Pennsylvania Game News - July 2014 - 11

a group that is 0.03 inches or smaller at
100 yards, you are not in the competition in benchrest shooting.
I reload for my 6mm PPC and
use Hodgdon H322 powder, Federal
GM205M primers, Sako brass cases
and the Nosler Ballistic Tip 70-grain
bullets. After working up a load for it
one afternoon, I shot off a picnic table
at a target 122 yards away and put four
of the five bullets in the same hole, and
the fifth was out of the group by oneeighth inch. Without a doubt, this is
the most accurate rifle I have ever shot.
One day in the middle of July, I was
hunting in a farm field at 7 p.m. I was
set up just inside a fencerow, and shooting slightly downhill across the field,
which was about 285 yards across to
the edge of a woods. I had hunted here
many times and knew just how to set
the turret top on the scope on the 6mm
PPC to shoot this distance. The edge
of the woods was riddled with chuck
holes. I would spot a chuck walking
out into the field, line it up and shoot
it, and a few minutes later another
chuck would walk into the field.
The chucks just kept coming out of the woods,
one at a time. I did
this for 40 minutes
and shot 22 chucks
with 23 shots. The
wind fouled one shot.
I made a 322-yard shot
that day, which is the longest I
ever made with the 6mm PPC.
One Saturday afternoon my son
and I stopped and asked a farmer
for permission to hunt groundhogs,
and he was glad to have us help him
remove some of the hole-diggers. He
directed us to an 80-acre field where
JULY 2014

the hay had just been taken off and
we got 25 chucks out of that field
in the next hour and a half. Over
the next three Saturdays, my son
removed 84 chucks from that farm.
I have noticed that there are not
many chucks along public roads these
days. I have found that if you want
to find chucks, you have to walk to
the back of a lot of the farms, and up
over the hills to fields that cannot
be seen from the highways. Hunters,
after they gain permission to hunt,
should ask farmers where the chucks
are most plentiful - they know.
Every one of my rifles has a Harris
bipod attached. The bipod, when
fully extended, is tall enough to use
while kneeling on one knee. When
just two sections are pulled out, it's
just right for the sitting position.
Totally collapsed, it's the proper
height for prone shooting. The one
important thing to remember about
the bipod is to not tighten the screw
that fastens it to the sling swivel
stud, or the rifle will shoot high.
When using a bipod, loosen the
fastening screw enough so that
it will permit a 6-inch
rocking motion of the
rifle (forward and
backward), and after
finding the center of
this rocking motion,
make your shot. The
bipod prevents left and
right movements of the rifle. Your
shoulder and elbows prevent the rifle
from moving forward or backward.
Many hunters, when they miss a
chuck, blame it on the wind. What
really happens is often they cant the
rifle to the right or left of vertical,
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Pennsylvania Game News - July 2014

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