I officially opened my Rock Chuck season for the year today. I usually like to wait until about the 15th so they have their pups weaned but figured the 14th was close enough. I've seen several pups & my trigger finger was itching really bad the last few days so I took off about 5pm. It was really windy so I didn't expect to see very many but there was a lot of them out feeding, I was surprised! I had the 223 Contender for the long shots but in a rush I took the wrong ammo, it's zeroed with 50 Nosler BT's & I had a box of 40 gr VMax's. My other gun was my 32-20 Buckeye with a 1X4 scope on top & I was carrying my Walther carry gun in case anything charged.
I pulled into a farmers field & the place lit up in a hurry, lots of Chucks, lots of pups & quite a few Fermin looking graybeards, all of them running for the Lava reefs. The first one was 48 yds peeking back over a Lava rock, I waited until he raised up just a bit more & sent a 116 gr cast HP Skud missle right under his chin,nasty! He was a very large male barley muncher & you can see compared to my Buckeye he's been around a long time.
All the others were holed up in a large Lava reef at mostly 120 yds. This is where the 223 Contender comes in handy but the ammo was off a bit, I missed 2 for sure & got 4 for sure but couldn't retrieve any except for one that lost his head in the fight. They fall down in the crevices & you can't reach them, it's very dangerous climbing around those jagged rocks, especially alone, if you fall down in one of those big cracks you would never get out. I'm certain I saw 15 but it was getting late & the TC was off, I needed my other ammo, I'll punish them real hard Monday.
Dick