Well! What a morning!
As per my usual M.O. I looked out the kitchen window this morning hoping to see something moving near Bruce's acorn tree and was greeted with a wonderful sight. Two young, healthy squirrels were running around the tree, over my target stop and what not playing with each other. The only problem with the whole scenario was that my sniping spot was woefully unprepared. I went to my air rifle rack and pulled down the B30, grabbed my pellets and went outside. As I came out on to the back deck I realized that these squirrels were new to the area because they didn't flee. They continued to frolic as I attempted to set up my bench. In doing so I kinda slid/dropped my chair (cooler) and it thudded loudly. THAT was enough to get the squirrels' attention. One of them broke hard left and for Tom's yard and the unlucky one went for the "tree of death" behind my shooting stand. As I was getting situated he got nervous again and began to make a break for Garthton. My concern grew as he bounced further and further away from me and was steadily reaching the B30's maximum lethal distance. Fortunately for me, he stopped at a tree still within my range but on the far end of it. I watched him through the scope for about 10 seconds when he disappeared. I was just about to give my self a "V8" smack when he popped up in the grass about 10' from the tree. Sure enough he sat straight up and looked around.
I pushed in the safety, started breathing slowly and judged him to be 50+ yards out by the clarity of the scope. Surprised that he stayed up so long I began adjusting mild dots for the distance. One mil dot up and I squeezed the trigger with the dot on his head. The gun fired and there was a loud "whap!" and he dropped. As I loaded another pellet and got him back in the scope I could see he was only twitching in the tail. A couple seconds later there was nothing.
Knowing it was a long shot and being so pleased with myself I grabbed the kids, put the youngest in her outside play pen and me and the oldest went to measure the shot using my 10yd string. Sure enough, 55 yards from drop spot to muzzle. I was surprised to see the cleanliness of the kill as well. Shot entered in the chin area and never came out but certainly rattled inside his skull. Here's a couple pics I took.
