Spring has sprung. Get out and shoot your Henry

2021 hunting

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bandit1250
Cowboy
Posts: 1645
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 10:25 pm
United States of America

2021 hunting

Post by bandit1250 » Sun Dec 05, 2021 11:10 am

2021 has not been a good hunting season for me. Squirrel hunting has been bad as my normal seasons usually go. Very little feed for squirrels here except for walnuts and the little red berries on the sticker bushes that some guys call Japanese briar berry. All most impossible to get through and still have all your skin and most of your clothes left on you. The walnut areas are grown up drainage areas with weeds and briars taller than me and it requires a shotgun in most areas. Plus our game commission passed a law where you can't even hunt squirrels during the two week turkey season. I feel they could have at least gave the rifle hunters the three day hunt over the Thanksgiving holiday. They totally wiped out one small segment of their license buyers just to appease the cry baby shotgun hunting group. I have rifle hunted in the fall turkey season since I was 15 years old and I may never buy a Pa. license again. I am going to contact our game commission about their decision that is completely one sided. I don't even believe for a minute that many of the game commission officials even hunt. I can't even find an e-mail address for the game commission so I guess they don't want to hear complaints and just sit back and get their paychecks. I also gave up the first week of deer season to help my brother move. Looks like it will be a loss on the second week also as we still have a lot of the heavy things to haul now. Have to get it done as he lives in an area that can get up to over 200+ inches of snow in a season. If he gets snowed in my moving him will be finished with me having a two wheel drive pick-up. So that has been my hunting season so far. At least I got about 2 dozen squirrels to can and saw a lot of deer and turkeys while out so not all is lost.
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JEBar
Town Marshal / Deputy Admin
Posts: 19272
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 10:58 pm
Location: central NC
United States of America

Re: 2021 hunting

Post by JEBar » Sun Dec 05, 2021 11:36 am

I haven't heard any reports on how this year's hunting season is coming along .... we haven't seen a large number of dead deer on the road during the last month .... my wife says she has heard a few shots fired but I haven't heard a single one which is unusual
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North Country Gal
Firearms Advisor
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Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2016 12:46 pm
Location: northern Wisconsin
United States of America

Re: 2021 hunting

Post by North Country Gal » Sun Dec 05, 2021 4:01 pm

Sorry to hear about the bad luck, bandit. Hope things improve for you.
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.45Steel
Wrangler
Posts: 83
Joined: Sun May 22, 2016 4:40 pm
Location: N.C. Pa.
United States of America

Re: 2021 hunting

Post by .45Steel » Sat Dec 18, 2021 10:39 pm

2021 hunting has been pretty good here. As for deer,...I had a buck and doe tag here in N.C. Pa. I ended up with a big mature doe with plenty of good meat for the freezer. With no more room in the freezer, I didn't even bother going out after a buck.
Now to the reason for this post. I have been trying to get a deer with my Henry BB Steel .45 colt for a few yrs. but haven't had the opportunity as I wanted to get meat and ended up going out with my Ruger MKII .243 so that I was capable of taking one at a longer range.
This year, I finally got it done. I was skeptical of my reloads with my cast Lee 255gr. rnf and 8 grs of BE-86 as I didn't shoot them thru the chrony. and restricted myself to shots at 75 yrds. or less. I had a big doe come into about 50 yrds. and had a frontal shot. Now I have taken several deer including a couple of nice bucks at that angle with the .243 and had some awesome heart shots where the deer jumped on impact and died before it hit the ground. That is the shot I took with my Henry BBS .45 colt. The deer ran less than 50 yrds. when it died. Needless to say,..It did an awesome job. Upon skinning the doe I was eager to see the damage that the 255 rnf did. It was way better than I expected. The bullet entered just left of the breastbone, right where I was aiming and exited just behind the last rib on the right side. When I field dressed the deer, I discovered that the bullet took out the lungs but missed the heart. I'll be using the same load next year unless I develop a better one. Taking a deer with the BBS with my own cast bullets was on my bucket list.
2 x
H010G 45-70
H012 .45 Colt
H001TER .22

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