After shooting a few Rock Chucks last week with my 32 maggie & have them run a bit before realizing they were dead I decided I better raise the firepower a bit so I left the single six home & grabbed my 8 shot Blackhawk 327 stoked with 135 gr. Ferminator HP's & a heavy charge of H110 & headed out to one of my favorite Ground Squirrel spots. This spot is also a great spot for some USDA prime badgers & there's always 3-4 Boone & Crockett size bad boys that live here because there are so many Ground Squirrels.
On this day I didn't see any of the badgers but that's they way it is with them, even though they are big they are always very hard to see. They can lay as flat as a dollar bill when they want to or hump up the size of a camel when they are looking for trouble, which is most of the time. I knew they were there because the sign was there. Big holes had been dug trying to dig out Squirrels. Badgers & Squirrels are very destructive on fields! I probably seen about 40-45 Squirrels but there was still some snow in the area & the hay was just starting to sprout up so it wasn't a great day although I did get 8 Squirrels with 13 shots, maybe more but it's hard to tell sometimes it the brush & dead grass without climbing through barb wire fences which I don't do very well.
When this 135 gr. HP hits a Squirrel it's a real bad wreck, sometimes it blows them in half but next time I'll use the 113 HP's, they will be even more explosive. These 135 gr. Ferminators have a long shank & they are really better for something like Rock Chucks or Coyotes, etc. I would even use them on deer with confidence because of that long shank at reasonable distances. Here's my 8 shot Blackhawk with a set of my Amboyna Burl stocks.
You can see the damage they do to a hay field, farmers hate them & the badgers.
This mule deer died a slow, horrible death. They try to jump the fence & catch their legs below the top wire & then wrap down around the second wire & it's over, they never get loose & just hang there & die a long lingering death.
Dick