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Overshot vixen


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I decided to go out foxing tonight in pursuit of a chicken killer. Despite all the bangs and flashing in the distance from fireworks the fox was mooching about, much to my surprise. It came flying in to "vixen on heat" and due to my mate flapping about because he wasn't ready it exited the field sharpish. It crossed a single track lane and entered the field opposite. I could see the gate was open and decided to drive into the gate hole to see if i could find it again. It didn't take long to find it in the thermal but it knew we where there aswell. It made it's way at a fast trot across the field from the right of us and went through the hedge opposite us into the next field. After running sixty or seventy yards in, it turned left and started trotting across the second field. By this time i had put my rifle on the jimny's roof and switched everything on. I picked it up in the scope and tracked it waiting for an opportunity. I didn't have to wait long because it stopped running and squatted down quartering away from me. As soon as the drones reticule  hovered over it's shoulder i squeezed the trigger and saw it go down. The distinct popping sound followed a split second later and i made the rifle safe to go and retrieve it. It was laying stone dead at two hundred and thirty three yards, the old chap who owns the land would be pleased to see the back of it. On inspection i noticed it's jaw is overshot, i have seen this in dogs before but never a fox. It obviously hadn't affected it's ability to kill and make a good living for itself as it was a decent weight. 

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What is your setup?  Rifle, cal, cartridge, bullet type /wt ?  we're your white or red or I/r and did you have to give any hold over.  Lots of questions but alĺ valid and interesting.  I use a 223 and have taken then out to about 300 paces but that sort of range is not normal for me.  Where possible I try to get them in to about eighty paces.  At this range I can positively id the target .

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7 hours ago, Meece said:

What is your setup?  Rifle, cal, cartridge, bullet type /wt ?  we're your white or red or I/r and did you have to give any hold over.  Lots of questions but alĺ valid and interesting.  I use a 223 and have taken then out to about 300 paces but that sort of range is not normal for me.  Where possible I try to get them in to about eighty paces.  At this range I can positively id the target .

My rifle is a Tikka T3 supervarmint in .204. I homeload using Hornady brass, Hornady 32grn vmax bullets, Federal 205 match primers and Hodgdon h322 powder. Velocity from the 20" barrel is just over 4,200fps. I have a Drone pro x10 fitted on a neil McKillop mount and for illumination a Solaris SRX 500mw laser infrared. I am zeroed at two hundred and thirty yards which is approx one inch high at one hundred yards and two inches low at three hundred and twenty yards. I rarely if ever have to use any holdover. I use a Pulsar Helion XQ50 thermal spotter and the Drone can positively id well beyond shootable  ranges. 

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2 hours ago, ianm said:

My rifle is a Tikka T3 supervarmint in .204. I homeload using Hornady brass, Hornady 32grn vmax bullets, Federal 205 match primers and Hodgdon h322 powder. Velocity from the 20" barrel is just over 4,200fps. I have a Drone pro x10 fitted on a neil McKillop mount and for illumination a Solaris SRX 500mw laser infrared. I am zeroed at two hundred and thirty yards which is approx one inch high at one hundred yards and two inches low at three hundred and twenty yards. I rarely if ever have to use any holdover. I use a Pulsar Helion XQ50 thermal spotter and the Drone can positively id well beyond shootable  ranges. 

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With that performance I’m wanting a .204 even more?, those little bullets are screaming. I’ve read that it’s popular in America that shooters are having their .22/250’s rebarrelled  in .204 due to the performance and increased barrel life.

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18 hours ago, Sausagedog said:

Amazing. Never seen that. I'm gonna call it a streamliner.

Good shot that. ?

How many of us actually check for it?  I know I check sex, condition and have a quick look at their teeth, but not to check for overshot or undershot jaw

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10 hours ago, lllluke1 said:

How many of us actually check for it?  I know I check sex, condition and have a quick look at their teeth, but not to check for overshot or undershot jaw

To be honest if you are checking the teeth as i was , it would be obvious, perhaps not to Stevie Wonder though.?

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15 hours ago, ianm said:

My rifle is a Tikka T3 supervarmint in .204. I homeload using Hornady brass, Hornady 32grn vmax bullets, Federal 205 match primers and Hodgdon h322 powder. Velocity from the 20" barrel is just over 4,200fps. I have a Drone pro x10 fitted on a neil McKillop mount and for illumination a Solaris SRX 500mw laser infrared. I am zeroed at two hundred and thirty yards which is approx one inch high at one hundred yards and two inches low at three hundred and twenty yards. I rarely if ever have to use any holdover. I use a Pulsar Helion XQ50 thermal spotter and the Drone can positively id well beyond shootable  ranges. 

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Thanks for the reply. My setup is 223 topped with a 6x42 Leupold scope and using a 55grn Sierra gameking 1390 propelled by a FULL charge of 4895. This is quite a hot load and I have worked it up over a period of time.  This is around 3450 which is only a couple of hundred less than a 22.250 but only about half of the charge wt. I usually briefly use white now because they are used to seeing white from cars ect and it illuminates the target better than red ect especially over cultivated ground.  I set at about 1" high at about 150.  As stated I very rarely shoot at long range because firstly most places don't offer long range shots and I do like to identify the target and make sure that it isn't someones stay dog that is out there. Mostly I stalk the target using the wind and ground contours to get to about eighty.  I know that I am about right as soon as I can see a pair of eyes rather than one.  In the past I have encountered several situations where if I had not been careful the result would not have been good.  one was where some calves had been put in a field which should have been empty and one was rubbing its head on the hedge bottom.  All I saw was a moving set of eyes and was told by the farms shepherd who was with me to shoot.  Good job I didn't !!  Ive never had a lot of success with 322.  I have a vacant slot for a 1.7 REM which is a something else calibre which is not as popular as it should be.  piano wire out to 300 at over 4000.  I've just never had the need to go get one because I have 223 and 222.  I can only shoot so much and Ive got too many.  well that's what two feo's have told me.

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Never used h4895 but i have used BL-C2 in .243 very successfully.  I can download the 204 to replicate 17 rem by using barnes varmint grenades at 26grn and i have done so in the past  but my go to load for 204 remains h322 with 32grn hornadys. I tried 223 years ago but didn't like it, no good for round here it's not flat enough.

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