Hi! This will be rather long, but seeing this question about woodchuck hunting brought back fond memories.
Back in the sixties, when I was going to school at the U. of Michigan in Ann Arbor, I helped put myself through school by working at a sporting goods store. A fellow employee and I had read about the good ground hog hunting in Ontario, right next door to Michigan, so we decided to go try it. On Labor Day weekend, we went over and set up in a motel near Clinton. Our procedure was to drive the back roads, and, when we saw woodchucks, we would stop and ask the landowner for permission to shoot. Nearly always they granted permission, and even thanked us for asking because most shooters wouldn't bother; they just stopped their car and shot from the window or over the hood. I was shooting a Weatherby DeLuxe in caliber .257 Weatherby with a 7.5X Leupold scope using factory 87-grain loads.
Anyway, one day we were driving the back roads when we saw a woodchuck sunning itself on a huge boulder out in a farmer's field. We stopped and glassed and decided to go back to the farmhouse and ask for permission. It happened to be my turn to shoot, so I went up to the door and knocked. The lady of the house came out, and I soon found out first that she was a native French speaker and didn't speak English very well, and second that her husband was not at home. So, I asked for permission to shoot whereupon she asked where her cattle were. I pointed them out to her in another field in the opposite direction from the sunning woodchuck, but she still was worried and seemed afraid to grant me permission. Finally, she said, somewhat reluctantly, that I could shoot. Yippeee! Off we went the mile or so back to where our furry rodent was last seen hoping he'd still be there. Yippee again! He was. We pulled over to the side of the road, bailed out of the car, I loaded the rifle, and we stepped through the barbed wire fence. I took a good sitting position with my back to the fencepost while my buddy, Mike, looked through binoculars. I tried to estimate the range, but wasn't certain. I decided to just hold dead on (I had a 200 yard zero) and hope for the best, but thinking this rifle and caliber would shoot flat enough out to beyond 200 to quite comfortably take this woodchuck.
I took aim at his right shoulder, let out my breath, held it, and touched off. Pow! went the rifle. And Smack! came back the sound of the bullet hitting. I lowed the butt of the rifle and said to Mike, "Dang, I hit the rock. Did you hear that?" Mike said, "No, I think you got him." "Naw, that was too loud and sudden of a smack to have been the woodchuck. Anyway, let's go see."
So, we paced off 260 generous steps to the face of the boulder. On top of the boulder, which proved to be shoulder high and four or five feet square and flat on top, there was a huge red smear of blood, probably a foot by two feet in extent. Well, maybe I did get him after all. Next, we went around behind the boulder, and there lay our woodchuck. Believe me, he did NOT suffer! I picked him up by the tail and held him up in the air to look at him. Holy Cow! The damage was terrific! There was no left shoulder. His head was held on to the rest of his body by a thin and narrow strip of flesh; it was just dangling almost loose as I held it up. But, the most amazing thing was that there was so much hydraulic shock from that 87 grain bullet travelling so blazingly fast (3800 fps @ the muzzle) that his eyes were blown out their sockets and were hanging on the 'chuck's cheeks connected only by the extended optic nerves. I became absolutely sold on the .257 Weatherby at that moment!
Today, Ontario's weapons laws and hunting regulations just about prohibit such activities. You must pay a $50 fee and fill out a form just to import your rifle, and, even then, you can't come into the country without a written invitation from the landowner extending an invitation to you personally complete with the dates for you to come.
Holy Obama! Let's all vote right in November so laws of this sort don't become common in this country.
So, thanks for letting me be so windy. Those were good hunts, and I only wish they were still possible.
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