Prairie dogs with the .20 Veteran

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Franklink

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Sep 3, 2017
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Had about 30 minutes while my son was at soccer practice. One of my "permissions" is about a mile from the soccer field so I took the .20 Veteran Short with me.

Forgot the rangefinder so had to walk some shots in.

Working backwards from holdover, most were in the 100-125 yard range, but the last shot of the evening was one where the holdover corresponded to somewhere between 140 and 150 yards. Took four shots. And with the evening sun, I could see them perfectly. So dang cool to watch a .20/13.73 arc up and drop into where you want it to go. And for starting at only 805-810, they're dropping pretty substantially by 145ish yards. Wish I had it on video to share. .

Totaled out to only 13 dogs this evening.

Super cool and fun little pesting session
 
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TN_Yankee said:
That's a pretty good return on your time invested! I wish starlings would stick around like that.
Click to expand...

I agree that starlings are wily boogers. From my experiences with both of them, I'd say starlings are smarter than pdogs.

Prairie dog will set there and let you walk shots in. But hat ain't happening with starlings. Usually get one shot at a starling and if you hit it the rest are GONE from the sound of the pellet snake and their buddy falling.

A few years ago I saw an interesting study some researchers did with prairie dogs. They were testing their vocalizations and were able to determine that the little critters make different alert sounds for two legged, four legged, and airborne (hawk) threats.

So maybe it's not an intelligence situation, but more a behavior thing. Sometimes they'll stand tall and proud, on "alert." When they see something they think is bad juju they'll make a sort of bark sound, usually just peeking out of their holes. Those are my favorite, when I can just see their eye and the top of their head I really enjoy precisely sniping them. The long shots are usually when they're on sentry duty, standing up.

So from their behavior, airguns are the perfect tool for pdog pesting. Nice and quiet and theyve got the prey/predator safe distance thing all wrong for our modern PCPS.
 
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Franklink said:
Had about 30 minutes while my son was at soccer practice. One of my "permissions" is about a mile from the soccer field so I took the .20 Veteran Short with me.

Forgot the rangefinder so had to walk some shots in.

Working backwards from holdover, most were in the 100-125 yard range, but the last shot of the evening was one where the holdover corresponded to somewhere between 140 and 150 yards. Took four shots. And with the evening sun, I could see them perfectly. So dang cool to watch a .20/13.73 arc up and drop into where you want it to go. And for starting at only 805-810, they're dropping pretty substantially by 145ish yards. Wish I had it on video to share. .

Totaled out to only 13 dogs this evening.

Super cool and fun little pesting session
Click to expand...
“So dang cool to watch a .20/13.73 arc up and drop into where you want it to go.”
If the sun is behind you when shooting, in most cases you can see the pellet in flight.
Even at the range!
 
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Frank in Fairfield said:
“So dang cool to watch a .20/13.73 arc up and drop into where you want it to go.”
If the sun is behind you when shooting, in most cases you can see the pellet in flight.
Even at the range!
Click to expand...

Such was the case here too.
The arc was so pronounced that it almost looked like they were dropping from vertical on that farthest dog. He had his back to me, nice broad target and the first couple hit short and slightly off center. Just held higher and higher and walked the shots in, connected right between his shoulder blades on the fourth shot.
 
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