The ol' woodchucks here (as you may have read) have ben ravaging a little stand of corn I have in the back of a roughly 1.5 acre parcel of land.
The surrounding areas are heavily wooded or open farm land and the chucks have been marauding.
Lately, I have been using the corn stalks like I was bobber fishing. I see the stalks move, I move in. Usually that's a bit too late though.
So I am actually harvesting some corn for ourselves and a chuck runs off.
I give it some time to settle down and then I return, armed with my 52, a tin of 15.8 gr JSB Exacts, and little more wisdom than in the past.
This time I play stealth all the way. I even silently close the fence latch, which is a good 100 yards or so from the likely kill zone. I creep down from the enclosed yard behind the house and take up
pbservation behind a rectagonal flower garden which actually doubles rather well as a shooting blind, except for the poison ivy I never seem to be able to get rid of. So keeping my distance, I check the scene and
see no sign of movement other than the ubiquitous cabbage butterflies, monarchs and random small birds.
So I duck down and saunter around the flower bed to low-lying wisteria bush/tree which is, on a diagonal and up the hill, roughly 35 yards from the corn, which is itself an area of about 10x20 yards where the land flattens out by the stream separating the main property from
the farm pond.
I position myself sitting down, right leg bent and tucked in, left leg foot on the ground, knee up for shooting. The wisteria provides complete coverage from my right side, almost complete from the middle and a few branches on the left, through which I intend to shoot.
As I am getting comfy, my eye detects movement on my left (wonderful thing the human eye and how it does that). Slinking down from the neighbor's adjacent property is a smallish but decent-sized ground hog. Hugging the tree/brush line he makes his way down
to a wooded, non lawn area and freezes. I stop breathing. I have shot at 3 groundhogs, missing one completely and probably killing the 2nd. No body no crime, so I cannot be sure. Although a blood trail and presence of turkey vultures makes me think it was a kill, I can never be sure, he ran off never to be seen again.
So I am frozen, not loaded, pellet tin on the ground not even open, roughly 45 yards away at this time and probably in perfect line of sight if he happens to look in my direction, because he approached almost level with me to my left then went down hill and slightly to the right til he was at roughly my 10 o clock when he froze.
I did not move a muscle. He looked at the corn patch. Must have looked good because he never seemed to see me. He starts moving again, and finds his way under a big apple tree which is about 10 yards to the left of the corn stand -- roughly at my 11-1130 now..almost straight on.
I very very slowly and deliberately reach down with my left hand and begin to open the tin -- it won't budge, my leverage is all wrong. I work it slowly with my non-dominant hand and finally after what seems an eternity, the lid silently comes loose and I extract a pellet.
Lucilky I cocked the side-lever action 52 silently (or silently enough) and the quarry is not interested in me at all, if he has even seen me, which I doubt...or at least not recognized me as human.
Quickly I load and gently place the lever back in place.
I shoulder the 52 and take aim.
My 52 is sighted in for about 25 yards and about 40ish...I don't know exactly the distances but I know where on my property I can hit dead on with the scope as is...I figure this is about the distance from the top of the hill to the garden fence near the corn, so I figure it should be roughly dead on.
I acquire the target. He has found some corn he (or another) chuck has pulled out of the ground. He's munching on it under the shade of the apply tree. Nice work if you can get it on a hot August afternoon.
Just then he sits up a bit, and I aim for a head shot. I give the trigger a pull and the chuck drops in his tracks.
I quickly reload and move it to see if he's finished. He makes one move, then collapses, heaves a few times and moves no more.
Looking over the body, my aim was low. I got him sort of on a low neck high back shot.
Regardless, once the shot was taken, he didn't move more than an inch or two from the spot.
I fired a closer range shot to make sure he was done.
And that is my first verfied kill.
Hope you enjoyed my story.
