Truce Over

As I have said before, genocide can be a good thing. I was referring to God’s efforts, like the flood, the tribulation, and the destruction of the Canaanites and Amalekites, but it’s particularly true of squirrels.

I used to kill squirrels whenever I got a chance, but one day I decided to stop. I was working in my shop, and a mother squirrel kept walking by, carrying material for her nest. Ordinarily, squirrels are afraid to be near people. She walked right by me, over and over as she built the nest in a tree by the corner of my house.

I felt bad when I thought about killing her and her family. She trusted me. Maybe God was telling me something. I let her live.

Then I paid $6000 for truck repairs. Squirrels ate my Dodge’s wiring harness.

Let it suffice to say the ceasefire is over. And they are the ones who violated it.

I got myself a gadget that lures squirrels and shoves a bolt through their heads, but so far, it has only registered one kill. I’m going back to firearms.

I have a few .22 rifles. I believe the best for squirrel control are a Savage A22 and a modified Marlin 60 (made during the dark Remington years). Both are scoped. I also have a Ruger 10/22 with a Sig red dot and a silencer.

My 10/22 breaks down. I don’t mean that in the FIAT sense. I mean it comes apart into two short pieces you can stick in a backpack. Like an assassin’s ridiculous briefcase gun from a 1970’s movie.

In retrospect, I believe I should have gotten the one-piece version. My understanding is that it takes some skill to make the one I bought accurate, and I think it is also known to lose its zero when broken down.

I have gotten bad results in the past using scoped rifles for squirrels. I can’t let that continue. I don’t want to wound animals and have them run off and suffer. I would also like to avoid giving up and using a shotgun.

I believe the solution is to sight the rifles in correctly and memorize the deviations at squirrel distances so I can be really sure where the bullets will go. I also think I need to use the same ammo all the time, so I’m going with CCI Mini-mags. I have a good supply on hand, and they seem to be 1″-accurate at 50 yards in a good gun.

The Marlin Model 60 is a mix of good and bad. The good? It’s cheap. It’s light and handy. It feels good in the hand. The barrels have a great reputation for accuracy. It even looks nice. The bad? The quality control during the last years was like the quality control at Popeyes. The insides are like BB-gun insides. It’s not made for hyper ammunition. The trigger is plastic, and the trigger pull is bad.

I bought my Marlin a few years ago. I sat down and shot at a target maybe 60 feet away. The impacts covered an area the size of a big orange. Unbelievable.

I sent it back, and Marlin didn’t even try to fix it. They sent me a new gun, and I had to do a new background check.

The tube magazine fell off the new gun, and rather than go through the warranty process, I bought parts and fixed it myself.

I bought a trigger, springs, and some other stuff from a company called MCARBO, and now I have a metal trigger that works fairly well, and the gun will handle hyper ammunition if I decide to use it.

A photo I have on hand suggests this gun will do 1 MOA at 50 yards. I’m not positive about it. I wonder if I typed “50” in the file name when I should have typed something like 25. Anyway, it’s not bad.

Ruger is a fantastic gun company, unlike Remington, which owned Marlin when it made my gun. Ruger bought Marlin from Remington when Remington collapsed. The Rugerians must not think much of the Model 60, because they discontinued it. It’s probably one of the two most popular .22 rifles in history, but I guess Ruger’s people know a problem child when they see one.

I think they should bring it back and fix the issues everyone knows about.

The Marlin has a Bug Buster on it. This is a very cheap airgun scope. I like good optics, but I will defend the Bug Buster against all attacks. At short distances, a scope doesn’t need perfect glass or even good tracking. You just have to be able to see your game. You will never need to move your turrets. Just remember how the gun shoots and hold over or under accordingly.

The Bug Buster has a neat illuminated reticle that lights up in red or green, and it also has target turrets, so you don’t lose stuff when you sight it in. You don’t have to remove caps that fall in the grass, and you don’t need a screwdriver.

When I decided to sight my guns in yesterday, I chose the Model 60 and left the A22 in its case. The A22 is better in every imaginable way, but that miserable Model 60 has an allure no one seems to be able to resist.

The A22 is tapped and threaded for a real scope mount. It has a Savage Accu-trigger. It comes with iron sights, too. It has real-rifle guts. You can replace the barrel with a wrench instead of a press. Savage barrels are known for accuracy.

I didn’t want to go out in the manure and set up my bench at 50 yards, so I settled for 35 yards in my backyard. Let’s face it; no compassionate person is going to shoot a squirrel with a .22 if it’s over a hundred feet away. Rimfires are not accurate enough to trust on tiny game that far off.

I used a dubious hunting tripod for a rest, but I still got the gun shooting into half an inch at 35 yards, so it was good enough. I moved the target to 20 yards, which is a more likely distance, and it shot half an inch or so low. Now I have three numbers to remember: 35, 20, and 1/2. Done.

The Ruger surprised me. I didn’t think a red dot would be any good for squirrels, but it put rounds into half an inch at 20 yards just fine.

I ought to be able to assassinate squirrels very reliably now without resorting to the 16-gauge.

I don’t like the Ruger’s trigger. It’s plastic, and it seems like I can feel it bend before the gun goes off. I don’t think it matters at rimfire distances, but I could see myself changing it some day.

The scope is a Sig Romeo5. Very simple. Cheap. The battery lasts for years. You don’t turn the scope on or off. It’s “shake awake,” which means it comes on by itself when the gun is moved.

Now I’m looking for shooting opportunities. I have a great hide. It’s not black or camo. It’s white. It has a refrigerator and running water. It’s my house. I’m going to look out the windows every so often, and when I see a good shot opportunity, I’ll open a door and shoot from inside. It works great.

I might start shooting from upstairs windows. That will give me more chances. Because of the elevation, more squirrels will be significantly below my position, so I will be able to blast them without any concerns about rounds leaving my property.

Maybe I should put a stand up in the yard. That would be really funny.

When my dad and I were looking at houses here, we saw a 5-acre property with a deer stand and feeder. There is freedom here. I can sit in a stand beside my house, holding a semiautomatic rifle with a 25-round magazine, shooting at squirrels, any day of the year.

I have to stop at 12 squirrels per day. I guess that’s the tyranny I face.

Time to get up and look out the window.