Squirrel Sniping

[Big Galloot]

Many years ago, I knew three guys here in Florida who claimed to hunt squirrel with elephant guns. One of them had an old .470 Nitro Express and the other two had Weatherby Magnums. The Nitro Express was part of an inheritance, I have no idea why the other two had elephant guns, but I am fairly certain that they had never been to Africa.

According to them, there is no indigenous Florida wildlife that they could reasonably use these guns on, so they hunted squirrel. Squirrels will commonly put the trunk of a tree between themselves and a hunter, so the trick is to put the bullet through the tree so that the squirrel is killed by the flying debris when the bullet comes through other side. Mind you, I never saw this attempted, but I did see some seriously mangled trees in the area where we hunted.

On the other hand, these were not people who were adverse to telling tales. Actually, they were bald-faced liars, but bald-faced liars with elephant guns!

[Cracker]

Everything larger then a .22LR is overkill for squirrelhunting.
Btw, squirrels are protected here (not so many left) and in the US they are considered varmints.

The weatherbies are stupid choices if you don't hunt BIG game (moose or bigger), they are complete barrelkillers.
After about 2000 rounds, your barrel is completely messed up.

And there's nothing a .308 wouldn't bring down.
(I like the 308.. cheaper and a large scala of loads and bullets available)

Hunting with .300 WinMag, .338 Lapua, Weatherby Magnum, Holland&Holland nitro express.. all are simply overkill, and will only cause extensive damage to your prey animal.

The best "clean" killer is probably the lower powered .30-30.. it has enough power, but doesn't cause extensive damage..

[DangerousDave]

You are right, Cracker. However, I did knock one down with a 250/3000(250 Savage) with hand-loaded 117 gr. Hornady RN bullit. I happened to be Whitetail hunting(yea, I know, a 25 caliber rifle is light, for deer hunting in Virginia, but hey, it's all in the shot placement). However, the 117 gr. RN happened to go straight thru the Sqawk-Tail, before it could mushroom, thus leaving most of the meat intact. That one was about 60 ft. up, and made really loud "THUD" when he burned in.

[Cracker]

I have to admit I don't know that caliber, it's not a used caliber around here. You can hunt foxes etc. with .22s, but everything bigger demands (because of a law) bullets with an X amount joules of ballistic energy.

So all those american calibers are not popular here.. Everything "smaller" then .308.. is actually .30-30, .30 carbine, .22 Hornet and .22 LR.. nothing more actually

I own a Sabre Defence XR41 myself (G3 / HK41 clone) in .308, not for hunting though.