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Joined: Nov 2012
Posts: 2,623
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Nov 2012
Posts: 2,623 |
I can't believe Mr. Rockchuck himself hasn't chimed in yet!
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Joined: Sep 2012
Posts: 18,243
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Sep 2012
Posts: 18,243 |
But Field Grade, those nicknames are all so cool, especially when you turn your ball cap backwards and say them while holding your hand up to the sun so it doesn't hurt your eyes! Lol. You crabby old fart!
Happy Friday Charlie! Thanks Bob....
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Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 2,552
Campfire Regular
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OP
Campfire Regular
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 2,552 |
Off Topic, but we have the Hoary marmots in the Cascades of Washington. And they's some big bastids.....look like bears when you are glassing extreme distances and can't tell relative size cuz all the trees are shorter at timberline. And we have several yellow bellies in Downtown Spokane.....but not too terribly many in the outskirts where one could have a great afternoon of shooting...
Please God, give me some good tags this year....
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Joined: Sep 2012
Posts: 18,243
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Sep 2012
Posts: 18,243 |
And we have several yellow bellies in Downtown Spokane.....but not too terribly many in the outskirts where one could have a great afternoon of shooting... Same thing around here....there's a butt load of em along the Snake River in downtown Lewiston...
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Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 20,268 Likes: 19
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 20,268 Likes: 19 |
I lived in Boise in the 80's and rock chucks were known as "whistle pigs". Left for a few years, moved back to south west Idaho in 2004 and everybody was calling ground squirrels "whistle pigs". Looked at me like I was some kind of weirdo when I called a rock chuck a "whistle pig". That's interesting. These days nobody would call a rock chuck a "whistle pig" around there. Times have changed I guess. I do love shooting "rock chucks" from across the Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls. They'll fall 1000 or so feet down sometimes.
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Joined: Feb 2001
Posts: 5,220
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Feb 2001
Posts: 5,220 |
I lived in Boise in the 80's and rock chucks were known as "whistle pigs". Left for a few years, moved back to south west Idaho in 2004 and everybody was calling ground squirrels "whistle pigs". Looked at me like I was some kind of weirdo when I called a rock chuck a "whistle pig". That's interesting. These days nobody would call a rock chuck a "whistle pig" around there. Times have changed I guess. I do love shooting "rock chucks" from across the Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls. They'll fall 1000 or so feet down sometimes. Thought cross canyon shooting in Twin Falls was banned. To the OP, no there isn't any good rock chuck shooting within an hour's drive of Boise. Where I define good to be more than a couple dozen chucks a day.
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. Albert Einstein
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Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 20,268 Likes: 19
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 20,268 Likes: 19 |
Not in the canyon just outside of Twin Falls...you'd get a visit from the po-po for sure doing it there. I do it near Murtaugh, Cauldron Lynn, just downstream from Miler Dam and areas near the confluence with the Malad River.
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 23,053 Likes: 7
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 23,053 Likes: 7 |
Jesse Jaymes: I have LOTS of relatives in eastern Oregon and western Idaho and for the last 65 years that I know of the term Whistle Pigs does and has been used to refer to Marmots, Rock Chucks, Yellow Bellied Marmots and High Mountain Whistling Marmots! Many of my relatives "homesteaded" ranches on land that had LOTS of Whistle Pigs on it. I went on my first "Whistle Pig" Hunt when my grandmother called me and my older brother to her kitchen where she showed us a "Whistle Pig" - said Whistle Pig was in her large garden and we were tasked with shooting said Varmint with an old pump 22 (Winchester 06). We eventually got that Varmint (Rock Chuck/Whistle Pig) and grandma made us some cinnamon rolls in her wood burning kitchen stove/oven as a reward. To this day that is one of my fondest and most vivid memories. It is incorrect to refer to any of the Ground Squirrel family as "Whistle Pigs" as they do not whistle - they PEEP. And many folks refer to them as "peeps" among many, many other nick-names. Indeed Rock Chucks ARE Whistle Pigs and vice versa. Hold into the wind VarmintGuy
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Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 4,105
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 4,105 |
In Virginia, we call woodchucks/groundhogs whistle pigs. When I first started hunting I remember my cousin whistling to get the groundhogs to stand-up in the tall grass so we could see them to shoot.
On a side note I heard a funny term for them recently. Eastern ground grizzly.
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Joined: May 2009
Posts: 34
Campfire Greenhorn
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Campfire Greenhorn
Joined: May 2009
Posts: 34 |
In Idaho we have a number of different ground squirrels, Idaho Fish and Game call them Whistle Pigs/Ground Squirrels. Most around southwest Idaho are Piute ground squirrel, and starting last spring started testing positive for the plague. Other parts of the state have different species of ground squirrels/Whistle Pigs. The very large whistle pigs are no larger than a beer. Idaho also has the different species of Marmots, Rock Chucks, and they are not Whistle Pigs. Some people may call all of them whistle pigs. But Idaho Whistle Pigs are ground squirrels.
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Joined: Jun 2007
Posts: 24,632 Likes: 30
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Jun 2007
Posts: 24,632 Likes: 30 |
Everybody likes to use a different term for whatever reason. It is never clear to the listener just what is meant by the sayer, it is just a code that is meaningless to the general population...
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Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 115,424 Likes: 13
Campfire Sage
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Campfire Sage
Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 115,424 Likes: 13 |
Out east people will refer to woodchucks as whistle pigs. They're interchangeable.
Out west marmot, woodchuck, and whistle pig are interchangeable.
Travis
Trump being classless,tasteless and clueless as usual. Sorry, trump is a no tax payin pile of shiit. My young wife decided to play the field and had moved several dudes into my house
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Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 893
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 893 |
I just can't get used to calling ground squirrels whistle pigs. They don't whistle, it's more of a squeak and I like to call them squeakers. Rock chucks will always be whistle pigs to me. However, most of the time we just refer to them as chucks. By the way, I hear that in Montana they call ground squirrels gophers! What's up with that! LOL
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Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 23
New Member
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New Member
Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 23 |
The letters RCBS (as in reloading dies & presses) stand for Rock Chuck Bullet Swage. Early on RCBS made tools for swaging 22RF cases into bullet jackets to shoot rockchucks. IIRC it was during or around WWII and copper jacketed bullets were hard to find due to war rationing & shortages.
With over 15 revolvers I've been called the Imelda Marcos of cap & ball. Gun control=OSHA for criminals NRA Life SASS life
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Joined: May 2009
Posts: 1,378
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: May 2009
Posts: 1,378 |
SE Idaho for the past 50 years and I have never heard the term whistle pig.
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Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,383 Likes: 2
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,383 Likes: 2 |
SE Idaho for the past 50 years and I have never heard the term whistle pig. I can believe that, it is more of a local term in the Boise area. I can guarantee that it was being used over 65 yrs ago by most folks who lived there, along with the name "picket pins". I never heard them called ground squirrels in the Boise area, at least at that time or even recently. But with lots of out-of staters moving there they are using their own names for them. In central Idaho it is about an even split between folks who call them gophers or ground squirrels. On the other hand I have never heard a Rockchuck referred to as a whistle pig, yet we go to south central Idaho to shoot them every year and I have never heard a local to that area refer to them as whistle pigs. Calling a ground squirrel a gopher, whistle pig, picket pin, or simply a ground squirrel, is regionally oriented - nothing more, it does not make one name right or wrong. drover
223 Rem, my favorite cartridge - you can't argue with truckloads of dead PD's and gophers.
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