gun hunting | ON TARGET in CANADA

Girl Shoots Mountain Lion That Stalked Her Brother

During the course of a single week, three cougars were killed at a family ranch in northern Washington. The latest big cat was killed by 11-year-old Shelby White, who shot an emaciated lion that had been stalking her older brother near their home.

Thomas White awoke at 2:30 a.m. to the barking of the family dog so White walked outside and discovered a cougar trying to enter an enclosure of cows and calves. Although he scared away the cougar without incident, the lion returned two hours later and White drove it off a second time.

Later that day White’s three children arrived home from school at 3:30 p.m. The cougar turned up a third time when his 14-year-old son Tanner White was doing his chores outside. Tanner had finished feeding the dogs and was walking back toward the house when the cougar emerged from its hiding spot by a vehicle in the driveway. Tanner didn’t notice the cat following him and walked safely through the basement door.

His dad was in there and said, ‘Close the door!’ because there was the cougar, right behind him.

Shelby White, 11, was the only member of the White family with an unfilled cougar tag. She retrieved her rifle and shot the cat where it stood outside, just 10 feet from the door. The 4-year-old female cougar appeared “very, very skinny” and weighed just 50 pounds. A healthy mature female cougar should weigh twice that, according to Treser. “It was starving to death,” Treser said.

Shelby’s cougar was the third big cat taken on or near the family ranch in a single week. Two days prior a family friend tracked a cougar within 200 yards of the ranch. The hunter shot the 2- to 3-year-old female cat near the White’s driveway a couple days earlier.

The youngest White child also tracked and tagged a cougar on the property. Nine-year-old Cody White and his father spotted paw prints near the White house and followed them to the family’s calving pasture. He discovered a 120-pound male cougar and shot it on the hillside.

Additional tracks and big cat sightings have occurred in the region since and a total of 10 cougars have been harvested during the season. Five were taken by hunters and the other five were killed by wildlife officials after the cats attacked domestic animals.

The number of cougar predations and encounters in the area is above average. Wildlife officials suspect cougar numbers have increased or the big cats cannot find enough deer to survive without resorting to domestic prey.

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Bargain vs. Premium Ammo

12 Mar

You get what you pay for. That’s an adage we generally believe in. But does it hold up with respect to ammunition? We set out to answer that question by testing the accuracy of a variety of value-priced .308 hunting ammo against more costly stuff.

Methodology
Using three .308 rifles in the test—one hunting rig and two precision rifles that we knew would be ringers.

We put a number of budget and premium loads through all three rifles over the course of one day, ensuring the results wouldn’t be influenced by different environmental conditions. We also used a standard 5-shot-group protocol, and shot two groups with each load at 100 yards. As a control to establish a baseline level of accuracy for each rifle, we also shot 5-shot groups using Federal’s Gold Medal load with 175-grain Sierra BTHPs.

Using the baseline match load to calculate a ratio for each hunting load by dividing the size of the hunting-load groups into the size of the match-load groups. The closer to 1 that ratio is, the better the hunting load performed. None of the hunting loads outshot the match load, so all these ratios were greater than one.

Results
The outcome was interesting. The best hunting ammo was Hornady’s American Whitetail 150-grain Interlock SP. Compared to the baseline groups with the match ammo, this budget-priced load ($19.29 for a box of 20) shot nearly as well as the match ammo in all three rifles and had an impressive 1.41 average ratio. Federal’s Fusion, another bargain ammo ($21.49 for a box of 20) was second best among the loads, with an average ratio of 2.02.

The only expensive load that delivered consistent performance in all three rifles was Federal’s 165-grain Trophy Bonded Tip ($34.49 per box), The two Winchester loads had nearly identical levels of performance, though again, the less expensive 180-grain BST (2.11 ratio average) outshot the more expensive 150-gr. XP3 (2.81 ratio average).

It’s worth noting when purchasing premium ammo that the promise of greater accuracy is certainly implied because it uses better quality components, but that much of its benefit is based on the idea that it will perform better on game.

Conclusion
It pays to try different loads in several different bullet weights in your rifles. Investing money to find an accurate load is the cheapest way to get the most from your rig.

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Posted by Wawang Lake on March 12, 2015 in Ammunition, firearm, gun hunting, hunting equipment, preparation, Wawang Lake Resort

Tags: ammo, ammunition, gun hunting, guns, hunting equipment, ontario, Outdoors, Wawang Lake Resort, WMU 15A, WMU 15B

Muzzle Affect Accuracy – With or Without?

02 Mar

If you hunt in rainy places, you probably know about electrical tape, the basis of vigorous debate in almost any camp.

The tape, stuck over the muzzle, is used to keep precipitation and debris out of the rifle’s bore. But many hunters argue that the protective layer throws off your bullet’s impact point. Others say the flimsy barrier won’t deflect the bullet.

Which is it?

After testing the accuracy of two bullet types fired from the same .308 bench rest rifle, first without tape over its muzzle and then with electrical tape covering the bore. The results of eight 5-shot groups: Tape does not significantly degrade accuracy. Just as important, the tape also did not shift the rifle’s point of aim.

If you tape your muzzle to keep out the elements, you needn’t worry about shooting through it.