ridge to where I expected the herd to be. When I topped back over the ridge they were still there. I sat with my mouth open watching this buck for another 15 minutes alone. He had great bases and was really tall. It was hard to say, as they were still 600 yards away, but I put him at about 15” tall with great shovels and ivory tips that curled around perfectly. I had never seen an Antelope this well put together. I have shot some that have either been tall but with small shovels, or with great shovels but no length. I tried getting a picture with my little digital camera, but I was just too far away for a decent picture. I backed out of there and back over the ridge with out spooking any animals. When I made it back to the truck I marked the spot as a waypoint on my GPS, so as not to forget the location. As I made my way home I had visions dancing in my head of some tasty Antelope back straps on my grill and an awesome mount on my wall. I also drove by some good Dove hunting grounds to see what their numbers looked like, and was not disappointed. There were a lot of Doves in the area, eating grains of different sorts and roosting in the old Cottonwood trees. It feels like this is going to be a great fall. I can’t wait for the Antelope season to open, as I have waited for this for a long time, now if that darned old buck will just stick around a few more few months, it will get exciting. I will continue scouting on the weekends, and maybe I will also be able to look over some different area as well.

2009 Big Game Drawings

Well folks. That does it, all the waiting & wondering in anticipation has come to an end. All of the 2009 Big Game tags have been drawn for and the results are posted on Montana FWP's website. I can now concentrate on work and my dog kennel again. Every year at this time, I drive myself and those around me absolutely crazy with childish gibberish about which tags I might draw this year. I will have to settle for my Antelope tag for region 630, which I said before, that I have been puting in for for 5 years now and finally drawn the tag. I also have to say that here in N.E. Montana we have an absolute abundance of game to be hunted. I'm pretty sure if my memory serves me right, that I can buy 6 over the counter Antlerless Whitetail Doe B tags. That alone is more meat than my family could eat in one year. I can also buy an A tag which I can shoot either species of Deer antlered or not. So, all totaled I can harvest up to 8 animals this year, along with my Elk tag. If I so chose to take the time and effort to travel to the western side of the state to hunt elk. All in all I think this will be a great season afield. I am so looking forward to the opening of Upland bird season as well.