Ramblings and Such From Hunting Coyote

[Straight Shooter]

My favorite coyote rifle has a Weaver V9 on it that I bought in 1969. It has a fine crosshair with a one minute dot. Very good for when you have to shoot running coyotes. Your eye is just naturally drawn to the dot.

 

[DMP25-06]

The Dot reticle is the easiest for me to use also . As Straight Shooter said " your eye is just naturally drawn to the dot ".
I have numerous scopes with some form of dot in the reticle , whether it is the Leupold Dot Hunting reticle or some form of crosshairs that stop before intersecting , and a free-floating dot is left for the aiming point .
Also , I have electronic red-dot non-magnifying sights on several pistols , a shorty AR-15 , and I even have 1 on a break-barrel pellet rifle .
Whatever the reason , the dot is perfect for my eyes when shooting .

 

[Ohlongarm]

Ohlongarm , I'm sure you have some good experiences to share as well . What kind of things do you do to your rifles to make them better suited for your use . Do you do any reloading if so what extra steps do you use if any for accuracy . Thank You to all who contribute for our enjoyment we all have some very good experiences and we all know how exciting it is to hunt the coyote and other animals . It's so interesting to hear what you do with your hunting , camping , calling , to and with your rifles ect. . A good job done by all let us continue . We will be making new interesting experiences to share with each other as we continue our journeys in life .

Basically not a whole lot,examples ,CZ 22 Hornet night scope mounted on it,trigger is a double set, breaks at 2lbs,stock rifle has dropped in the 100's of coyotes.Savage 17 WSM heavy barrel,on this rifle the plastic stock was thrown in the gargage,a Boyds hardwood laminate replaced it,had the barrel free floated, and the action bedded.Trigger set at 2lbs ,crisp as can be on the break. Shoots like this now,9 shots at 100 yds. With my 204 a Thompson Center Venture,the only thing done was a trigger job by Mcarbo in Florida, set at 2lbs,the rifle shoots great, and I had little problem dropping a yote at 1300 feet drt.I practice just a habit which can give me an edge.Now one hole groups at 200 yards are great ,but the ones that can do that and they're many, won't outshoot me on a varmint, just saying. I know where all the rifles shoot at the ranges i'll encounter, and no round goes in the chamber without being run through a ballistics calculator program.Nothing fancy,i'm not one to spend good money on a rifle and then spend another pile to make it shoot,good scopes and triggers are a must have for me. I don't reload there's enough top notch factory loadings that serve me well.

 

[DSheetz]

Bedding came to be a practice before synthetic stocks . When you had wooden stocks , even when they fit the action well , the moisture content of the wood changed with the weather , and location . So you bedded the action and made as good a fit to the action and at least an inch of the barrel . this made sure that the action didn't move around in the stock and sealed that part of the stock . You also would then seal the barrel channel , most wooden stocks weren't sealed well under the barrel to save the manufacture money ,after you made sure it didn't have any rubs with the barrel . Pillar bedding came about for much the same reasons it let you torque your action bolts to the proper torque and they would pretty much not change with the weather or your location . With the advent of synthetic stocks and aluminum bedding plates we found that if you bedded your action to them it gave you a much better and ridged action to stock fit and stopped any movement between the two . Sports men and hunters have benefited from the bench rest shooters and the things that they have learned to do to make their rifles shoot better . As time goes on, and sadly so does a war on terrorism , our knowledge of weapons systems , powders and bullets increases also to better enable our military to do their job .

 

[DSheetz]

As shooters and hunters we have benefited from the need for better equipment for our military . Laser range finders , gas filled scopes, better glass for optics , better coatings for the glass in our optics , night vision systems , stocks ,triggers , barrels , bullets , powders have all benefited from the need for better equipment for military use from around the world . We have benefited from the long range and bench rest shooting world as well . These guys take it to the extreme ragged edge of what their equipment will do and in an effort to push it past these limits they study , think about all the things that can be changed and ask for things to be changed for things to work better , longer and more accurately from all of the manufactures involved .

 

[DMP25-06]

Basically not a whole lot,examples ,CZ 22 Hornet night scope mounted on it,trigger is a double set, breaks at 2lbs,stock rifle has dropped in the 100's of coyotes.Savage 17 WSM heavy barrel,on this rifle the plastic stock was thrown in the gargage,a Boyds hardwood laminate replaced it,had the barrel free floated, and the action bedded.Trigger set at 2lbs ,crisp as can be on the break. Shoots like this now,9 shots at 100 yds. With my 204 a Thompson Center Venture,the only thing done was a trigger job by Mcarbo in Florida, set at 2lbs,the rifle shoots great, and I had little problem dropping a yote at 1300 feet drt.I practice just a habit which can give me an edge.Now one hole groups at 200 yards are great ,but the ones that can do that and they're many, won't outshoot me on a varmint, just saying. I know where all the rifles shoot at the ranges i'll encounter, and no round goes in the chamber without being run through a ballistics calculator program.Nothing fancy,i'm not one to spend good money on a rifle and then spend another pile to make it shoot,good scopes and triggers are a must have for me. I don't reload there's enough top notch factory loadings that serve me well.View attachment 217611

Ohlongarm ,

Great shooting by you and the rifle .
I have been following your posts on coyote hunting on this , and other threads here on LRH , and I have enjoyed each and every one of them .
Your success with the .17WSM has piqued my interest into possibly purchasing a rifle such as yours .

My Olympic Arms Ultramatch AR-15 rifle is just as it was purchased , the only modification was replacing the trigger and springs with a Jard 1.5# trigger system which cost $79.95 back in 2010 , from Brownells , after I purchased the rifle direct from Olympic Arms for $1010.00 .

Yes , the ammo is hand loaded , 2.2" OAL to fit into magazines , and loaded on a Dillon 550B progressive loader at the rate of 300 rounds per hour .
Load development took only 1 trip to the range , with load data from Hodgdon's website .

I would consider this rifle to be 90% pure stock original ( only trigger replaced ).
I just got lucky in buying a once-in-a-lifetime accurate mass produced rifle .

Again , thank you for sharing your hunts with us .
DMP25-06

 

[DSheetz]

It has only been a few years back that we had to do things to our factory rifles to get them to shoot better then one and a half inch groups at 100 yards . So we bedded them put in different triggers ect. . We also loaded our own ammo with bullet styles , weights and powder charges and types to find better groups with our rifles so that if we didn't get the hits on our intended prey we knew it was us not our equipment as we considered ourselves sportsmen and felt that the animal deserved that from us . We still do think that way but it is easer to buy factory offerings in ammo as well as better built factory rifles , sighting systems for day and night time use . If you look at a factory rifle from even the 70's they all came with open sights on them as the scopes of the day just weren't what they are today and our fathers and grand fathers didn't trust them and often wouldn't put one on a rifle , you might even have to take it to a smith and get the action drilled and taped to put a scope on a rifle . One of the first Weaver scopes I bought had a knot tied in the wire beside the cross hair and only a 3/4 inch tube . Weaver and Redfield were the popular scopes of the day for hunters Unertle scopes were the scope for bench rest and the military in a fixed power of 10 . Times have changed that for us and I'm glad of it . Back in about1967 Carlos Hathcock had a Navy machinist make a scope mount to put a scope on an m2 fifty caliber machine gun as you could press the butterfly trigger system and get it to fire only one round . Today we have a few different fifty caliber rifles to choose from . As well as a massive number of scope manufactures to pick from . For us as shooters the cotton has gotten pretty tall and I for one am pretty glad although I still like to tinker with my rifles , scope mounts and triggers . Do the younger people know what s#%)&@&! in tall cotton even means today ?

 

[Reemty J]

means things are going your way, big harvest................

 

[DSheetz]

Yup got enough to hid behind while you do what nature calls you to do when out working in the field you and your family will not go hungry this year .

 

[74honker]

We really are blessed with the technology we have today. In the same respect though, the things men like Carlos Hathcock did with the equipment they had back then was and still is truly amazing. They were true marksman! Hathcock did as much with that 30.06 model 70 than many or most shooters can't do with a far more exspensive set up today. Most people now a days think the cotton comment is racist lol because they have no clue what it means.

 

[DSheetz]

I didn't know what racism was till I went into the service . The people of color taught me about it because they were against me . Dennis told me one time not to talk to him in public when he was with his brothers as they gave him a lot of s$)^ because of it . I still to this day don't care where your ancestors came from if you treat me well I will treat you well if you treat me badly I will treat you badly because that is how you are telling me that you want me to treat you by your actions .

 

[DSheetz]

I was told one time that there weren't any 30-06's used by the U.S. in Vietnam . My reply was I seem to remember some 175 gr. 30-06 rounds being used there . He then said they were only used by snipers . Well never mind then it was just my imagination your right sir ? He never figured it out was like an A4 few over .

 

[DSheetz]

Capt. Whorral said one night awh Shi . What's going on capt. . I've got a green dot looking at us and we are looking at him hope he see's our green dot . Close calls happen some times .

 

[DMP25-06]

Going back to recalling hunting stories from the "Thrilling Days of Yesteryear", I have a short story to share .
My Dad , Baby Sister - age 7 , Baby Brother - age 6 , and I were Dove hunting . I was 21 at that time , and the oldest child of our family .

The Dove hunting was slow , and we were allowing the 2 younger children to shoot a .410 shotgun and a .22 rifle , to teach them how to handle firearms safely , and how to shoot accurately . Just a relaxed family outing .

Dad had just bought a Smith and Wesson Model 29 , .44 Magnum and he and I had fired a few shots with it , so he decided to wear it on his belt in his holster .
The 4 of us began walking toward another area that we hoped would have more birds flying , and as we walked , a cottontail rabbit jumped -out of the brush and began running away in their zig-zag pattern .
Baby Sister and brother said look at the "cute Bunny" just before Dad decided to impersonate John Wayne by drawing the .44 and shooting from the hip at the rabbit . I don't know if it was pure luck , I tend to think that Dad was actually that good , but that quick draw and shot from "HipShot Percussion" hit that cottontail rabbit and almost vaporized it .
My 7 year old sister went from saying "cute bunny" to crying , and my 6 year old brother began crying and said "Dad , you just killed the Easter Bunny".

Dad's reply to his 2 crying , youngest children was
" Well H..L , I didn't know that I was going to hit the DA.N thing" , and he was almost in tears because of the crying of the little ones .

DMP25-06