I forgot to put a Cheerio in one of my reloads. |
I am up to eleven or twelve red squirrels harvested from the black walnuts west of the driveway. Google maps suggests that it is 170 feet-by-170 feet or 2/3 of an acre.
The amount of meat on a red squirrel hardly justifies the use of a shotgun shell.
The amount of nuts, especially the northern pecans growing beside the driveway, that the squirrels will strip from the trees definitely justifies the use of a shotgun shell. Shooting of these squirrels is not "hunting", it is pest-control.
Gresham's Law applies to squirrels. Bad squirrels (red squirrels) drive good squirrels (fox squirrels) out.
The ounce of #7 still does a dandy job on the squirrels. It also knocks a bunch of small twigs and branches off the trees, making it hard to follow the trajectory of the corpse as it pinwheels to the ground.
Oopsie... :-)
ReplyDeleteI find that a pellet out of an airgun at +/= 1000 FPS does a great job out to 35 or 40 yards.
ReplyDeleteCheaper, too.
.22 is a good cheap squirrel getter. I run decent ammo and get head shots at 50 yards and longer. Cheap bulk ammo from Wal-Mart doesn't have the consistency for those shots out of my lever action.
ReplyDelete