Summer Time pdogs & a bonus!

orkan

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2010
Messages
2,112
Location
SD
With summer officially here, I recently figured I should go out and celebrate. One of my neighbors called and said he had some prairie dogs move into his pasture and setup shop. When I arrived, I saw they had spread themselves over about 2-3 acres... so it was a tiny uprising, but one that had to be dealt with none the less. I found a nice elevated position overlooking the town, and began working them over. The vast majority of them were pups, so they presented plenty challenging targets at 250-350yds. Many of them were no bigger than an adult striped gopher! Winds were swirling pretty heavily with intensity from 3mph to 18mph. Despite that, I was getting solid work in.

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Here's one of the little critters after meeting his end at the hands of my 6 Dasher.
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Wherever I set up, I always like to see how far I can see from my position. That day, this draw in the distance was the farthest point.
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The afternoon was going well, and I had 19 of them put to rest. That represents the bulk of what was in the town. I missed 5 times total... but I think those made it back up top and weren't so lucky the next time around. There were mounds out at the far end of the town, that I didn't see any activity in all day. Nothing out there, despite there being obvious fresh mounds. This puzzled me all afternoon. Finally the mystery was revealed. I caught a glimpse of movement out there, and hopped on the Vector to to ping target data to the Kestrel 5700X. Hey! That's not a prairie dog... thats a badger! Pinged him at 408yds and did the deed. Perfect chest hit. Small badger... but still much larger than the tiny pups I'd been shooting all afternoon.

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It's always nice to get a badger. Great pictures, I love the rifle and tripod set ups! A friend is moving to SD to help out on the family ranch. Hopefully I'll be able to get out there someday and get some hunting in.
 
Tell me more about your binoculars/range finder. Is there a cable plugged in the side of the binoculars?
From the ground up, I've got a set of RRS 33 legs with a leveling base and a RRS Fluid Head (discontinued, sadly). That keeps everything true to the horizon and super smooth movement. On top is a Vectronix Vector 23 LRF bino. The cable is a special data cable for the DRS Bravo bluetooth dongle. The bluetooth dongle connects wirelessly to the Kestrel 5700X AB. The Kestrel HUD connects wirelessly to the Kestrel 5700X as well.

So, I ping a target with the Vector 23, it sends inclination, azimuth/dof (direction of fire), and range to target to the Kestrel 5700X AB. (Applied Ballistics) The Kestrel is reading temperature, pressure, wind intensity, wind direction, (among other things) and feeds it to the on-board Applied Ballistics solver. That solver is setup with the specific rifle and bullet profile I'm running. AB then computes the firing solution using all of that... and spits out elevation and the wind 1 and wind 2 horizontal adjustments. The HUD sits down by the shooter, so they can get an active readout of the elevation, W1/W2, and then its up to the shooter to use their instincts to place the shot properly. The Kestrel is mounted in a free spinning weather vane, so it is actively sending wind intensity and direction to the shooters HUD via bluetooth. The 5700X is updating constantly in the vane, so if there's a shift of intensity or direction... the firing solution is automatically updated on the HUD.

The Vector 23 LRF has a beam divergence of less than 3 tenths of a mil, (0.3mil) so it is extremely capable when pinging tiny colony varmints way out there. We're currently working through a bluetooth issue between the DRS Bravo and the Kestrel, but I've been able to keep things running for the most part.

It all together allows some very impressive work to be done afield. Some days I just like to drive around in the side by side zapping them out the window with 17WSM's. When it's time to get serious, this is what I drag out.
 
Pretty breezy today, but a solid time none the less. 55 more down. Couple hundred to go.

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... and this is why they have to go! They just dig. All the time they dig. When this little fella was done kicking up dust, he came topside for a rest... and that's the last time he was making holes.


My 22BR with 80gr bergers had a solid bit of fun.
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That's a nice setup !! What was the wind call on the dirt in the video ?
 
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