Henry Rifle Forums

Ah man, I used to shoot hundreds of those pesky things out in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Just seeing a picture of one gets me all excited. I need to get my old 220 Swift out and tuner her up.
Shadow my butt, eat lead varmint!

And the 220 swift does a number on those and the prairie dogs. Had a Ruger 77 varmint barrel in one it was a good shooter.

BigAl52 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 02, 2021 10:58 am

And the 220 swift does a number on those and the prairie dogs. Had a Ruger 77 varmint barrel in one it was a good shooter.

Got one just like that. Purchased it back in 78 I believe. Got a 12 power Luepold on top. Shoot a Sierra 85 grn Hollow Point Boat Tail, and loaded
down to about 3800 fps with IMR 4350 Powder. If you keep it under 4000 fps the barrels last many times longer.

Tack driver!

In the Shenandoah Valley the Groundhogs are like rats. My buddy and I were asked to clean out a dairy pasture one Summer. When I got there I remarked that the pasture was over grazed. The farmer told us he had not let the cows into that pasture for months. The Groundhogs were eating all the grass.
We spent a happy summer there. I'll bet in that 100 acre pasture we killed 400 or more groundhogs that Summer. That farmer loved us and we could hunt anything on his property after that.

Man, that bring back memories. No idea how many I killed over the years. Lot of fun. I had a Win.Mod. 70 Varmint,in 22-250, 24" bull bbl, 12X scope.
Sierra 52 gr. HPBT Benchrest, Norma case, 35.0 grs IMR 4064, CCI 200, 3700 fps.

I went back & dug out my old Sierra manual & found the load I was using. worked well. Had one shot at 312 yds, that my Uncle said I missed 'til I walked down in the bottom & brought it back. The good old days. Used to be legal to shoot from the road. No more. As usual, some jerks abused it.

So...did he see his shadow or his grave?

cooperhawk wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:15 am

BigAl52 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 02, 2021 10:58 am

And the 220 swift does a number on those and the prairie dogs. Had a Ruger 77 varmint barrel in one it was a good shooter.

Got one just like that. Purchased it back in 78 I believe. Got a 12 power Luepold on top. Shoot a Sierra 85 grn Hollow Point Boat Tail, and loaded
down to about 3800 fps with IMR 4350 Powder. If you keep it under 4000 fps the barrels last many times longer.

Tack driver!

Did you mean a 55 gr HPT? My big heavy single shot Savage loves that bullet. It also loves 52 gr Hornady A-Max at just a few FPS shy of 4,000. I hate to guess how many ground hogs I have killed for farmers here.

We called them wood chucks, my grandpa called them marmots. Dispatched a few in my day!

bandit1250 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:32 pm

Did you mean a 55 gr HPT? My big heavy single shot Savage loves that bullet. It also loves 52 gr Hornady A-Max at just a few FPS shy of 4,000. I hate to guess how many ground hogs I have killed for farmers here.

You are correct my friend. Getting old. The 85gn was for my .243 when I used it for varmints.

52gr Sierra HPBT and 38 gr of IMR 4064 worked real well in mine.

BigAl52 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 02, 2021 7:12 pm

52gr Sierra HPBT and 38 gr of IMR 4064 worked real well in mine.

That was a classic load for the 22-250. 4064 and 4895 were both great performers in the 22-250. Another was H380. H380 got its name from one of the best loads being 38.0 grs with a 52-53 gr bullet. The 22-250 was not finicky on the loads you made up for it. About any powder in the mid range burn rate from 3031 for light bullets up to the slow burners like H414 and 4350 even worked well with the 55 gr. and 60-63 gr bullets.

brm4450 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 02, 2021 4:48 pm

We called them wood chucks, my grandpa called them marmots. Dispatched a few in my day!

They've got different name in different parts of the country. Appear to be the same, or close.

How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood

Grunt67 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 02, 2021 7:38 pm

brm4450 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 02, 2021 4:48 pm

We called them wood chucks, my grandpa called them marmots. Dispatched a few in my day!

They've got different name in different parts of the country. Appear to be the same, or close.

Yeah, out here we call them Rock Chucks. West of Spokane is scabland country and they are pretty plentiful. Many years ago I loaded some Speer .308 130 HP’s for my 30/06. This bullet had a massive hollow point in it and was amazingly accurate in my Ruger. I took it Rock Chuck hunting as I didn’t have a varmint rifle and hitting one of those chucks with that 130 grain HP was devastating.


PJM, great picture of your Lab. My wife enjoyed it as much a I did.