Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Official 22 caliber dead stuff thread

This photo is of Eileen with her latest "deer" rifle, a special-run Tikka T3 .22-250 with a 1-8 twist from Whittaker Guns of Owensboro, Kentucky. The pronghorn was taken with a 70-grain Hornady GMX at 180 yards, which dropped the doe right there. (The guy to the left shot the buck after he trotted a little way from the doe after she dropped, and then stopped broadside. The "rifle" is a Sauer 16x16/6.557R drilling.) A few weeks later Eileen killed a big whitetail doe at 275 yards with the same .22-250 and load, but we ran out of photo light, since I'd shot another doe a few minutes earlier with a 6.5 PRC. Both deer went about 50 yards and dropped.



I used the same load to take this pronghorn buck at 350 yards a couple years ago, but with another Whittaker special-run 1-8 .22-250, a Ruger American. The buck was angling away, and the bullet stayed inside, the only 70 GMX we've recovered so far, weighing 70 grains....



This one's "historical," of an 18-year-old guy I guided on a central Montana ranch in 1988. He wanted to be an Alaskan guide, so bought a .338 Winchester Magnum before he ever saw Alaska. He brought it on the pronghorn hunt, which his father bought as a high-school graduation present, and couldn't hit them. The outfitter I worked for loaned the kid his .25-06, but by then he flinched so much he couldn't anything with it either.

That evening I took the kid to the .300-yard gong I 'd set up behind the lodge, and had him shoot my Ruger 77 .220 Swift with its handloads using the 60-grain Nosler Solid Base. After flinching hard on the first shot, he said, "Hey, that doesn't kick!" He then shot a tight 3-shot group on the gong, and we went out the next morning and found him this buck. The Solid Base went through both lungs and exited, and the buck trotted 30 feet and fell over.