Montana "Snow Painting"

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   Its a somewhat rare set of circumstances that must come together to allow for this "unique" sport to come to pass!
For those that do not know what folks are talking about - it has to do with Ground Squirrel Hunting in the snow!
Most years the snow and the Ground Squirrels do not show up at the same times - thus its only rarely that one even gets the chance to "paint some snow"!
2,007 in SW Montana is now one of the rare (good?) years that provided the right circumstances and conditions for me to enjoy at least one days worth of "Painting The Snow - Montana style"!
Tuesday night (March 27th) brought 4 inches of new wet snow to SW Montana and Wednesday afternoon things began to warm and clear a bit. I grabbed my main "go to" Gopher Rifles and headed out to one of my favorite fields. I had called both my local Varminting buddies but neither were home! I proceeded alone.
As I travelled to my favorite local ranch I saw many Ground Squirrels scurrying about on top of the fresh snow! This only heightened my anticipation of what I was sure would soon come to pass - a good old fashioned session of Painting the Snow"!
I soon was rewarded with lots of targets and lots of shooting! I had brought along my Ruger 77/17 V/T in 17 HMR and my custom Ruger 10/22 with its new Tasco 6x24, scope all dialed in and ready for action!
The Ground Squirrels stood out on the snowy background like tiny black bowling pins in an all white field!
I quickly went through all ten clips of ammo for my 10/22 and then went to the longer ranging Ruger 17 HMR for the more distant Varmints! This Rifle (Ruger 77 V/T in 17 HMR), I think is the absolute top choice for Ground Squirrels - it is fully capable of 225 yards hits and kills on the Gophers, it has no recoil, it is QUIET, the barrel does not heat up excessively, it is amazingly accurate and has a wonderful trigger! I changed the scope on this Rifle last fall from a Weaver KT-15 (straight 15 power scope) with duplex reticle to a Weaver V-16 (variable 4 to 16 power scope) with fine crosshairs and a tiny dot! A great choice and improvement in my opinion. I really like this Weaver V-16 for Varminting - especially Gophering!
At times the sun would break through the clouds completely and I had to wear my Nikon Ice Climber Sunglasses to cut the glare. Luckily the Nikon lenses are of such quality that there was no eyestrain nor did I have to take them off to sight through the scope for final sight alignment!
I won't go into the more gorey details but I will say this - there was a LOT of red fan shaped "designs" there on the Montana snow when I decided to call it a day!
I am sure I got close to 170 Ground Squirrels during the afternoon. Shooting was virtually non-stop due to the Gophers standing out against their backgrounds so much more strikingly evident than they had, in just the previous days! Previously the grass had been very low but the Gophers when eating and travelling about had been just barely covered by the short grass and hard to see! Yesterday they were on top of the snow and could not have been more visible!
The rancher was VERY happy that I got so much shooting in! The snow was also a VERY welcome thing for all of SW Montana as we are still in the grips of a decade long, now, rated as "profound" (worst classification of drought!) drought!
I hope ALL "Ground Squirrelers" get a chance, someday, to enjoy "Painting The Snow" Montana style!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy  