Early July is usually just about right. So in July we crossed the Atlantic


by Air Transat A310 to Toronto. U.S. hunters, accustomed to the generally more relaxed attitude toward hunting rifl es in the States, get told lots of horror stories about the regulatory regime Up North, but the rules are straightforward and the form-fi lling minimal. I had no hassles with my rifl e plus 300 rounds be- cause I’d checked out the requirements, fi lled in my RCMP (the “Mounties”) Firearms Form 909 — available online, a temporary license which enables you to buy ammo, etc. — the guys at Toronto’s Pearson Airport were friendly and help- ful, charged me $25, and wished us good hunting! We got a taxi to downtown Toronto where we stayed a couple of nights for a brief look at the city — well worth it, a cosmopolitan place with lots of culture, striking architecture, great food. We painlessly picked up our visitors’ hunting permits and Outdoor Cards from a branch of Service Ontario. Then we collected a Dodge from Na- tional Car Rental, headed up Yonge St. to the 401 freeway, and drove just 100 miles west to the country motel Henrik had booked us into. As soon as we pulled into the


parking lot Henrik appeared, looking the same as ever. We renewed our ac- quaintance and I introduced Oliver to him. Since we’d come all this way to go hunting, we did some of that straight away on a surprisingly cool evening. July anywhere near the Great Lakes is often pretty hot and humid, but to- night was chilly. Still, we got our fi rst groundhogs ... my fi rst in some years and Oliver’s fi rst ever. My shooting irons have always


been pretty conventional. Last time I hunted ’hogs in Ontario I took a Rem- ington 700 VS in .22-250, which most would consider an ideal long-range varminting tool. It wore a Leupold VX- III 6.5-20x40 and shot very nicely using my load with Varget and Hornady’s 55-grain V-Max at nearly 3,700 fps … though I was a tad disappointed not to push out the distance beyond a ’hog I took at 340 yards. That rifl e started to show an eroding throat after 1,100+ rounds, and I reluctantly sold it. Since then I’d been varminting


with a skinny-barreled Winchester Featherweight in .223, custom McMil- lan stock, Timney trigger, which I put


Feeling rather pleased with myself after strolling back from checking that I really did get that ’hog at 335 yards. Not bad for a skinny-barreled Winchester Featherweight in .223 driving a 40-grain bullet.


www.varminthunter.org Page 153


together for 250- to 300-yard work, using a 40-grain V-Max load at close to 3,800 fps. Hot, but not excessive. Accu- rate, too. I had some reservations about how this would work in Canada, since I wanted to push out the distance. But after looking into a new load with the Hornady 52-grain A-Max (a promising long-range bullet), I decided my .223’s existing load looked good on paper out to 400 yards and I’d just be giving away a little stability with the skinny barrel. Reluctantly, though, I decided on


a temporary scope swap — my Leupold 3-9x40 Tactical is great but 9x is a bit lim- iting at long range and it has no parallax adjustment. On went a Simmons 6.5- 20x50 instead. And I have to acknowl- edge that my reservations about this modestly priced glass were unfounded since it’s not only built solid, but the glass is clear and the clicks worked fi ne. We were rangefi nding with two Leica LRF 1200s, Henrik’s and mine, which gave near-identical readouts, and then clicking up from a set 100-yard zero. I don’t think my click chart to 500 is quite right yet, but it worked for my longest shot this trip, a ’hog at 335 yards for which I also held off the fur an inch or so to allow for a moderate breeze at 90 degrees. Dead centered through the ribs. Many might doubt my use of


40-grain bullets for longish range but I’ve used polymer-tipped varmint bullets for a long time (these 40-grain V-Max for ten years) and they are ex- cellent. Groundhogs at 100 or so were


Varmint hunting contributes to science! We enjoyed transporting 12-year-old Julie around for the day at the request of her mom and dad. Henrik counts their farmland as part of the acreage over which he hunts and was glad to oblige. Julie’s mom — a veterinarian — was doing a survey on parasitism and infestation in the groundhog population, in partnership with a local university. Julie bagged up the groundhogs and logged the details of where and when they were found, taking them home for dissection and examination. It looks like she might end up a veterinarian herself.


opened up if they were small; big ’hogs at longer range absorbed complete in- ternal fragmentation and went straight down, just like foxes or rabbits back home. My ’hog at 335 went down just as well as the longest ’hog I got last trip, which I’d shot at 340 yards with a


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