Woodchucks

[Don]

This week I was out back of the school I work at and surprised one of the resident woodchucks. It inspired me to try hunting their country cousins with my.50 ML. It should be sufficiant to take down these tough little guys. I also thought about shooting other small game with my ML but I've shot a squirrel or two with my .50 and I feel its a little too much gun. I know some of you would debate that but I have an Idea to run by you all. I have two boxes of .440 balls I got for a pitol and I know it will take forever to use them up in that pistol sooo...I was thinkin about using them in my .50 with a thick patch. I know the old timers used to use buckskin or leather as patchin and I have some buckskin scraps around that might be suitable. So let me know what you think of that idea and let me hear from you guys that hunt woodchucks with your smoke pole.

Don

 

[musketman]

Ah, the ground grizzly...

I hunt the groung hog with my brown bess, you can't be too careful with a woodchuck, that's why I chose to use a .75 caliber... :winking:

One thing to remember when hunting the ground hog is that it is done guring the hot, dry summer months, a muzzleloader (especially flintlocks) will set hay fields on fire, trust me on this one...

Prime ground hog country...

I touched off my bess and ignited a roll of hay in the process, I had to put it out by beating on it with my shirt... :haha:

Speaking of rolls of hay, the animal rights people are trying to outlaw them...

I guess cows aren't getting a square meal...
Haaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaa, I really crack me up... :haha: :haha: :haha:

 

[jtmattison]

How do you cook woodchucks?
I think slow cooking would be best so you don't get any splinters in your teeth

Huntin

 

[Huntinfool]

I can't wait till about the middle of May that's when my self emposed season opens up. If you really like to hog hunt you don't kill-em when they got little ones in the hole.

One shot could kill a whole litter maybe six or seven little ones. Not to mention how horrible a death they would have you miss the opportunity to shoot six or seven more times!

Of course the farmers don't care it'd be good for them as long as they get killed. I would rather waste a little more powder and lead and do it the hard way.

Oh Huntin', you cut the little brown kernals out from under their front legs plus remove any excess fat. Then par boil them before ya slow cook em with Bar-B-Que and smoke em too! The young ones are the best! I made an old one once in deer camp and the fellers licked the pot! Oh and also Huntin' ya got to hit em in the head!

LOL Once again musketman good post you got me linin' my sights on thet thar hog!

"The Chuckster" ::

 

[musketman]

Well, here some more to wet your appitite... ::

 

One thing to remember when hunting the ground hog is that it is done guring the hot, dry summer months, a muzzleloader (especially flintlocks) will set hay fields on fire, trust me on this one...

We use "small" cook'n-fires out here in tha "stonies"!! (snicker, snicker, har, har!!) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif ::

 

Don, here in Ahia we ain't got no woodchucks. Them danged groundhogs run 'em all off!
:bull: :haha: :haha:
( I crack me up too!)

 

The Beavers eat them up here - that's why there aren't any groundhogs in the mountains. We've got the smaller marmots. The dang beavers'r so big, they caint git dowen them marmot holes ta git 'em.
Daryl

 

[Huntinfool]

I think u guys is plum full a whislepig crap! :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

"The Chuckster" :: :: :: ::

 

I think u guys is plum full a whislepig crap! :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

"The Chuckster" :: :: :: ::

We used ta have whistlepigs, but the woodchucks run e'm off!
Then tha groundhogs run tha woodchucks off! :bull:
Ya know if a groundhog weighed 300 pounds and ate meat we'd be in a heap o' trouble.
They is the toughest critter to kill that I'd ever seed!
I saw my cousin take ones head off with a .243 and the critter ran 50 feet into his hole!
Once I was shooting a hay field with my old .222 Mag and saw a young'n at about 200 yards. I shot and it disappeared.
A couple seconds later it stood up again so I shot and it disappeared. Seconds later it stood up again and I thort I give the dumb critter some more hot lead. This went on five times!
I thort I'd missed, very unusual for me as I once shot 83 straight with that rifle one summer, so I walked over to tha hole to see if my bullets went wide of the target and lo and behold there layed FIVE dead groundhogs!
Honest. ::
And that ain't no :bull:.

 

[musketman]

Another name for groundhog... sausage... :haha: :haha: :haha:

Bawwwwwwwww Haaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
Ground Hog, I really, really, really crack me up...

 

[gordy]

Don't know how well the .440 ball would perform with a patch thick enough to spin it! I doubt that You'd be able to drive it with much powder or it would most likely strip the rifleing. I do know that woodchucks are great eating! If You like liver they have the best!They are one of the cleanest animals and eat the best of Your crops,so the meat flavor is consistant from chuck to chuck.It always bothered Me that the varmit hunters would just hang the carcuss on the fence.I always intended to make things from their hides but never got around to it.Anyone here ever tan one? You folks went and got Me all worked up for chuck meat and I've never seen one here in Florida! :curse: /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

I've eaten a few when living in South Western Ontario - shot 367 last summer I was there with the 6.5 and another hundred with the 22-250. shooting them with a smokepose would be fun for sure. Perhaps more fun than dusting them of at 400yds with the 6.5?- I'm sure it would be, skinnying up to one within range and FaPoom. BIG hole, right through.
: The young ones tasted better and took less chewing. The hides are very thick in back of the neck, quite thin ion the belly. You are right- they eat only vegatables, unlike the Prairie Dogs and gorund Squirrels whose diet also includes their own young and any others they can overcome. Last year, had a pile of 7, just keeping an eye on the first shot, and others close by would come over for a snack. - POW (.17AckleyBee)- another for the pile. Disgusting little creatures, these western rodents. We'll try the .45 flinter and one of Brads's .54's on them this summer.
: Got my first of the season, yesterday, with the 8178R14. (81 Malibou, right front tire)
Daryl

 

.............sausage........Harrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Bawwwwwwwwww....hawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.





ROTFLMAO :haha: :haha:

 

[Slowpoke]

We uses to call them whistle pigs because of the noise they make when they run.

Chuck

 

[musketman]

Whistle pigs, ground grizzly's, pasture poodles, woodchucks, groundhogs, they're all the same... "targets"... :winking: :haha: :haha: :haha:

 

[bob1961]

when me and my brother was a yun ens on the farm we rented the farmer gave us a $25.00 bounty on any hogs we gave him....we would look out the windows for any of them out in soybean fields....then go out the back door and do a sneak and stalk around the farm buildings to trap them out in the beans....since we knew where there holes were by the big half circle of bare ground where they eating the beans down to the ground....then jump out in the field and git between them and there holes....and you know them critters whould run right between our legs if we let um....take one little side step and a good swing from our baseball bats and we had another $25.00 bucks per hog :haha:....not bad for being 14 years old..........................bob

 

Been 'charged' by a mad pig before, myself. By the time I was 12, I was hunting on my own with a .22 ACE, a present from my uncle, an RCMPolice Sargent at the time. I used to take the gun down (single stock screw), wrapp it in news paper and tie it to my handlebars, then ride out to the farm for hunting with the farmer's younger boy.
; It's odd how things 'go-round'.
: My Mom, 83 years old & widowed, just this last fall, married that farmer of 84yrs.age, who had let me hunt on his acreage so many years ago. Now, he's my Step-Dad.
Daryl

 

[Stumpkiller]

When I was dating my wife we did a lot of hiking. We were cutting across a field, headed for a 'secret' trout stream, when a woodchuck came barreling towards me at full galloumpf (they don't really gallop). This was back when any respectable nature lover either wore sandals or Vasque hiking boots. I had the latter. These bad boys weighed enough to tip you back up on your feet, pack and all, if you fell over while backpacking. I lofted the woodchuck about 15 feet up and 30 feet out with a mighty kick, killing him very effectively. My wife stood there, mouth agape, as I explained "He attacked me!"

She still brings that up as "The time I should have realized you were't a normal person." She used to hunt & fish but has become civilized since we replaced the wringer washer.

In those days I had a buddy with a father-in-law-to-be who had a huge farm outside of Owego, NY. We would spend summer Sundays, each of us with a .36 T/C Seneca, trying to make the longest kill on a woodchuck. My longest was 220 paces, prone position, with a Maxi-ball, and my pace is near-nuff one yard (I'm 6'3"). OK, so it was a fluke, but I intended it to happen and it did, so it counts. The carcasses were boiled and went to feed the farm owner's coon hounds (mean, scrawny dawgs as ever there were but businesslike on a hunt - just don't come from behind and try to grab a coon away. We never did get much for a pelt). Why is it the best hunting buddies always move away? (The farmer's daughter, by the way, was a pretty but prissy thing who hated that farm and moved that poor boy inner city and kept him broke buying her high heel shoes and get-me-the-h*ll-off-this-farm and you-take-me-out-I-ain't-cookin luxuries).

 

[Huntinfool]

I STILL think u guys is plum full a whislepig crap! :: :: :: ::

"The Chuckster" :: :: :: :: ::