Slept kinda crappy last night/this morning because I had to go pee, been tossing in bed since 4:30 and decided to just get up at about 6 or first light. Everyone is still asleep so I figured I’ll just pop off a few practice shots to kill some time till the kids wake up. Picked up my Crown that I have been using for HFT 2 weekends ago and silhouette last weekend, it is zeroed it at 25 yards with 10.3 heavy pellets at exactly 12fpe. popped a few practice shots and since I have left my reg alone for a while it’s rock steady even for the first shot. Feeling pretty good and kinda bored of sending pellets through the same hole at 20 yards I decided to check my tree and saw a flickering orange tail which got my heart racing!
Grabbed my Crown with a pellet in the chamber and slowed peeked back around the house. It clearly saw me as it run up the tree more and peeking back at me from behind branches and leaves. The jittery squirrel moved a few times assessing my intent as I followed it with my scope. Then it decided to peek over a different branch that has a big branch behind it or very solid back stop, fatal mistake! I adjusted my parallax from my HFT practice and range it at 31 yards, but I can only see its beady eye between some leaves so I put the center dot at where I estimate where top of the brain is(.3 Mil hold over) and squeezed the trigger….POP!!! The pop was so loud even from 31 yards away it almost made me jump! To my surprise all I heard was a thud and no usual brain shot dance, it literally didn’t even twitch!
A quick look showed I literally threaded the pellet through its ear hole and just crushed the back of the skull so most likely complete severed its spinal cord hence the lack of any nerve twitch after the hit. So even though I had a rough night the morning started out great with actual application of my HFT skills! Interestingly I didn’t see an exit hole so will do an autopsy after the kids go to school.
Happy Friday everyone! Mine at least is off to a very good start!
EDIT: after a closer look the pellet entered where I estimated and existed the opposite ear which has a ton of blood from first picture. Being a domed pellet the exist hole is quite a bit smaller compared to Hades I normally use on tree rats. Very happy with the shot and the HFT practices really paid off! Can’t wait till the next tree rat to show up to Qball lead buffet because the next server’s name is Thomas! LMAO!!!
Grabbed my Crown with a pellet in the chamber and slowed peeked back around the house. It clearly saw me as it run up the tree more and peeking back at me from behind branches and leaves. The jittery squirrel moved a few times assessing my intent as I followed it with my scope. Then it decided to peek over a different branch that has a big branch behind it or very solid back stop, fatal mistake! I adjusted my parallax from my HFT practice and range it at 31 yards, but I can only see its beady eye between some leaves so I put the center dot at where I estimate where top of the brain is(.3 Mil hold over) and squeezed the trigger….POP!!! The pop was so loud even from 31 yards away it almost made me jump! To my surprise all I heard was a thud and no usual brain shot dance, it literally didn’t even twitch!
A quick look showed I literally threaded the pellet through its ear hole and just crushed the back of the skull so most likely complete severed its spinal cord hence the lack of any nerve twitch after the hit. So even though I had a rough night the morning started out great with actual application of my HFT skills! Interestingly I didn’t see an exit hole so will do an autopsy after the kids go to school.
Happy Friday everyone! Mine at least is off to a very good start!
EDIT: after a closer look the pellet entered where I estimated and existed the opposite ear which has a ton of blood from first picture. Being a domed pellet the exist hole is quite a bit smaller compared to Hades I normally use on tree rats. Very happy with the shot and the HFT practices really paid off! Can’t wait till the next tree rat to show up to Qball lead buffet because the next server’s name is Thomas! LMAO!!!
