Was a rather windy today but after I did my morning errands I grabbed the .177 CFX, the Gamo Tomahawk pellets I just bought, and headed for the duck farm. As I reported the other day the Tomahawks shoot great in my my CFX and S1k but I needed to test them on some live targets to determine their effectiveness for hunting and pest control.
Got to the duck farm and saw literally thousands of starlings. Huge flocks, and I mean huge, were flying back and forth over the duck farm. Problem was they simply wouldn't stay put in one spot for very long, and they were so wary that as soon as they got a glimpse of me they would burst into flight and fly off. I decided to find a good spot and simply sit and wait.
First shot of the day was a starling that landed at the very top of a tall, dead tree. I know the range to this tree from where I was sitting was 35 yards, as I've "sniped" from this location before, so I set the AO on 35, put the crosshairs on his chest and pulled the trigger. Heard the "thwack" and watched the starling plummet to earth. Bird never even twitched. So far so good.
Had a long wait for the next target but a small flock landed in the tree next to the dead tree. I knew the range to this tree was 40 yards. Set the scope, pulled the trigger, another dead starling. Inspected the bird after retrieving it,,, pellet blasted through the wing and produced a good sized entry wound in the side of the body. After that decided to take a walk and move to another spot.
Wound up getting 2 more starlings, one at 20 yards and the last one at 35 yards, both one shot clean kills. I realize that starlings aren't the toughest game to take down so I went looking for some of the pigeons that were circling near the far end of the farm. As I was approaching one of the large wooden feeders I noticed a squirrel half inside the feeder feasting away. If he's eating the duck feed then he's fair game. Range was 10 yards. Put the crosshairs on his noggin, squeezed, and the squirrel slumped and fell out of the feeder dead as a stone. Examination showed that the pellet actually hit him in the shoulder (not sure if he moved or I flinched) but the Tomahawk went through the shoulder, through the body and exited near the other shoulder leaving a profusely bleeding wound.
No more targets presented themselves so I called it a day. I wish I had been able to take more shots to better evaluate the Tomahawks on game, but not a bad first hunting test. The pellets certainly performed extremely well on the birds and as for the squirrel, a longer shot would certainly have been a better test of the pellets killing power on tough skinned squirrels, but a dead squirrel is a dead squirrel.
I plan on heading back to the duck farm tomorrow morning for another hunt and will bring the S1K this time with the Tomahawks. Hopefully I'll get to shoot at more targets. So far I think these pellets have potential as a viable hunting pellet.
Jeff
