Yesterday, I got a rare glimpse of a ground squirrel sprawled out flat on its belly just chilling on part of my retaining wall about 30yd from my office door so I go to the safe and grabbed my Edgun Leshiy 2 with red dot to dispatch of it. Of course, as soon as I open the sliding glass door to take aim at it, the squirrel scurries off into the bushes. Disappointed, I lower the Leshiy 2 . . . only to see a tiny bit of movement about 5yds past the squirrel's previous location.
I had to squint and do a double take to see what it was . . . but lo and behold, it was the very tip of the head of the pocket gopher that has been digging up a large portion of the backyard. I've been trying to poison it for weeks but it was still digging out new mounds of dirt everyday. It was pretty skittish, only popping its head above ground for a split second at a time before disappearing again. I knew I'd probably only have one shot at it and my chances of hitting it with the red dot on my L2 were probably low so I went back to the safe and pulled out the trusty Impact M3 0.25 w/ 30x Hawke Frontier scope on it.
By the time I got the M3 back to the door, there were all sorts of thoughts running through my head. 1) This M3 has been sitting for weeks without being shot so there's inevitably going to be some amount of reg creep so how much lower is the POI going to be on this shot? 2) This rifle is fully decked out and pretty heavy but I don't have time to mount in on my trusty tripod so I was going to have to brace it against the side of the sliding door and hope for the best. 3) It was mid-afternoon so there was a pretty brisk right to left breeze to contend with. 4) I'm going to have a split second to time the shot before it ducked into its hole again (which, by the way, was slightly obscured by the dirt mound in front of it so the line of sight was obstructed). 5) And finally, I've got another Zoom meeting starting in 3 minutes so I've got to get this shot off right quick . . . needless to say, the adrenaline's pumping pretty good now!
Taking all those things into consideration, I steady myself against the door, tried as best I could to anticipate its head popping rhythm and pulled the trigger . . . then logged onto two consecutive meetings without being able to see if I hit my target or not. The meetings end and I walk out to the gopher's location with more gopher pellets in hand thinking that, at the very least, I would have a fresh opening into which to put the pellets in the hopes of maybe finally getting the poison to its intended target.
Here's what I found:
The red arrow is pointing to the gopher hole just in front of the palm tree trunk (about 35yds out)
View attachment 460509 This is the hole:
View attachment 460511 This is what was waiting for me in the hole:
View attachment 460510 This is what I pulled out:
View attachment 460512 I mean WOW - a shot straight through the back of the head coming out the front dead center at its neck. Talk about a DEAD RIGHT THERE shot; that thing didn't move an inch after impact. Pretty amazing!!! Imagine something smaller than the size of a golf ball, popping in and out of a hole (partially obscured by a mound of dirt) for a split second at a time and getting this result!
I just hope that was the last one b/c I don't know if I can pull off another shot like that (or even have the chance to)!!!
