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Ernie Bishop
Posts: 8,606 Senior Member
Once in a lifetime
Ernie Bishop
Posts: 8,606 Senior Member
It was the last day of WY-SHOT. In stead of shooting steel this year from 1300 to to 2K, I did something that more in line with the Pre-WYSHOT days...LR prairie dog shooting. Very few folks come prepared to shoot a specialty pistol out to 2K. For the past several years, they have been using my stuff, so I changed it up. I asked how many had ever killed a pd past 1000 yards. As you would assume, the numbers were quite small (2), so that is what we did on Wednesday. Steve Hugel (My longtime hunting buddy from Pueblo) and I spotted for 5 different guys. For the longest dog award for the prize money the pd had to be found on the ground. Jeremy won that with 2 kills over 1126ish yards (only found one topside). One of our new shooters, Jeff took one at 1025. Glenn lives in Gillette and he is fairly new to shooting distance with anything, hit on at 1161. I watched the bullet hit the dog, but it went into its hole. We found the blood, but it went deep enough down, we couldn't recover it. Before we went to look for bodies and take pics, Steve challenged me if I could kill a dog over a grand in less than 10-shots with a 22 centerfire specialty pistol. He upped the ante, by saying he would buy me lunch if I could do it. The conditions were good, so I started pulling stuff out of the Yukon. I had three 22 centerfire specialty pistols with me: 15" center-grip 223 Remington HSP, shooting 77 grain TMK's, 15.9" 22 GT center-grip XP-100, shooting the 88 grain ELD-M, and my rear grip 18" Kauger Arms specialty pistol, also shooting the 88 grain ELD-M. I had shot the rear-grip on day one for fun, so I chose it. I found a dog, and ranged him at 1004 yards, dialed it up, felt the wind (I had been spotting for others for around 4 hours up to this point), and dialed left 1.25 MOA. Steve had not had time to get on his Kowa Big Eyes yet, as he figured it would take a shot or two to get dialed in. Jeremy and Jeff were on spotting scopes. Hit him on the first shot cold bore. Steve couldn't believe it, and he was up set he didn't get to witness it. At first, he thought I was teasing him, so I told him to look through my scope, and saw for himself the dead dog topside. Then it rang out, "there is another dog right beside him?" I got back on the gun, since I had 9 more rounds to use, and proceeded to be more typical of this kind of shooting (just right, just left, just over, etc..) Both of these dogs were yearlings, and not the Boone and Crockett level you would prefer for this type of distance. On the 9th shot I took out the second one.
It was my day to look good. Steve was spotting for me with his Big Eyes, and that made everything sweeter, as Steve had been my spotter when the two of us committed to LR dogs back almost 20 years ago when I killed a pd just under 1600 yards in less than 10-shots, then the following day hit one at 1800 yards (Many shots). The longest one had blood everywhere, but the dog went down the hole. Kind of wish I had a shovel and dug it out or tried to. As a good friend says, "A hit is a hit!" 
One of our WY-SHOT guys who didn't kill one with his 6.5-284 XP asked to shoot my Kauger rear-grip, and killed a couple of dogs beyond a 1/4 mile with it-It sure shoots good!
Was there luck with a cold bore kill at a grand on a small prairie dog? You betcha! And I will take it!
Ernie
"The Un-Tactical"
"The Un-Tactical"
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