Month: August 2009

Squirrel Hunt with the Benjamin Trail NP (NitroPiston) As squirrel season got underway, I was hitting the woods for a quick hunt in the morning before work. On most mornings I found myself stalking though the woods with on of my high power PCPs, and was shooting lots of squirrels. One morning as I sat watching a den tree and waiting for the action to start, I started thinking back over the last decade of squirrel hunting since moving to the Midwest. A lot of those hunts, especially the earlier ones had been done with one of my trusty springers, often an old Beeman C1. But this year I’d not gone out once with a springer, and I decided then and there to fix this oversight the following morning! But which gun to use? I looked in my gun room and there were several to choose from, but finally I settled on a Crosman Benjamin Trail NP in .22 caliber. The gun is light, compact, accurate, moderately powerful, and easily capable of laying out the 35 yards bushytails I looked forward to encountering. I also like the ergonomic thumbhole stock and reckoned the digital camo would be spot on in the still heavy foliage of early fall. I worked my way into the woods as the first rays of day started to filter through the trees listening for nuts dropping out of the canopy while watching for the telltale cuttings raining down from above. I found an area that wasRead More →

On a business trip down to Texas, I hooked up with my shooting buddies Eric Henderson and Mark Bolson for a varminting session. They have a large farm that they provide pest control for, and it was heavily populated with raccoons, possum, skunks, and I heard we might even run into some feral hogs. Eric picked me up at my hotel and we drove out to meet Mark at the farm, and after a 45 minute drive rolled up to find him waiting for us at the gate. We loaded up our gear, guns and lights into the Big Bore Productions truck and started back onto the property. The two guns we had along were distinctly different; Mark brought his Gladi8tor and Eric brought his .497 caliber Big Bore Bob tuned Quackenbush Ubermagnum. Our plan was to use the .22 Gladi8tor for the small stuff, and if we came across a hog we’d break out the Quackenbush. After a half hour or so we glassed a skunk out in a harvested corn field scooting along, and I lined up a fifty yard shot …. Which missed, then another ….. that missed again. Not knowing if the gun or the shooter was a problem, I handed the gun back to Mark. He lined up his shot …. And missed, then missed again as we watched the striped backed stinker dive into the bush. That was it; the gun had to be messed up! Eric walked a milk jug out into theRead More →