Sprinkman
Well-known member
April 24, 2026
I’ve been able to get out rock chucking a handful of times so far this spring. I haven’t been able to get out much because I’ve been swamped with work. It’s a good problem to have, but it gets in the way of life. So, yesterday I took the afternoon off from work and headed up into the mountains. It’s nice that they’re only an hour away.
It was still cold up there, but not freezing, at 39 degrees and a steady 15-20 mph wind my bones were chilled a bit
.The first spot I stopped I spotted a pair of rock chucks at about 350 yards, but I could never get a shot. They were skylined the whole time and never moved into a safe shooting position. So, I packed up and move further back into the mountain. I set up and started glassing only to see birds, lots of black birds. Felt like I was in an Alfred Hitchcock movie
.Finally I spotted one at 435 yards but it never presented more than the top of its head. It’s on the pointy rock outcropping just above the suppresor.
So after 20 or so minutes of nothing else showing up, I moved again. I saw two deer.
After getting to the new spot, I set up and started glassing. This time I spotted one at 318 yards. I got setup on it and pulled the trigger. Rock chuck down. As I watched it fall I spotted another one pop up just above it at about 320 yards. Trigger pulled again and another rock chuck down. Then, a third one came down the hill to see what was going on and stopped just above the second one at about 321 yards. Third rock chuck down. I hiked over to the rock chucks and couldn’t find the first one, just blood in the hole it fell into.
The other two are here. The little one is number two and the bigger one is number three.
March 13, 2026
This one started out as a coyote hunt, but I didn’t call anything in. While moving between stands I spotted a coulple of rock chucks, so I switched to a rock chuck hunt. Found this one at 164 yards.
March 3, 2026
This one isn’t really all that exciting, but it’s part of the story, so… Rock chucks are the evil western cousin of the woodchuck. The only real difference is where they live. Rock chucks live in rocky areas, go figure. They still burrow there way to china causing problems with the canal that runs behind our place. So, this time of year whenever I step outside of my office I glass the back hill. This one was one of those. I steeped out of the office, because nature calls, and spotted this one at 227 yards.
February 27, 2026
We had a really nice February this spring with temps in the 60’s. It was great weather here in the valley, but it sucked for the mountains and our snow pack levels. It’s gonna be a bad water year for the farms. Anyway I got out on this day and found this rock chuck at 205 yards, pretty much a chip shot.
After this one I moved about a half mile or so and set up on some power lines that a week or two earlier I missed one at 475 yards. I set things up and started glassing spotting one, probably the same one, at about 512 yards. It took a while to get the phone scope set up and focused on the spotting scope. There was a ton of mirage. Anyway, once everything was good I got the rifle pointed in the right direction, found the chuck and pulled the trigger. This time there was no miss. This is also the longest shot that I have made outside of hitting steel at 650 yards at the gun range.
The video is pretty bad because I did a bad job of centering up on the critter. I also couldn’t stabilize the video because the stabilization took the rock chuck out of the picture.
Here’s the video of the 475 yard miss. I started out by forgetting to rack a round, then just barley missed low and slightly left.
Here’s the picture and video of the 512 yard hit.
After this one I kept glassing and spotted another one at 350 yards. I missed this one in a spectacular fashion hitting maybe 24” low. I think I self diagnosed this miss as rookie error. I was looking at the rock chuck without paying attention to the crosshairs, so the bullet hit where it was supposed too. Operator error all the way. Gotta show the good with the bad, so here’s the video:
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