Groundhogs
There are, here on the mountain, an abundance of groundhogs (Marmota monax). You may know them as woodchucks or whistle pigs, but they are, all the same, rodents in the ground squirrel family of marmots. Weighing 5 to 10 pounds, they burrow in the ground (cows breaking their legs in the holes) and eat the same green vegetable matter you and I might (destroying gardens). As such, you can imagine that they are unpopular hereabouts.
We now have a family of groundhogs living in the field across the road from us and I am determined to stop their advance there. That means, of course, delivering a high velocity projectile to their body (preferably the head), causing massive local trauma and, ultimately, death from lack of oxygen to the brain caused by bleeding and loss of blood pressure.
I own three machines capable of performing such a feat, two shotguns and a rifle; in this case the rifle is the instrument of choice. It happens to be a single shot, .22-caliber Remington Model 514 manufactured by the Remington Arms Company in March, 1958 according to the letter code stamped into the side of the barrel. The date is significant because I turned 12 that year. You see, I never owned a BB gun because my Mother was certain beyond a doubt that I would put out my eye (or, worse yet, perhaps someone else's eye) with such a dangerous toy, but if I would only wait until I was 12 years old I could have my very own .22-caliber rifle. The logic escaped me then and as now. I've never known anyone to have lost sight in an eye from a BB shot but I've read any number of accounts of accidental death from a .22 gunshot. So, I bade my time and on June 26, 1958 we went down to the Brown-Rodgers-Dixon hardware store in Winston-Salem and bought my Remington 514 for $12.50. The weapon, now 49 years old, is still in great shape and has, since it's initial purchase, had a low-power telescopic sight added. It is, fact certain, a most capable groundhog killer.
I had not taken a shot with the rifle in at least twenty years. Was the sight still in alignment? Could I still point it at target and have a prayer of hitting it within reasonable limits? So it was that the Sunset Ridge Rifle Range came into being over the 150 feet clearing down the sewer line to the drain field. The box of ammunition, however, said the projectiles were dangerous over a range of 1.5 miles. So it was that I built a bullet trap (at no cost) of metal plate, bed frames and the like, hoping all the while that the laws of Newtonian mechanics had not changed substantially since my days at the university such that the bullet would not be unexpectedly directed back toward me and, thereby, put out my eye.
I aimed at the center of the bullet trap and pulled the trigger. Crack! Splat! Ding! The bullet hit the 2 foot wide deflector in the upper left corner, shattered into a thousand pieces of shrapnel which were, as planned, redirected by the stop into the ground below. I love you, Sir Isaac!
But why the upper left corner? A groundhog is much smaller than the bullet stop. Was it my sight or the rifle sight? So it was I built a rifle bench rest (at no cost) from odd bits of wood and metal and adjusted the telescopic sight to within an inch or so of where the rifle was aimed at 150 feet. That was a bit of an adventure because my scope had been mounted with the vertical and horizontal adjustments transposed. But, I soon learned that a "R" adjustment was really a "U" adjustment and, similarly, the "D" and "L" (or perhaps it was the other way around).
The Remington 514, despite it's low price, is more than capable of that kind of accuracy with it's nice 22-inch barrel and long rifle cartridges.
The question was, was I?
In the standing position, the tin can target moved around in the telescopic sight as if I were a drunkard. I didn't even bother to squeeze the trigger once. In the sitting position, I fired twice, both misses. In the prone position, I fired thrice with two outside nicks and one dead tin-can groundhog.
Practice, they say, makes perfect. I need quite a bit of it.
Now, you might ask, just what am I to do with a dead groundhog. Well, as for the one Thoreau dispatched after it ravaged his bean field, he ate it. Indeed, a Google search of the Internet for "groundhog recipes" yields a great variety of them. So, my plan is to freeze the meat until Large, Sparky, and the other boys come for golf and we'll enjoy a pot of "Caddy Shack" Stew, the groundhog, after all, being nothing more than a huge gopher.
Mmmm, mmmmm, good!
We now have a family of groundhogs living in the field across the road from us and I am determined to stop their advance there. That means, of course, delivering a high velocity projectile to their body (preferably the head), causing massive local trauma and, ultimately, death from lack of oxygen to the brain caused by bleeding and loss of blood pressure.
I own three machines capable of performing such a feat, two shotguns and a rifle; in this case the rifle is the instrument of choice. It happens to be a single shot, .22-caliber Remington Model 514 manufactured by the Remington Arms Company in March, 1958 according to the letter code stamped into the side of the barrel. The date is significant because I turned 12 that year. You see, I never owned a BB gun because my Mother was certain beyond a doubt that I would put out my eye (or, worse yet, perhaps someone else's eye) with such a dangerous toy, but if I would only wait until I was 12 years old I could have my very own .22-caliber rifle. The logic escaped me then and as now. I've never known anyone to have lost sight in an eye from a BB shot but I've read any number of accounts of accidental death from a .22 gunshot. So, I bade my time and on June 26, 1958 we went down to the Brown-Rodgers-Dixon hardware store in Winston-Salem and bought my Remington 514 for $12.50. The weapon, now 49 years old, is still in great shape and has, since it's initial purchase, had a low-power telescopic sight added. It is, fact certain, a most capable groundhog killer.
I had not taken a shot with the rifle in at least twenty years. Was the sight still in alignment? Could I still point it at target and have a prayer of hitting it within reasonable limits? So it was that the Sunset Ridge Rifle Range came into being over the 150 feet clearing down the sewer line to the drain field. The box of ammunition, however, said the projectiles were dangerous over a range of 1.5 miles. So it was that I built a bullet trap (at no cost) of metal plate, bed frames and the like, hoping all the while that the laws of Newtonian mechanics had not changed substantially since my days at the university such that the bullet would not be unexpectedly directed back toward me and, thereby, put out my eye.
I aimed at the center of the bullet trap and pulled the trigger. Crack! Splat! Ding! The bullet hit the 2 foot wide deflector in the upper left corner, shattered into a thousand pieces of shrapnel which were, as planned, redirected by the stop into the ground below. I love you, Sir Isaac!
But why the upper left corner? A groundhog is much smaller than the bullet stop. Was it my sight or the rifle sight? So it was I built a rifle bench rest (at no cost) from odd bits of wood and metal and adjusted the telescopic sight to within an inch or so of where the rifle was aimed at 150 feet. That was a bit of an adventure because my scope had been mounted with the vertical and horizontal adjustments transposed. But, I soon learned that a "R" adjustment was really a "U" adjustment and, similarly, the "D" and "L" (or perhaps it was the other way around).
The Remington 514, despite it's low price, is more than capable of that kind of accuracy with it's nice 22-inch barrel and long rifle cartridges.
The question was, was I?
In the standing position, the tin can target moved around in the telescopic sight as if I were a drunkard. I didn't even bother to squeeze the trigger once. In the sitting position, I fired twice, both misses. In the prone position, I fired thrice with two outside nicks and one dead tin-can groundhog.
Practice, they say, makes perfect. I need quite a bit of it.
Now, you might ask, just what am I to do with a dead groundhog. Well, as for the one Thoreau dispatched after it ravaged his bean field, he ate it. Indeed, a Google search of the Internet for "groundhog recipes" yields a great variety of them. So, my plan is to freeze the meat until Large, Sparky, and the other boys come for golf and we'll enjoy a pot of "Caddy Shack" Stew, the groundhog, after all, being nothing more than a huge gopher.
Mmmm, mmmmm, good!
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