Ontario Groundhogs Revisited Member Anthony (Tony) Harrison


Ontario. Despite never having seen a groundhog ’til then — there are small marmots in the Alps and the Pyrenees but none in the British Isles — I logged 74 ’hogs in around a week. After that life got a little complicated, with career changes, etc., and a projected repeat trip in ’99 had to be cancelled at short notice. Like I said, complications…. Anyway, an uncontrollable urge


came over me to zap more North Ameri- can varmints. So I planned Groundhog Two — this time with my son Oliver, who at 16 had been varminting with me for a while. Brief digression. Where I live in


Two of these ’hogs fell simultaneously. We spotted them around the same burrow and synchronized our shots. On the left I’m holding the trusty Winchester Featherweight. Henrik used Marilyn’s Remington 700 in 6mm Remington.


varmint-hunting foray after ground- hogs. Members of a few years’ standing will fi nd in a copy of TVHM from 1998 (sorry, can’t fi nd the issue) a write-up by me following my fi rst trans-Atlantic trip to pursue groundhogs. I managed


B


etter late than never. I fi nally got back to Canada for another


this after teaming up with VHA’s Area Coordinator for Canada, Henrik Hoyer. We had a great time and Henrik spent a day introducing me to groundhogs and showing me around, then left me to work my way over some of the vast acreage of farmland on which he had permission to hunt in southwest


Oliver lines up the Sako on a ’hog at around 150 yards that kept appearing momentarily.


Page 152 July — September 2011


Devon, South West England, my quarry is rabbits, foxes, crows, and pigeons. For a long time I’ve enjoyed North American style “varmint hunting” with precision high velocity rifl es, a sport that’s grown somewhat in Britain but is still rela- tively uncommon. Having read about North American varminting for many years, in Field & Stream, Guns & Ammo, and of course The VARMINT HUNTER Magazine®, it was a great experience to see it fi rst hand in that 1997 hunt. I loved it immediately — the groundhog is for me the perfect quarry. They’re bigger than the rabbits back home and more solidly built, but not too big. Their chestnut-brown fur makes them stick out like a sore thumb as they stand up in the hay/alfalfa fi elds, but they can be tricky, too. And I enjoy the challenge of seeking them out by carefully glassing the wooded fringes where they like to sit on fence posts chewing the timber, or on rocks. In southwestern Ontario there are large hayfi elds where farmers grow huge quantities of feed for cattle to see them through the harsh winters. The ’hogs dig their deep burrows and the spoil spreads out in broad shallow piles that a farmer can easily miss, and runs his cutting gear into the stuff. Bang! Troublesome, and can be damaging. So the farmers welcome varmint hunt- ers, and all the ones I’ve met are very friendly. They call Henrik when there are lots of groundhogs around, and when they’re about to cut and roll (dif- fi cult to see the varmints before then).


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