So as I was visiting in So. Cal this weekend for the 4th I decided to hit the desert early on Saturday for some jacks and cottontails. Just outside of Lancaster I pulled off the 14 and found a likely spot. Cottontails were everywhere. Early in the a.m. I was seeing more than jacks which somewhat suprised me. This was the first time in the field with the new HM2. I started pushing rounds into the BC 25 round mag and realized as I was finishing up that the tips were pointing down in the mag and wouldn't feed correctly. Arrrrgh! I spend the 10 min. trying to strip the rounds out. Only the first 5 rounds in the mag appeared to work fine. Good thing I had a couple factory 10 rounders with me. So I fill them up and spend the next couple 3 hours walking around the truck. I didn't have and shooting sticks with me so it was all offhand or kneeling. Shots ranged from 50 to about 120 yards. The HM2
ROCKS for this. Although a bit heavy for a walking varminter, shooting sticks would have made it easier. At 7am when I started it was already 75 degrees and at 10am when I had enough heat it was 93 deg.
I almost had a double on jacks, I was just getting lined up on one when a group came through on motorcycles and drove a them off so as I pursued them another 50 yards or so one stops and the other hops right over to it. They didn't get themselves lined up as they should have but as I unzipped one from it's ass to it's throat and it just laid over on its side the other one didn't move! BIG mistake
Here's the haul:Not a lot but it sure was fun. 5 jacks and 3 cottontails in about 2 and 1/2 hours.
The cottontail 3rd from the right looks like I did him a favor, realll scrawny and the 2 jacks second from the left musta died from fright as I couldn't find any entrance or exit wounds but only took 1 shot for each. Both of these were at the 100+ yardage.HM2 observations: Short range <=50 yards is devastating. Took the neck off the jack on the far left and really tore the cottontails up. 100+ yards proves fatal with no pelt damage. I really like the auto loader in this, or really any rimfire as it made follow up shots a breeze. So far at the range with this new rig with only 200 rounds through it I've had zero malfunctions or split cases. I used CCI's on this trip but have also run Hornadys through it. Still going to try Remington's and Ely's and this will get glass bedding next week.There were plenty more out there but the heat was getting unbearable.As I'm driving out a lone jack nonchalantly hops across the road in front of the truck taunting me so I rolled down the window and yelled to him that I may have missed him but I killed his brother!
