Our family did our traditional camping trip to the Cache Nation Forest this past week. And of course I loaded in some rifles and shotguns to have a little fun while we were in the mountains.
We had another great camping trip as a family. We shot a lot of 22 rimfire rifles at clay pigeons that were laid out across the meadow. My seven year old really likes shooting my Marlin Model 39a octagon barrel 22 rifle.
I got out of camp a couple of times and did a few setups trying to fool a wiley coyote to no avail this year. I was able to get some coyotes to respond to a howl but I wasn't able to get in on them.
Some fun, DIY targets that I love to practice shooting my rifles at are milk jugs filled with water. They make for great long range shooting targets. They make a loud whopping sound when hit good and the "fireworks" from the exploding jug are pretty cool also.
This year I hiked up a hill near camp and set out four milk jugs across the hill. The closest jug was 615 yards from where we (my brother and me) were shooting and the longest was 625 yards. On my very first shot at the jugs with my Winchester Model 1885 in 243 WSSM I took out the 625 yard jug. Then the wind picked up a little and we had to hold a little further and further to the left to hit each of the remaining jugs. It was pretty cool to watch the vapor trail through the spotting scope or on the LCD screen of the camera as we shot. Our young children thought it was cool also and joined in to watch. You can see the long range jug smashing action in this video clip.
With the copious amount of snow we had this past winter and spring there is an abundant amount of water... and in turn abundant mosquitoes. With a ThermaCell at hand nary a mosquito would be in sight after you had stayed still for a minute allowing the vaporized repellant to fill the air near you.
ThermaCells just plain rock!
For the milk jug shooting video clip I use my Fujifilm HS20exr camera at full HD 1920x1080 then I crop that in to 1280x720 for this HD YouTube video. I also had a Sony VCL-DH1758 teleconverter 51X Ultra Super Zoom on the camera to get a 51x (1224mm) optical power zoom which is very useful for the long range shoots we are taking.
Scouting around the area I wasn't able to find any elk this year and I saw very few mule deer. I was able to find one small four point and a three point buck one morning when I was out looking for coyotes. We also saw a small bull moose on a skyline probably a good 2000 yards away at dusk. I put my Sony VCL-DH1758 teleconverter on my camera and got a pretty cool photo of him on the skyline. And on the way off the mountain we spotted a small buck pronghorn antelope with a interesting piebald coloration on it's front shoulders.
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| Mule Deer bucks out feeding on their way to their bedding area early in the morning. | Bull moose on the skyline at dusk one evening. |
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| Here's a couple of pictures of the piebald colored Pronghorn Antelope we saw while out camping this summer. | |
