Ah, what a wonderful day. It was so long in coming though.
Grey squirrels have been in seemingly endless supply in the past around here. I bought the 350 for myself during the Xmas holiday and hadn't seen but 1 since then.
Then, I woke up this morning. After a long and unpleasant night with a sick kid I groggily shuffled into the kitchen for the oldest daughter's "first chocolate milk of the day". As I poured it into her favorite cup I habitually looked out the kitchen window into my "killing grounds" as I have countless times before. THIS time it was different. My eyes bulged as I watched two grey squirrels frolicking around the tree directly behind my target stand while two big crows cawed loudly in disgust and annoyance. I quickly handed my daughter her milk and ran for my 350. It wasn't till I got to it that I remembered that after sighting it in at 30 yards yesterday I had forgotten to do so with Predators. It was sighted in with JSB Exacts. I could only hope it would do the trick.
I picked up the gun, loaded it and tried to open the sliding door without making any noise. As I slid the door open the crow's annoyance hit a high and they began flapping and cawing and the squirrels decided it was time to leave. It was exactly what I didn't want to happen. Reluctantly I set the 350 into position and decided to go back inside for a bit and see if the squirrels would come back.
I waited for 10 minutes and then looked out again. Sure enough, one of the squirrels was back by the tree looking around. In fact, he was so curious that when I slowly made my way outside to the 350, he was standing ON my target stand checking out my accuracy. He apparently couldn't tell that the holes all bunched together spelled his doom. As I sat down and picked up the gun he saw me and did the natural squirrel thing. He went up the tree. Ordinarily that would be a good move but this guy missed a "hide from the two legs" class or two. He went up the tree and sat down facing me. I giggled quietly as I set the 4X16X50 mil dot on him. I slowed down my breathing, concentrated on my spot (just behind his left leg) and slowly squeezed the trigger. POP! SMAACK!! For a half second I thought I'd actually missed a simple 35 yard shot and hit the tree because of the loudness of the hit. The stunned, twitchy dropping squirrel quickly belayed my fears. He hit the ground and moved.....once.
I went and retrieved him to find the pellet went into his body thru the left front leg elbow. Very little blood and one very dead, big fat grey squirrel.
