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Everyone has some great pics! I surprised you eastern guys shoot alot of stuff bigger then .223 . I thought it was tight cover and lots of populated areas back east. I was expecting to see alot of .22 hornets-up to .223 and shotguns on this topic. I never been anywhere but a few places in the south but i was bass fishin.
keep those pictures comin!
I hunt large blocks of public ground that runs into the hundreds of thousands of acres. I have a lot of room to move around where ever I want and it is pretty well empty of any other hunters. I can hit the woods at daylight and walk all day and never hear a manmade sound, with the possible exception of a stray aircraft, most times not even that. I have never seen or met another predator caller while afield, though on a couple of occasions I have met guys running them with hounds. Those guys tend to hunt in places I don't, closer to the nearest small villages and around the scattered farms, so we really aren't in competition for hunting ground at all. There are no sizable towns of any sort within a hundred+ miles of where I hunt. Pruson, Christopher, Plumbob, those members here know the general area and that is what they mean when they say I'm spoiled. And I am spoiled, but I certainly appreciate my beloved Ozarks.
I have used all sorts of cartridges from the .22LR, .22Mag. .22 Hornet through the .22 centerfires like the .223 and .22-250 all the way up to my heavy loaded .30-06 and .45-70 when I hunt in areas where there are feral/wild hogs and I hope to get a shot at one of the pigs while out and about. I've pretty well settled on the .243 for a couple of reasons. Shots in the thick timber and brushy creeks can be fleeting and shot placement isn't always as precise as you'd like. Though I would never suggest trying to substitute horsepower for placement, there is no doubt in my mind that a .243 anchors poorly hit coyotes better than a .223. The other plus is that the .243 makes a capable deer rifle and if I should run into a hog I feel more comfortable with the .243 than a .223.
Like pictures? The far end of the scale - the wrong end IMHO. Here is a coyote called and killed at eight very short steps on the hard run directly at me… with a .22LR. Not a cartridge I would recommend. That is a Thompson Center Classic .22LR semi-auto with Eley high velocity hollowpoints. I called this one with a Faulks Squirrel Distress handcall.