2017 Trip #6 Montana & Wyoming

2017 Trip #6

Three friends (Harold, Tom, and Terry)  from the Denver area and myself headed to Montana for some shooting on the 12th through the 16th of June.  We made it into Miles City around three in the afternoon.  We went right to Western Powder for a tour by Rob Behr of the set-up they have.  It was my second and the guys first.  Rob answered many questions and dazzled us with his knowledge; it was good to see Rob and their facilities again.

We meet a rancher friend the next morning and he took us out to look over some area to shoot on.  He had several small towns that had been shot on and one big town that hadn’t been shot much at all.  It had rained and stormed the night before, which made it very messy, but the dogs were out.  We went to the big town before the wind came up and shot most of the day and did real well.  We shot a little over 400 for the day.  The wind came up around 20 – 25 mph in the afternoon making for rough shooting.  After supper we watched the news and the wind was going to be much worse the next day.  We decided to move down to Wyoming because the weather wasn’t going to be that great for a couple days in a row.

I had two ranches in Newcastle, WY that had been great the last two times I shot there.  We found a Motel and headed out with permission on both ranches.  After we pulled on the first ranch we stopped for lunch.  A guy on a 4-wheeler came up to us and ask us “what’s up”.  I told him we had permission to shoot.  Since he was in place we would shoot on the second ranch, right next door.  We went onto the second ranch the rest of that day and most of the next day.  In the late afternoon the grandson of the owner came over to us on the second ranch and ask “do you have written permission to cross our land”.  I told him “NO”, I’ve been shooting on the owners land for awhile he could talk to him.  He then told me I could leave across their land today but don’t come back.  Not real sure what happened but we left later.  I called the owner later.  He said he would have to go along with his grandson.  So I’m not going back, to the first ranch.  I will the second.

We did great for the day and a half of shooting on the second ranch shooting 1,220  between the four of us.  As a result the group had a total of 1,485 for the Montana and Wyoming trip combined.

For the two places I shot 415 of the dogs.

I shot my 20 Practical, 22 BR and 223 AI not missing many getting several doubles and a few triples.

The last day we traveled back to Denver stopping and meeting my gunsmith to pick-up my first real custom rifle (a 6 BR).  But that’s another story I’m working on for later.  I’ll post on my FaceBook page.  varmintermintor.will  “the “a” is missing out of terminator”.  I ran out of charter space.