Around 3:30 this afternoon I decided to head over to the duck farm and do some bird shooting. All the starlings I saw the other day were still imprinted in my brain and I just had to go starling hunting. I hadn't hunted with my .177 Goldfinger lately so I carefully took her out of the gun safe, grabbed a supply of CPL's and headed for the farm. Well,, there were large flocks of starlings all over, but due to the fact that there were a bunch of farm workers out in different areas of the farm the birds just wouldn't sit in one place for very long. I roamed the farm for about an hour, and while I did manage to nail a few birds the shooting just wasn't going to improve as long as the workers were out so I shifted gears and decided to stalk pigeons and some G-hogs in the hope of getting enough for dinner.
The first flock of pigeons I tried to stalk up on did sit tight long enough for me to get a shot, and I did clip one of the birds cause I saw some feathers fly, but when the flock lifted off and departed there weren't any stragglers left behind. The white pigeon I had knocked some feathers off flew off with his buddies and looked just fine. I skulked back into the weeds and underbrush and waited for another shot. It took almost 30 minutes but a good sized flock landed again at the same feeder and I started my second stalk. This time I took a different angle of approach, using a large old piece of farm equipment as cover, and after 10 minutes of slowly moving forward one step at a time I found myself in a good shooting position 30 yards from the birds. I picked out a good sized pigeon that gave me a good angle, pulled the trigger and heard the "POP" as the CPL slammed home. The pigeon immediately fell over on his side, flopped around for about 10 seconds, then lay still. !/2 my dinner was now down and in my game pouch so I headed off to find a tender young G-hog to round out the meal. I didn't want an older one, I was looking for a younger one that would fry up nice and tender :)
As I slowly made my way through a field covered with thick new grass on the other side of the farm I suddenly saw something moving in the grass up ahead of me. I froze and surveyed the situation. Yup, it was a young G-hog alright,,, just about the size I was looking for. He hadn't seen me so I started to creep forward to close the distance a bit. By staying close to the ground and moving only when the G-hog was eating and facing away from me I was able to close the gap to 25 yards. As I stood up to shoulder the rifle the little G-hog noticed me and made a bee line for some thick weeds bordering the duck pen. I found him in the scope and followed him as he ran but I had no intention of firing while he was running. There is a small 2 - 3 foot high chicken wire fence that is used as a border for the duck pens and most times the G-hogs will stop just for a second before they climb the fence. I don't know why they do that but they do. They could easily hit the fence on the run and be over it but most of the time they give you that 1 or 2 second pause before they scale the fence and flop over on the other side. This pause is just what I was hoping this young G-hog would give me and sure enough he didn't disappoint me. He came to the fence and just stopped dead in his tracks. I already had the scope on his noggin so I just pulled the trigger and send the CPL slamming into juniors noggin. The little guy fell over, shuddered a few times and gave up the ghost. My dinner was complete so I picked up my trophy and headed home to take some pics and to make dinner :). Upon seeing I was making fried pigeon and G-hog for dinner my 2 daughters gave me look that meant only one thing,,,,,, they wanted some,,,,, so I took a couple more pigeons out of the freezer, thawed them in the microwave and fried up enough for all 3 of us. It was a meal fit for a king :)
Hope ya like the pics,,,, I had my oldest daughter take a pic of the proud hunter, the beautiful Beeman and of course the critters headed for the dinner table......
Jeff
