More shooting

As you know I have gotten into Predator hunting this year, having nothing else to fill the short winter days and ease my "blood lust" requirement. With my replacement rifle, came a desire to reduce the size of the hole on the opposite side of whatever I shot. You ladies might want to skip this one, unless you are interested in shooting.

I am a "Reloader", having made my own shells and sometimes bullets since the late 60's. I had some H 380 powder that was reputed to be one of the best for the 22-250 that I am shooting. I decided to use the Hornady 40 grain Vmax bullet, whose main feature was that it was explosive. I did find a pretty good load that was 3677 fps. and just one big ragged hole at my 50 yard sight in distance.

I thought that that was pretty good and I shot about 6 Coyotes with them. Every thing was fine if I could hit in the shoulder as the bones caused the bullets to blow up not exiting the other side. Some of my shots were in close- 75 to 100 yards, and the only problem that I had with that was one poor Coyote that I shot that was facing me and about 20 feet lower than where I was hiding. The bullet hit the backbone and opened her up for about 14 inches. That is when I started shooting them in the shoulder. One nice feature of this bullet, is that the Coyotes never moved after the shot. If I hit them they were dead, generally dropping in their tracks.

Of course Coyotes do not willingly go to the skinning shed, so some of my shots were at pretty long distances. That meant that I had to now carry a range finder when I went to call Coyotes. I got to where I was using an "Alaskan Back pack" (frame big enough to pack out Moose) to carry all of my crap.

My next adventure concerned a Coyote that was suspicious of my calling, and began to edge away. I knew that I was going to have to take my chances with what I considered an extreme distance. My rifle was sighted in at 100 yards at this time. I raised the sight at the top of its back, and pulled the trigger. I didn't see what happened, but I heard the bullet hit with a "whack". I kept my eye on the last spot that I had seen her, and was actually quite surprised to eventually find her quite dead. I had hit her just under the spine and another sewing job was in store for me when I got her skinned. I paced it off as I walked back to my stand and ended up with 325 paces.

My next evolution was "Point blank range". In essence that means sighting the rifle in at the distance that will give you the least amount of variation both over and under out to 300 yards. For the loading that I listed above that was 245 yards. That resulted in being 1.7 inches high at 100 yards, 2 3/4 high at 200 yards, 4 1/2 low at 300 yards. Sounds pretty good right?

The first thing that began to cause some doubt was a Coyote that I finally called in one 4 degree morning at daylight. It was pretty close, about 125 yards was my guess. I aimed at the middle of the shoulder and was quite surprised when He left the area at a high rate of speed. There was an inch or so of snow on the ground and I tracked him for about a 1/4 of a mile, and could find no indication that I had done any more than cut a few hairs off his back. Now I know where my sight was when I pulled the trigger, and it was on the shoulder, perhaps a bit high on the shoulder, so the bullet had to have been still climbing when it got to the Coyote. A Coyote is about 7 to 9 inches from top of the shoulder to the bottom of the chest.

My next problem came with "Frankenyote" of the post before this one. I can't be unhappy about how that came out, but the fact still remains, that I can still screw it up. I just resigned myself to giving it a lot more thought before I pull the trigger. The only problem with Coyotes is that there just usually isn't much time to waste when they finally show themselves.

My trapping - predator mentor had an old Remington 788 rifle in 22-250 that he had put aside for one of his son's 223's. He was having a problem with clean kills with the 223, and wanted to have his 22-250 operational again. I offered to work up a load for his gun.

I have been trying for 6 months or more to buy some more of the H 380 powder that I had used for my loads. I don't know if you have tried to buy anything to either shoot or make something to shoot. If the president has accomplished nothing else, he has spurred a run on guns and bullets. It is almost impossible to find bullets and powder. It just isn't on the store shelves, and you can't back order powder either. So I decided to use a different powder that I had, and rarely use. It is a bit faster burning than the H 380. I picked a starting load that was comparable to the one that I had worked out for the H 380, thinking that the comparable load would be pretty close. Actually it worked out to be the best load for the gun. I produced a five shot group that was less than 1/2 inch. I shot the group through a chronograph and found that the bullets were traveling at 4000 feet a second. That means that the "Point blank range" sight in was for 260 yards. At that sight in, the bullet was .49 inches high at 50 yards, 1.7 high at 100 yards, 2 1/4 high at 150 yards, 1.7 high at 200 and 3 1/4 low at 300 yards. I no longer need a range finder.

Just the addition of 300 fps reduces the bullet drop and the fluctuation of its path by a really significant amount. Plus the added speed will contribute to the explosive properties of the bullet by that much more. I had been a bit disappointed by the speed of the H 380 load, so I decided to see how my rifle liked the different powder.

I found that the exact same loading of 34.5 grains of IMR 3031 would produce this 3 shot group. The group measures .320 outside to outside. That is less that 100 thousands more than the diameter of the bullet.

I didn't waste much time in changing all my loaded ammo to this load. Now all I need is one Coyote to volunteer.