I wanted to go rabbit hunting this morning, Sunday, up in the mountains, but I discovered late last night that my car had a flat tire. So, I spent the morning putting on the spare and getting my tire patched up. I was not a happy camper after waiting an extra hour for my car, so I came home and logged on to GTA to take my mind off it. I read Jeff’s story and saw his picture of that huge groundhog, and I told my son that we were going rabbit hunting. The first thing he said was, “If it is sitting still, I want the first shot.†LOL. I put the RWS 48 in the back of the car, and we got ready to go.
We pulled up to the gate that leads up to the field we have been hunting at 7:30 PM, and it was no sooner than we had walked around the gate, than we saw cottontail sitting in front of some bushes. I told my son to take a head shot. He set up on the shooting sticks, took his time with the aim, and pulled the trigger. The rabbit flopped straight over. No twitching on this one. We picked him up and started down the over grown path to the field. I spotted a cottontail sitting quite a ways off and we tried to sneak up on him, but I tried a much longer shot than I have normally taken, and I missed. And somewhere along this time, I broke my homemade shooting sticks. Oh, well, I thought, I know I can make some more pretty easily. The light was fading at about 8 PM, so we started back towards the car. On the way to where we parked, a cottontail ran around the edge of a tree and stopped. I moved over a little bit, and shot from a kneeling position. I hit him high in the shoulder, and I could hear the pellet hit a rock after it passed through him. I am amazed at the power of the RWS 48, and I love shooting Crossman Premiers out of it. After the shot I used my range finder and it came up with a distance of 37 yards. We picked up the rabbit and started back towards the car. When we got there, I again used the range finder and found out my son’s shot was 35 yards on the first rabbit. Another good, early evening hunt. We are going to cook some this week, and I am probably going to go with the barbecue suggestion provided by Ed, (Shadow). It should be a pretty good meal.
A couple more rabbits for the freezer.
Broken shooting sticks. I have to put together another pair. My son and I are getting used to using them.
