G'hogs hunting begins .. right?

[Boondox]

i

[340M&P]

I make a local beef farmer very happy when I show up. They are getting wise though, I cant use the 22 anymore, have to switch to the 223 so I can be further away.

[Walleye Hunter]

in the back yard starting this weekend.
A pass was given due to the Holiday'
Hunting starts tomorrow though …. if legal of course...…………….

Who else hates these things?

Who likes them would be a shorter list. I can't figure out why they're even on this planet, they're worthless, damaging and can't even predict the weather. IMO they are always in season.

[Jhaydeno]

There's a few of us here who religiously go after those destructive critters. Fossil up in Lebanon County is the master, but we haven't heard from him of late. Hopefully he is doing ok.

As noted by Walleye above, there is no season, just not Sundays and deer season. Unofficially most people will give them to Memorial day to wean off their first batch of brats!

[Walleye Hunter]

Them things been undermining my shed for years.....
they are like drug dealers ...
no matter how many you wack ....... they keep refilling their ranks

LOL I don't have any at my current house (honest!) but at my other house I actively trapped them and every year I got around six of them. Most of them were young ones moving out of the nest and I had one big gray one that I could never get, I'm confident he was the baby daddy.

[scoutjoe]

Got one real dumb one in the barnyard about a week ago. He let me get to the trunk of the car, load the magazine then the .22. The hay is getting a little too tall for me to see them out in the field now, I'll have to wait till we cut in June.

[Gunplummer]

I never thought about where groundhogs lived until I hunted early bow season over in the Hagerstown area. I would see some whoppers up near the top of the mountains, living in cracks and under rocks. I never saw saplings stripped of bark, so I guess they ate nuts and whatever wild plants they could find. It seemed pointless to shoot at them because they weren't doing any damage. I guess you never notice them if you are mostly a rifle deer hunter and they are dug in already.

[Walleye Hunter]

I never thought about where groundhogs lived until I hunted early bow season over in the Hagerstown area. I would see some whoppers up near the top of the mountains, living in cracks and under rocks. I never saw saplings stripped of bark, so I guess they ate nuts and whatever wild plants they could find. It seemed pointless to shoot at them because they weren't doing any damage. I guess you never notice them if you are mostly a rifle deer hunter and they are dug in already.

The damage they do doesn't matter much in the woods but I've never seen one in the woods either. They're vegetarians and they eat grass but prefer lush vegetable gardens and have voracious appetites. The like to live in burrows under back yard sheds and leave piles of dirt out front to show their existence. Their burrows are hell on a horses (and maybe a cow's) legs and will destroy a fine beast. In return they have nothing to offer up to validate their existence, other than to maybe feed an occasional fox. In days of old I suppose that the poor ate them. For all that matters some might still.

[heatheroo]

The damage they do doesn't matter much in the woods but I've never seen one in the woods either. They're vegetarians and they eat grass but prefer lush vegetable gardens and have voracious appetites. The like to live in burrows under back yard sheds and leave piles of dirt out front to show their existence. Their burrows are hell on a horses (and maybe a cow's) legs and will destroy a fine beast. In return they have nothing to offer up to validate their existence, other than to maybe feed an occasional fox. In days of old I suppose that the poor ate them. For all that matters some might still.

One year sitting in my tree stand in the woods during bow season I watched a chuck hauling grass down into his burrow all day. I guess he was getting ready for winter. I bet a coyote would be pretty happy to stumble across a chuck. A bunch of years ago, I moonlighted as a hand at an orchard/farm market in Hill Town. I used to shoot chucks there because they tore up the orchard. I skinned one once with the idea of putting it on the rotisserie in the market. The owners wife spotted the carcass in the cooler and chucked it, so I never got to try that experiment. They are greasy/fatty buggers to skin.

[squirrel hunter]

I shot one last year and cooked it, stew with vegetables, it was quite good to eat. I was surprised. Anyway, now I want to improve my ground hog hunting skills. I am using a target Savage .22 but the last one I shot was about 75 yards and it limped away and died under my wife's studio. (P.U,!) I like the .22 but was wondering if it was the ammo or the shooter. I shot for the heart and may have hit or missed I will never know. Any advice here would be much appreciated. Head shots only? or hotter rounds?