Grumulkin
Member
Every summer without fail a groundhog, or two, or more will decide to live under my front porch. In the photo, you can see a flower bed that is at one end of the porch. What you won't see until the next photo is the dead groundhog (too small to see well in the photo) by the last hole it ever dug. The upper window is my office window. I've lost count of how many groundhogs I've shot out of it over the years.
It was a fair size female and it was the most aggressive digger of any I've ever seen. About five minutes before I shot this one, I had filled its hole back up and it had promptly come out to remove the dirt I had repositioned. Too bad for it. I had, by the way, filled in the hole several times before and was surprised at how fast it removed the dirt and rock I had put in it.
A few days ago I shot one in the yard with a 308 Winchester. One shot, one kill. Today, since I had to shoot out a window, I used a Thompson/Center Contender pistol in 357 Herrett on this one. One shot, one kill again. It's not the first I've taken with a 357 Herrett and they never needed more than one bullet. Are you surprised?
This is the pistol with the same load I used to take a springbok, a mountain reedbuck and a black wildebeest. The load is with IMR 4227 and 158 grain Hornady XTP bullets. The load was in virgin brass which, as is my usual practice, I didn't resize, trim or otherwise mess around with. The load will do about one inch for five shots off the bench at 100 yards out of the above handgun.
The final resting place for the groundhog. Groundhogs make great pumpkins. That's how I eat them; I turn them into pumpkins and then into pumpkin pie.
