Went to the killing fields with a pard today that Ive been hanging around, hunting and fishing with for 35 years...
And took my old .223...on its third barrel ( first two I wore out..) and its third stock...didnt wear them out, just upgraded.
Shooting was good till it got too hot, but we each managed to expend a couple hundred rounds of .233 before lunch


My pard on a hill overlooking the killing fields..




and my 'old faithful' .223




It didn't suck....

With all of the varmit caliber choices we have it's still hard to beat an old faithful .223!
Good way to spend your day I'd say.
Wish we lived in or near such a target rich enviroment that we had to rebarrel a .223 3 times!

And there were half a dozen burnt out .223s before I discovered re-barreling!



Working on seeing how many rounds it takes to burn a .204..... Only got a couple thousand down the tube so far



Gratuitous kill shot with the aforementioned .223...





and a shot of the same killing fields we shot today...

37 days until the season opens here.

You have a season on gophers?

Prairie dog season starts on June 15th.

Just counting down the days.

We've got a PD trip planned in june, end of the month. looking forward to it!

You guys are getting me fired up for another trip.

and some of these east coast guys think we guys out west killing a deer or antelope at 300 and 400 yds is just our imagination...

spend the summer shooting those little pop can sized ( but skinnier) sage rats at 100 to 300 yds, for a couple thousand rounds or more....

a deer or antelope at 300 yds looks like a dump truck when you are on 4 power on the scope...

more fun than a barrel of monkeys...

ingwe, how many rounds did you use to shoot out those .223's?? An old friend had 12,000 rds. though his Sako .222, it was still shooting but in poor shape.. I got 4500 though a .22-250?? My .223 is only maybe 3000 rds old...

Well,I am not Ingwe but I am almost as old as him.

I have been shooting 223's near exclusively for PD's and ground squirrels since the 60's and have gone through a lot of bullets and barrels.

My better 223's will average 1/2" for 5 shot groups, my more ordinary ones will average 3/4" to 1' for 5 shot groups. In both cases I generally start noticing the odd uncalled flyer, or the groups starting to open up at around 4500 to 5000 rounds. I rebarrel when that starts happening I do not like a rifle that I do not have total confidence in. As far as practical field accuracy I believe that a person could get another couple of thousand rounds of useful life from them and still hit most PD's within 300 yds, on ground squirrels though the miss ratio will go up rapidly.

I do not generally run my rifles long and hot, I take multiple 223's and usually shoot 10 rounds and set it aside to let the barrel cool and rotate to another rifle. Yesterday when I was out I had 4 rifles and number one was just barely cooled by the time I got to number 4. A great day!

drover

drover, thanks for the info.. My .223 us still shooting fine, so I should get a bunch of rounds down the barrel..

What do "Friends for a day" cost? ....or is that inappropriate to ask?


DMc