This morning dawned clear, cool, and quiet, in southern Wyoming...after my morning's walk, I decided to do a bit of gopher hunting or shooting...this season has not been great by normal standards...the numbers of gophers seem rather low...plus the wet spring has brought on lots of grass for cover for the gophers that are active...About 8:00 I started loading my 84 Toyota 4 wheel dr. pickup...First thing my two golden retrievers wanted to go...So they crowded into the front seat prefering that to riding in the back under the topper...here they could see all the action an crowd me to their hearts content....I threw in a could cased centerfire pistols:this time a .45 auto and S & W model 28 4"...also put in my 700 in .223 incase I need a centrefire rifle...todays shooting would mainly be with my Remington 513T...a heavy barreled rifle with a 6-24 Tasco World Class scope on it..my ammo was CCI Stingers...It was about a 20 min. run to the ranch I selected for the mornings hunt...few gophers were along the highway, a sure sign the numbers were down....when I pulled into the ranch...I spotted two gophers, normally 20 or so would be racing around the old road...not good...I used the 513 to pop one of these then moved on up the ranch road...for the next couple hours I drove to different vantage points an shot gophers..some as close as 15 yards, some out to maybe 100 yards or a bit more...the Stingers were deadly on the little rodents...sometimes 4or 5 shots were all a guy would get, other spots 20-25 shots...my percent of hits when way down when I tried shooting over a hundred yards due to the light wind...by 10:30 I had a 100 less gophers eating the ranchers hay...decided to head in for lunch and other chores...tough work, but someone has to do it...glad I have the job....et
