First squirrel hunt of the year

[Sniper66]

Just sharing..........My buddy 'Joe' and I hunted squirrels for the first time this new season that opened 1June. We separated in the woods with him roaming and me sitting in my portable folding chair. He wasn't gone 10 minutes and I hear a series of shots over the next 5 minutes. About 20 minutes later he emerges from the trees and announced that he had his limit of 5 squirrels. I had one. We go back to the car and he empties his bag to discover that he dropped one somewhere and ended up with 4, all gray squirrels. We relocate about 200 yrds across a pasture to an other strip of woods. Within a half hour we have 5 more; this time all fox squirrels. I start back to the car for skinning and send Joe into the woods to get one one more. He shoots the last of our limit in about 10 minutes. We skin and field dress all 10 and discard one that looked sick. So we ended up with 9 squirrels for the pot.
Joe shot his wife's Marlin, for the first part of the hunt, but used his competition Bergara B-14R Steel with Manners stock for the last part. Needless to say the Bergara was amazing. I shot my Bregara BXR with carbon barrel and a Silencer Co suppressor....very accurate and very quiet. We had a great day....saw lots of deer and a boat-load of squirrels. I gave all the meat to Joe and he owes me a slice of his "squirrel pizza", that he makes for his friends.
I did decide I want to try a different scope on my rifle, so I'm shopping.

 

[Barbaroja]

Sounds like a great day. I love hunting squirrel but here in Alabama I have to wait until fall. Fortunately I’ll be spending most of my summer in Washington state where grey squirrel are an invasive species and have no season or bag limit.

 

[22250Rem]

Thanks for an interesting tale of a fun day. I gotta wait until Sept. 1st for squirrel season, but it then runs until the end of February. Except for Red Squirrels, which around here have no closed season and no bag limit. What are you looking at for new scopes?

 

[Sniper66]

Thanks for an interesting tale of a fun day. I gotta wait until Sept. 1st for squirrel season, but it then runs until the end of February. Except for Red Squirrels, which around here have no closed season and no bag limit. What are you looking at for new scopes?

I have a Tract 22Fire 4-12X with BDC reticle on it presently. It is a good scope, nothing wrong with it, but am leaning toward a Meopta Optika5 3-15X44, which can be had for a bit over $400. It has better eye relief and bit wider field of view. However, it has no illumination and am really wanting a dot scope with illuminated reticle. I hate to switch to a 30mm tube since I have great set of 1" Warne rings on it now. I had trouble with the first two illuminated reticle Meopta's I bought so am in a quandary. I have 4 other Meopta scopes and really like them. Any ideas?

 

[22250Rem]

Thanks for the feedback. I have an older el-cheapo BSA 2-7x on my 10-22 and the glass isn't as good as the 2-7x Vortex on my CZ-455. Considering something with better optics for the 10-22 and more than 7x on the top end. For my use I wouldn't need an illuminated reticle. I'm thinking that 12x would work well for me; although I've never had higher than 7x on a rimfire. Not thinking 30mm tube, either, as that would probably look too big on a trim little rimfire rifle.

 

[Sniper66]

Thanks for the feedback. I have an older el-cheapo BSA 2-7x on my 10-22 and the glass isn't as good as the 2-7x Vortex on my CZ-455. Considering something with better optics for the 10-22 and more than 7x on the top end. For my use I wouldn't need an illuminated reticle. I'm thinking that 12x would work well for me; although I've never had higher than 7x on a rimfire. Not thinking 30mm tube, either, as that would probably look too big on a trim little rimfire rifle.

How about I sell you my Tract 22Fire 4-12X? If that interests you, start a private conversation with me.