Rick Jamison's Best Group

[Buckshot]

..............One of my shooting buddies subscribes to Guns and Ammo and SHooting Times. About twice a year he brings a bag of'em to me to read. Generally I throw them in the backseat of the car and read them at work. Usually I go though one about every 10 minutes.

Last night I was glancing through one and was paging past a Rick Jamison article and as I flipped past, there in the bottom right hand corner was a picture of 3 cast boolits. Lyman 311291's to be exact. Never seen such a thing attached to Rick Jamison before :-). I went back to read the article and it had to do with accuracy and was one of his esoteric deals about it. Actually was an interesting read.

He said one of the most accurate groups he'd ever shot was 5 rounds of a cast boolit load with the ones shown in the photo over 25.5grs of ReL7. I forgot the rifle (it was a 30-06) but he said the group was .2" for 5 at 100 yards. He said he didn't hardly ever shoot cast boolits but it wasn't because he didn't like to, he just had so much other shooting to do he couldn't afford the time for it. He said he had a big bunch cast up in case he got the urge.

In that vein he also related one of the luckiest shots he'd ever made was with that cast boolit also. He and another gunwriter were in northern Arizona just kind of walking around popping jackrabbits and stuff. He said he noticed something like a bush that looked a bit out of place over on the lip of a ridge, and told his buddy he thought it might be a coyote. Then he looked through the scope and saw that it was.

He said he shouldered the rifle and his friend said he was nuts for even trying. Rick said he held over a good 8 feet and let fly. Recoil and the distance rocked him off the target enough so he said it looked like the coyote had just disappeared. Said he and his friend argued back and forth about the liklyhood of his connecting until he was tired of it and decided to walk the distance and see. He said it must have been a good 500 yards.

He said they reached where he figured it had been but didn't see it so they circled around a bit and then saw it lying there deader then a doornail. He admitted it was total luck but he said it was proof positive that you were crazy if you didn't think a cast boolit wouldn't kill.

Nothing earth shaking. I just thought it was interesting because this had been the only thing in print I think I've ever seen where Rick Jamison admitted to having shot cast lead.

...............Buckshot

[sundog]

Buckshot, good review. Seems like I spend lesser time with my face in the rags than I used to.

One comment though. If I were that writer I would NOT have related the account of the long range coyote. That was irresponsible. Even a coyote deserves better than being wounded. Animals deserve a clean kill, and not suffer. Y'all can think what you want, but if that story is true, Jamison just went down a few notches. sundog

[mainiac]

sundog, youd be totally ashamed of me if you knew what i thought of a no good coyote! The splineless vermin push deer out on to the glare ice lakes and streams, and then, after hamstringing them,thay start eating on them, always from the ass end! They aint got the deceasacy to kill them quick,and the poor deer die a death you cant beleave. Have witnessed this many times here.So, you cant beleave the bad things ive thought and done to the damn things!

[9.3X62AL]

Mother Nature isn't always a kind mistress, for sure. My very few long range attempts have involved ground squirrels and high velocity rifles (223, 22-250, or 243)--so it's either a clean kill or complete miss. Lots more of the latter than the former, for sure. I suppose a coyote deserves a decisive whacking, but after seeing what they do to petstock around my neighborhood......my sporting ethics are strained somewhat.

[MT Gianni]

Close friend in Idaho would not let you shoot a coyote on their summer range. It turns out his neighbor had an agreement of over 50 years to water his sheep no more than 1 ev ery 10 days and 1 day to cross his land 1 day to return he figured he was out a lot of grass. There are reasons for everything. Gianni.

[sundog]

Yea, I figured my comment would elicit a few remarks. I don't have much use for the ******** either. One had the balls to pass right up my fence line a couple days ago in between my dogs and the neighbors horses. I haven't had any trash can problems lately, but i can assure you, that if I line up on one it will NOT be a 'lucky' shot. Making Mother Nature's animals suffer ain't right! That's what separates us [edited in] ..., not from each other but from the animals. sundog

[Slowpoke]

One year I was scouting a new to me hunt unit for pronghorn in N. E., AZ. On a BLM map the majority of the unit looked like a checker board, with sections of private land and BLM land, with all of the access thru the private sections, one rancher controlled about 20 sections this way, I finally tracked him down to ask for permission to hunt pronghorn, at first he said no, but then said yes and handed me a key to the locked gates and said there is only one rule no coyotes get killed on my ranch, and as far as I am concerned you can shoot as many Pronghorn as you want. Come to find out just across the HWY. is where the USFG had been doing all there Ariel shoots on coyotes trying to get the pronghorn to flourish. After a bit of scouting his ranch turned out to be more of a game farm than a cattle ranch, it was over run with Pronghorn and Elk, coyotes were mighty scarce, I spent 3 weeks on that ranch and seen one coyote track.

I was lucky in that where my father decided to settle was way out in the sticks and we had lots of small buttes or hills jutting up from the desert floor, and over the years I shot a many a coyote and Jackrabbit from the tops of those buttes, early or late with the sun at your back worked good, I bet I left a 1000 pounds or more of RR Plates hanging from Mesquite tree's in that country that I used for practice from the tops of those buttes.This one was my favorite http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lon=-110.832&lat=31.8589

As far as I am concerned killing coyotes and ethics does not compute.

good luck

[fatnhappy]

Buckshot,

I have squirreled away somewhere a shooting times from the early 90s, with an article written by Rick Jamison about.... you guessed it, getting in to cast shooting for $35 or so. A cast iron pot, a dipper, scrounged WWs and a lee double cavity .30 soup can IIRC.

he had nothing but kind words for the silver stream.

Dean

[TCLouis]

If that ain't some kind of interesting topography.

Contours are so even it isn't funny.

I never did navigate around and find anything I knew.

Is this in the Globe area?

[Nueces]

TCLouis,

It's SSE of Tucson. Scale the map up and you can click on the little colored tabs at the edges to 'move over.'

[ron brooks]

Sounds like you over in the Serria Vista and Bisbee area.

Ron

[Slowpoke]

If that ain't some kind of interesting topography.

Contours are so even it isn't funny.

I never did navigate around and find anything I knew.

Is this in the Globe area?

No, Globe is about 120 miles due north. My wife and I were married at the Globe court house by a superior court judge 30 years ago, the justice of the peace was out to lunch.

This little butte is about 20 miles south of Tucson near the base of the western slope of the Santa Rita MTNS on the eastern side of the Santa Cruz Valley, On the South side of this butte there is a natural spring, with lots of Indian paintings on the cliffs and about 50 depressions the size of a basketball worn into the granite from Indians grinding Mesquite beans over the ages. I lived about six miles form this butte for most of my life. I carried a old Papago Indian up there one time to tell me if the paintings meant something or if they were just pictures, he studied it for a while then told me it was a map that told how many days to the next water and in what direction.

That dirt rd is called Helvetia RD and is a very special Rd. It got its name from a old mining town that sits in the foothills of the Santa Rita's, it is just a few adobe ruins today, a few scenes from the Movie Young Guns was filmed there. I don't recall the exact year but it was in the late 80's I had a long auto trapline of about 200 miles and one evening I was working my way home and as I topped a little hill right before I got to Helvetia I seen about a dozen tractor trailers and whole lot of different types of vehicles scattered around the old town and a small army of people and as I got closer I realized it was some sort of movie outfit and my presence had a few folks really pissed off because I seen a few clip boards hit the dirt. I just drove on thru the middle of there shoot like I owned the place and about a mile further down the road was a Pima County deputy sheriff parked there with the road blocked, he seemed very surprised to see me and wanted to know where I came from and what I was doing, I told him I came from the other side of the MTN and I was finishing up my trapline for the day and I will never forget his response WHAT IS TRAPPING? In the 70's it was a full blown ghost town, but to many wild parties and other interesting things that happened on full moon nights has pretty much led to its ruin. Any way the road continues on past Helvetia and tops out at GunSight pass or if you turn left at bottom of the last switch back it will take you to Lopez pass, this is where most of the movie Hombre was filmed. The road is special because it leads you to many thousand miles of old two tracks and 4x4 trails, you can spend a life time exploring them all.

Good luck

[7br]

Mother Nature isn't always a kind mistress, for sure.

I have always said that Nature was a Mother.

[AZ-Stew]

Well, guys, I hate wounding game, too. I had a bad experience about 30 years ago that I still regret, but I think you may find it a bit humorous when you hear the story.

When the Navy transferred me from Virginia to San Diego, the wife and I stopped in Indiana to visit her parents before we started the long trek west. While I was there, I decided to head out to the Mississinewa Reservoir area to do a little ground hog hunting. The area along the river that was potential floodplain had been taken over by the state and turned into recreational land. It's a pretty good area to hunt. The DNR plants corn and soy beans, providing food to a wide variety of game.

There are parts of the land where one can take a vantage point at the top of the river bank and look out over several hundred yards of corn stubble at certain times of the year. Just my kind of 'chuck sniping setup!

At the time, I had a post-64 Winchester heavy barreled 22-250 that was a real tack driver. Several weeks after the 'chuck incident I'm about to relate, I shot several prairie dogs with it at 4-500+ yards while hunting with an ex-Navy buddy of mine in Colorado. The rifle and I were both up to the task, in fact, groundhogs at 2-300 yards are pretty big targets. It's usually just a matter of finding them and waiting them out until they make the mistake of exposing themselves.

I set some sand bags on a camp stool for my rifle rest and took an uncomfortable position sitting on the ground and leaning into the short "bench" rest. Sure enough, within about ten minutes a nice fat 'hog popped up out of his hole in the field at about 200 yards and stood up to survey his domain. Piece 'O Cake. Cross hairs on the chest, squeeze, Boom!. When the scope came back down from recoil to where I could see where the 'hog used to be, he was gone. No surprise there. He probably just fell down amongst the broken-off corn stalks. So I walked down to claim my first kill of the day.

When I got there, there was no groundhog to be found for 10 feet in any direction. I was about 6 feet from his hole. Maybe I really screwed up from my bad shooting position and wounded him and he crawled back to his hole. No, there wasn't any blood in the area. I surely couldn't have missed him. Not at that range.

Looking over toward the hole again, there he was! Poking his head up to see what was making all that racket stomping around in his corn field. Of course, as soon as he saw me, he disappeared again. Scratching my head, wondering how I could have made a clean miss from that distance, thinking I must have had a "bad trigger moment", I trudged back up the hill to where my rifle was. I figured that since the 'hog didn't seem to have much fear of me, I might get another shot if I waited him out. The reservoir land doesn't get much traffic, so there's little reason for the animals to develop the fear of Man that they do where humans are more frequent visitors. I'd just sit down and have some soda pop while I watched the field.

Didn't take long. He was soon up and moving around again. I watched through the scope and when he went up into the sitting position again, I squeezed off a more careful shot. This time I was able to see the bullet strike. 2 feet over the 'chuck's head, about 25 yards past him in the dirt! For some reason, the scope had become misaligned during the trip from Virginia to Indiana. The rifle hadn't been handled roughly, but the proof was in the shooting. The 'hog had skedattled back into his hole again, as well.

I decided to wait again to see how stupid the 'hog was. Would he come up for a third shot? Yes. I held as much low as the previous shot had gone high and squeezed off another one. This time for sure!

When I had walked down to where the 'chuck had been sitting, I quickly located his tail sticking up out of the corn stubble and bent down to pick up my prize, who had apparently tried to burrow down into the thicket of stalks as he took his last breaths. Zip! Up came my hand, not with 15 pounds of groundhog attached, but only with the tail! I blew the little begger's tail off at the root!

It was funny and sad at the same time. I hated wounding the little guy, and I knew I wouldn't get another shot at him so I could put him out of his pain.

Lesson learned: After any lengthy travel, be sure to sight in your rifle before hunting. That was my first stop when I got to Colorado for the prairie dog hunt.

Regards,

Stew

[MT Gianni]

Great story AZStew, Reminds me of the one a friend tells to a few people. Many years ago at age 14 he was antelope hunting and stalked up on a small bunch. He followed a ditch over and when the buck got up he shot him only to have him go down and come right back up. He shot him again and the same thing happened so he went over and found 3 dead lopers. He was not proud and his family was not either. The group had tags but it was not a party hunting state or situation. He claims to have never been cussed out so bad. Bottom line remains be sure of your gun and target and if you think you hit it you probably did. Gianni.