VarmintAir's Airgun Hunting Blog

Marauder .25 - One Last Hunt For Micro Mini Vermin For 2010

The weather is starting to turn cool here, and the mini varmints will be hibernating soon.  I love the challenge of hunting these guys.   It takes patience, and a lot of time is spent in the binoculars, carefully scanning the forest's downed trees, stumps, and debris piles that these critters like to hang out in.

It also takes an accurate rifle to have much success.  The two main vermin type critters that are the focus of this hunt are, the Cliff's Chipmunk, and the Golden Mantle ground squirrel.  They are both small, with the chipmunk being the smaller of the two.  

Typical shots will run from around 55 yards, on out to 70.  A gun that can shoot sub dime sized groups with its favorite pellet at 50+ yards, is what is needed for this type of hunting.  The targets are small, and the ranges are challenging.  It's excellent practice for hunting the much larger Abert's tree squirrels at similar distances.

My choice of gun for this hunt, once again, was my .25 caliber Marauder. It has accuracy in spades, and is a ton of fun to hunt with.  It also has the power to drop any Abert's Tree Squirrel I may see during the vermin hunt.

I was hunting an area that appears to be an old abandoned homestead. A couple of the buildings, and much of the original barbwire fence are still standing. There is a huge meadow, or park, as they are known around here as, and the forest completely surrounds it.  It's an ideal area to hunt these small varmints in.

I got my gear out, and mounted up for the days hunt.  The plan was to hunt from the edge of the park, back into the forest for two or three hundred yards.  I was maybe 150 yards from my vehicle, when I spotted the first chipmunk at 61 yards sitting on a stump.  I'm sighted in dead on at 50 yards, and  there was almost no wind. I let a little bit of daylight show between the crosshairs and the top of its head, and launched a 27.8 grain Benjamin dome head pellet on its way.  The pellet impact was loud, and it sent the munk flying off of the stump.

As I was working my way over to the first varmint of the day, I was continuing to glass the area and spotted a Golden Mantle ground squirrel sitting on a log at 59 yards. Using essentially the same hold as on the chipmunk, I launched a pellet at the ground squirrel, with the same result.  The pellet knocked it off of the log, and it was DRT when I got over to it.  I picked it up along with the chipper, and took a quick picture of the two together to show a size comparison.

As I continued to hunt along, I spotted movement out in the park.  When I put my binoculars on the area I saw the movement in, I saw a nice band of Pronghorn Antelope about 700 yards away.  I shot a bit of video of them, and have included it in with some of the video clips from the hunt. Also, on the way out, at the end of the day, I saw a nice elk herd that I also shot some video of.  They were a good 1000/1200 yards away.

I was having good success hunting the edge of the forest.  There were a lot of old deadfall trees, stumps, and debris left from when the area was logged many, many, years ago.  The chippers and ground squirrels just love that stuff.  I continued to drop chippers and ground squirrels along the way.  

At one point, I spotted a ground squirrel sitting on a log at 68 yards, it was facing directly at me, I placed the first mildot on its head, and gently squeezed the trigger. The pellet dropped the squirrel in place.  Literally, it didn't even fall off of the log. Instant lights out.  

I could hear and see thunder and lightening off in the distance.  It was heading my way, so I grabbed a quick picture of the squirrel beside my rifle, decided to call it a day, and headed back to my vehicle.  I managed to pick off a couple more chipmunks on my way back.  The hunt was a lot of fun, with challenging targets, and seeing the band of antelope was frosting on the cake.  I had hoped to have a shot or two at an Abert's tree squirrel, but didn't see a one.

Ground squirrel dropped in place at 68 yards with .25 cal Marauder. 

The following are some video clips from the hunt.  They may take 20/30 seconds to load, and run 3 minutes 58 seconds.

  

  

 

The .25 Caliber Marauder - Takes Its First Abert's Tree Squirrel Of 2010

On my way out to squirrel hunt, I had to stop and grab a picture of this local lake.  I would be hunting an area on the back side of it.

I wanted to hunt an area that I have driven through several times while on my way to another spot.  It is fairly flat, with a nice mix of mature and younger Ponderosa pines.

Once again, I would be hunting with my .25 caliber Benjamin Marauder. It is extremely accurate, and a .25 caliber pellet leaves little doubt when it connects.

After four wheeling into to the area, using a 100 year old logging road, I got my gear set up and started to hunt.  One of the fun things about hunting tree squirrels here, is the fact that there are varmints in the form of a couple of types of ground squirrels and chipmunks, that are legal to hunt at the same time, and that makes for a fun day no matter what.

These Abert's tree squirrels, for the most part, are rather solitary critters and don't hang around in groups.  You really have to get out into the forest and dig them out. During the process of doing that, it is really fun to hunt for the other critters at the same time, and one of the advantages of doing it with a quiet air rifle is, there is no muzzle blast to send other furballs into hiding.

The golden Mantle ground squirrel is about one fifth the size of our local tree squirrels, and the chipmunks around here are about one tenth the size of the tree squirrels.  The chipmunk population has exploded this year.  They are everywhere in great numbers.  We live on the edge of the forest, and it is a constant challenge to keep them out of the walls of the house, and from under the foundation and sidewalks.

One of the side benefits of hunting the available vermin, at the same time I'm hunting tree squirrels, is the fact that they are a fraction of the size, more plentiful, and make for more difficult shots.  It's excellent practice.  The shots are at the same distances that I typically get on the tree squirrels, so by the time I get my crosshairs on one of them, in comparison to ground squirrels and chipmunks, they look to be about the size of a small dog.

I had been hunting for about two hours, picking off vermin here and there along the way, when I spotted an Abert's tree squirrel on the ground about 80 yards away.  I'm sighted in at 50 yards, so I wanted to close the range some before taking my shot.  I decided to put a pine tree between me and the squirrel, and move up closer.

When I was behind the closer tree, I snuck a peek to see if the squirrel was still there.  It was nowhere to be seen.  There was a cluster of six mature Ponderosa pines there, and the squirrel had been at the base of these trees on the ground.  I figured it had gone up one of those trees, but which one I didn't know.  Now the hunt really began.

I rested my .25 Marauder on my Stoney Point bipod, and for the next fifteen, twenty minutes, I glassed each tree from bottom to top, and back down.  On my second pass through, I spotted the squirrel about 40 feet up a 90 foot pine, sitting on a stub of an old broken branch in the shade, frozen in place and watching me.

I shot a range to it, and it came back at 63 yards.  There was no wind, so I held a little high, with no hold off, and launched a 27.8 grain Benjamin pellet on it's way for an upper chest shot. I heard the pellet impact, the squirrel jumped and headed left on a branch for about five feet, and tumbled out of the tree.  It was dead when it hit the ground.  The first Abert's of the year is a female of about medium size.  I picked her up, took a picture, put her in my game pouch and resumed hunting.

 

A little while later, I spotted one more at a little over 100 yards, but it disappeared into the forest canopy, and I never got a shot.  The limit on these guys is five. That doesn't sound like many, but as tough as they are to come by, it's more than enough, and the difficult challenge of hunting them is very satisfying.

This video may take 20/30 seconds to load, and runs 2 minutes 57 seconds.

  

Went Hunting For Tree Squirrels - But Got Two Different Types Of Ground Squirrels Instead

Abert's Tree Squirrel, Rock Squirrel, and Golden Mantle ground squirrel country, and it's loaded with chipmunks too.

Yesterday morning, I headed out for opening day of tree squirrel season.  I went to an area of the National Forest that I had seen good squirrel sign in this past spring.  The weather has been unseasonably warm here for this time of year, and I didn't see any squirrel activity on my way in to the area, which is unusual.  

I encountered a couple of guys going by, that were hunting squirrels also, and they hadn't seen any activity either.  Oh well, not a problem, because there are also a couple of types of ground squirrels, and chipmunks,  that inhabit these forests along with the tree squirrels.  

I would continue to hunt for tree squirrels, but would put more of a focus on picking off a few ground squirrels along the way. 

I think the tree squirrel activity will pick up once we have our first hard freeze. I've always had my best success in cooler weather.

Once I started to put some focus on glassing for ground squirrels, things started to pick up. The Golden Mantle variety, are the most numerous, and also the smallest.

Here's a picture from last year, that I took while hunting with my .22 caliber Marauder,  It shows the size difference between a Golden Mantle ground squirrel, and an Abert's tree squirrel.

Also inhabiting these woods, are Rock Squirrels.  They are very much like California Ground Squirrels, only nowhere near as numerous.  Below is a picture of one of them with an Abert's squirrel for size comparison.  Of the three types, only the Abert's is considered to be an edible game animal with a season and bag limit.  The other two are classified as vermin.  The chipmunk population must be at a peak level.  They are also classified as vermin,  were everywhere, and running in bunches.  I'm thinking a chipper hunt with my .22 cal Discovery is in the near future.

As I hunted along, I was picking off ground squirrels here and there, and enjoying another great day afield with my .25 caliber Marauder.  After spending the summer out on the prairie, shooting prairie dogs from 65 to 90 plus yards, these shots almost seemed like pointblank range.  Especially with the Marauder shooting sub dime sized groups at 50 yards.

What these shots give up in range, they make up for in some challenging shots on much smaller targets.  Some are at extreme up or down hill angles too.

All of the decades of hunting California Ground Squirrels, are really paying off here in the forests of Arizona.  

As I was hunting along, something got my attention up in an old dead oak tree stump, with several old branches sticking out.  The more I looked at it, the more I was sure it was a squirrel. When I put my binoculars on it, sure enough it was a Rock Squirrel laying very low and very still in the shade, on an old dead branch.  It lasered at 42 yards, which is a gimee shot with the Marauder. I dropped the crosshair onto it's head, and launched a 27.9 grain Benjamin dome head pellet.  It was a solid hit, he rolled off the limb and landed on the ground with a soft plop, at the base of the stump.

I didn't get a single shot at a tree squirrel yesterday, but it was a great day of airgun hunting anyway.

As usual, I was shooting video of the shots as they came along.  The video may take 20/30 seconds to load, and runs 2 minutes and 47 seconds.