Using the Beeman 30.8 grain Kodiak pellets in my .25 cal Marauder, I've been hunting prairie dogs all summer, with great success . With tree squirrel season opening here this friday, I decided that I wanted to hunt them with the .25 caliber Benjamin dome head pellets, so it was time to get the Marauder sighted in with them.
Yesterday, I headed out to a favorite spot in the National Forest, to take care of business. Before leaving, I cleaned the barrel. It was clean in 5 patches. This barrel doesn't lead foul at all.
The day was absolutely beautiful, maybe 80 degrees. There was a wind blowing, but nothing horrible. I put my target stand out at a lasered 50 yards. I also put out one of my SteelPlinker Quadrant paddle targets on a box next to it. After getting the gun sighted in, I wanted to have a bit of video fun with it.
I set up my video camera on a tripod about thirty feet in front of, and slightly off to one side, so it wouldn't get splattered with pellet pieces splashing back off of the steel target.
Once the targets were out, I set up the rifle on my portable shooting stand, put out my wind flags, and got down to the job at hand.
I wanted my zero to be about one half inch high at 50 yards. I had two, one inch black Shoot-N-C dots on the target frame, and a Shoot-N-C Prairie Chuck target on the top. I fired a magazine of pellets down range to condition the bore to the new pellets.
I weight sort my pellets, and the batch of Benjamin .25 cal dome head pellets I would be shooting, weighed 27.9 grains
Watching the wind flags for lulls, I started shooting at the bottom dot. The pellets were going a bit low and left. I started making a few scope corrections, and shooting when the flags were favorable. Within a few shots, I had it pretty close. I moved up to the next dot and fired a full 8 round magazine at it. My hold was at six o'clock. The elevation was where I wanted it, but I was still a bit left. The eight shots could be covered with a dime.
I cranked in some right windage, moved up to the Prairie Chuck target, and holding at 6 o'clock on the orange dot, I fired two shots. They went where expected, and I decided we are ready for opening day of squirrel season. I caught those two shots on video.
Next, I moved over to the SteelPlinker target, and shot some video of the .25 Marauder putting lead on steel. The orange spinner is one inch edge to edge. You can see the pellets turning into dust at impact. Three shots on the one inch orange spinner that touch, and then one shot on each of the paddles so you can see how they react when hit in different places. This rifle puts a smile on my face every time I use it. It is generating 44 fpe at the muzzle with the Benjamin pellets.
Hunting these big Abert's, and Kaibab tree squirrels with it this Fall, is going to be a lot of challenging fun.
The following video clips really capture the power and accuracy of this rifle. I've taken the liberty of editing out some of the dead air in between shots. Especially in the slow motion clips. Without it, the video would take forever to load and run.
It may take 20/30 seconds to load, and runs 3 minutes 16 seconds.
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