Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Predators and Varmints Practice

How many here use their hunting rifle on varmints as practice for big game? I was out this morning getting ready for the up and coming seasons. I normally use the Barnes TTSX but bought a box of Hornady 100 gr. Interlock for practice. They appeared to work OK.

First one:


About as good as it gets:


My hunting rifle with yet another:


Rifle is an early model Remington Titanium barreled by Pac-nor with a 24 inch, 3 groove, in 25 WSM, with a 4.5-14 Lupie and Stoney Point on top; 6.5 lbs as shown. The bullets are running just a tad shy of 3500 fps. Gawd I love this rifle.

Rancher told me today he's planning to poison the town. No one can say any of these suffered.

I've turned more than a few p-dogs and coyotes to mush with 100 grain Speer hollow points fired from a 270, and 87 grain HP-TNTs from a 25-06.

Each of those rifles was used during different periods as my primary for big game hunting.

I've used a bunch of my big game rifles on prairie dogs for practice, including some iron-sighted rifles, including a .25-35 Winchester Model 94 made in 1898, a reproduction Winchester High Wall in .30-40 Krag with an Axtell tang sight, a Ruger No. 1 .375 H&H with a NEGC aperture sight, and an original Springfield 1884 trapdoor with the original Buffington rear sight.

All worked fine, and took PD's out to 150-200 yards, but the most fun was the .375 with 220-grain Hornady flat-nosed bullets at about 2000 fps. They spread prairie dogs around like a .220 Swift with 40-grain Ballistic Tips!

They also shot to the same place as the full-power 300-grain loads I used with the same rifle and sights to take five kinds of plains game from impala to kudu, plus a Cape buffalo, a couple months later in Botswana. Nothing like practice on small live targets to give you practical experience and confidence in a big game rifle.

Took the kimber 260 out a couple weeks ago. Couldn't find a PD, so had to settle for a little striper...

I have shot a few gophs with a 7x57...and a BUNCH with the .223s and 223AI...which I also use on deer

I have tagged a few woodchucks with the 35 Whelen.
whelennut

Great practice and fun too!