The Great Oklahoma
Squirrel And Viper Safari L.P. Brezny
son/Center Arms, asked me to tag along on an Oklahoma squirrel hunt I was only too pleased to pack up my gear and head south of the Dakotas on the big tin bird. S&W had some new equipment that they wanted to have writers review, as did T/C with their new single-shot youth rifl e and centerfi re varminter. Or- ganizers of the event had billed the trip as a basic Oklahoma pecan grove style squirrel hunt. However, like so many hunts this spring and summer, nothing seemed to be in the area of normality at all. Oklahoma had been drenched in massive amounts of rain and strong storms, and the weather had turned to 97 percent humidity with a temperature of about 97 F. This made for very quiet squirrel activity, and the ground cover was knee deep grass in most places. The leafy canopy in the very old and high pecan orchard trees was exploding overhead. After settling in at a local motel
W
near our hunting grounds, we were off to the big woods early in the morning the day after touchdown. The air was wet enough to drown in, and the heat was already building even though the sun had just cut a yellow ribbon across the eastern horizon. This was going to be a killer day, as I call them, and I fi g- ured I had best get moving in terms of what I needed to cover. Sure as can be, I fi gured, by 2:00 p.m. in this heat and water-fi lled air, this old South Dakota body of mine would want to move into recovery mode. S&W had set out the full line of handguns for us to select from and also had brought along an ample number of the new M&P 15-22 caliber ARs. While I was also checking out several 45s in the 1911 pattern Smith builds, I was very interested in the .22 caliber black guns. I had been involved in quite a lot of ink covering such types of shooting platforms over the previous two years, as published in The VARMINT HUNTER Magazine®
hen the folks at Smith & Wesson, along with Thomp-
Spending time getting young hunters started is always a good idea. The rifl e this youngster is working with is a youth model Thompson/Center Hot Shot single-shot in .22 Long Rifl e.
M&P 15-22 Right from the get go, upon pick-
ing up a scoped M&P .22 caliber I found that after a very minor sight adjustment
and drawing down the Weaver-style rings the rifl e tended to put .22 LR CCI Mini-Mag bullets just about where the cross hairs of the Bushnell Elite 4200
Squirrels were part of the hunt but they were few and far between. These were taken with the Smith & Wesson AR in .22 Long Rifl e.
www.varminthunter.org Page 97
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