Got off work this afternoon at 3 pm, raced home, got changed, grabbed my R9 Goldfinger .177 and headed for the duck farm for some pest shooting. Spent the first hour trying to get some shots at starlings, but there really weren't many birds there today and the ones that were there were so nervous I simply couldn't get any shots. Decided to forget about the birds and start still hunting around the farm for woodchucks.
Within 30 minutes I spied a really large chuck hanging out near his burrow which was in a thin wooded strip bordering the duck pens. Using available cover I began my stalk. After 20 minutes I managed to get into a good shooting position 20 yards from the woodchuck, which was now sitting on top of his mound surveying his kingdom. This was really a large chuck, probably one of the biggest I've seen in a while, but I decided if he offered me a perfect head shot I'd take it. I waited 5 minutes, watching him intensely as he moved about. Suddenly he offered me a perfect view of the left side of his head. Put the crosshairs on his eye, pulled the trigger and heard the pellet slam home. The chuck dropped right in his tracks.
I walked over to look at my trophy and was surprised how large and old he was. He was really scraggly and much to large and tough for eating, so I pushed him back down into his hole and covered it up as best as I could. I then continued my search for another chuck.
While still hunting through a heavily wooded strip of land that runs the length of the farm I caught a glimpse of something brown in the bushes and grass. It was a chuck I had seen the other day but couldn't get close to. This time I had the advantage because I was between him and his den and I knew where he was going to run to. He caught sight of me and sure enough he made a bee line for his den. He was moving pretty fast so I didn't have a shot, but he made the fatal error of stopping for a split second on the top of his dirt mound before plunging into the hole. That was all I needed. I put the scope up quickly, found his head and squeezed the trigger. Distance was 10 yards. He dropped instantly, quivered for a few seconds, then stopped breathing.
This was a decent sized chuck, but he was really clean looking, not like the earlier big gnarly chuck, so I took him home for pics and for stew. I had my daughter snap a couple of pics of me and my tropy, then I took a couple more myself of him and my beloved Goldfinger. In one of the pics you can see where the pellet struck him behind the left ear.
Jeff
