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Longing for an old-time groundhog hunt

By Rod Schoener 8 min read

While driving in Greene County a week ago, I spied a groundhog scurrying across a newly mown hayfield. I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be great to get together with some of the old gang and spend an afternoon hunting groundhogs the way we did in our youth?”

It is a great way to pass a sultry summer evening when golfing and even fishing require far more effort than you really want to exert.

While growing up in rural Washington County, we spent many an afternoon or early evening hunting the large burrowing mammals, which are the largest member of the squirrel family found in Pennsylvania.

We were usually armed with our trusty .22 rifles as we stealthily crept through area pastures and newly mown hayfields in search of groundhogs.

Washington and Greene counties were strewn with working farms when I was a teenager, and a well-behaved groundhog hunter was a welcome sight for most farmers.

Most didn’t mind us shooting the pesky critters as long was we were aware that there was livestock and farm workers in the area.

A groundhog digs a burrow 2-to-6-feet deep with various entrances leading to a network of tunnels.

It’s the burrows that make groundhogs such pests on working farms.

They create enough problems when they dig near a fencerow, but when they build a mound in the middle of a pasture or hay field, that is when they quickly become unpopular with landowners.

The digging does not hurt the land, but what can happen as a result of the digging is the problem.

Farm machinery has been severely damaged by dropping in to a groundhog burrow, but on an even more serious note, the operator of the machine can be throw off and injured by the fall or by the machine itself if it ends up on top of him/her.

In the case of pasture fields, cattle and horses have sustained serious injuries from stepping into groundhog burrows.

For these reasons, groundhog hunters will find that if they ask permission they will be welcome on many farms.

There aren’t as many groundhog hunters as there were in my youth, but those who still love the sport and spend time afield hunting the “whistle pig” are far more sophisticated than we used to be.

I graduated from a .22 rifle with iron sights to a .22 magnum with a variable-power scope, which was extremely effective up to 100 yards.

Today most self-respecting groundhog hunters would not consider a 100-yard shot as enough of a challenge.

They seek out the 300-to-500-yard shots and make them look easy with custom-built rifles such as the bench rest shooters employ.

I was amazed to find how may web sites are devoted to varmint hunting.

Competition varmint hunters never mention the .22 and .22 magnum.

The new 17 caliber magnum Rimfire gets some rave reviews for far outperforming the .22 and .22 mags at 100 yards, but for those who want really reach out to bag a “chuck,” the most popular calibers seem to be the .223 Remington, the .204 Ruger and the 22-250.

The old .222, which made a comeback in recent years, is on some lists as is the .22 Hornet.

A rifle that was being built by custom gun builders when I was younger that is now being produced by some manufacturers is the .257 Roberts.

Popular big game calibers, which are used for groundhog hunting by those who do not own a big-bore target rifle, are the .243, .270, .308 Winchester and the .300 Winchester Short Magnum.

Other than a rifle and ammunition, equipment is minimal.

A good pair of binoculars is helpful to scan the fields for woodchucks.

Where we sometimes carried sand bags as we would “road hunt” the country lanes scanning for “hogs” way up on the ridges of the power and gas lines.

When we would see a likely target, we would park the vehicle and unload our guns and sand bags and carry them to a comfortable set-up spot.

Today it is much easier as most groundhog hunters have a bipod on their rifle.

When groundhogs were too busy feeding to stand up, we would whistle. The whistle mimicked the sound they made and they would most often stand erect for a few seconds to check it out, allowing shooters with a good eye and steady hand to get off a shot before the hog dropped back into the cover of the grass.

I have also spotted groundhogs in trees, and last summer as I was exiting Route 119 to go to the mall, there was lone hog basking in the sun atop a Jersey barrier. At first I thought it was dead and someone had placed it there as a joke, but as I got nearer, I realized that it was very much alive and looking right back at me.

When running across a field, a groundhog can obtain speeds of 10 mph. That may not be particularly fast for a larger animal or a motor vehicle, but it might as well be the speed of light when I would be trying to pick him up in a .22 rifle scope, which did not have much of a field of view.

I’ll never forget the first time by buddy Dave Behrendt handed me his .22 mag and told me to take a chuck we had just located in a field in Greene County.

I couldn’t even locate the mound he was standing on, let along the groundhog. Dave just laughed at me. I guess it looked like a scene from one of the old sight-impaired Mr. Magoo cartoons, where Magoo fumbled and bumbled around but would not admit he had a problem seeing.

Unlike rabbits and some other woodland creatures, groundhogs only produce one litter a year. A litter usually consists of four to five pups, but a female can have as many as nine or as few as two.

When they turn two months old, the pups set out on their own and start their own engineering companies, and the cycle begins again.

Other than man, the groundhog’s greatest threat for many years were dogs, foxes, mink, weasels and large hawks and owls, but an even bigger threat to their existence in the past 20 years is the coyote.

A farmer and coyote hunter from Greene County told me that coyotes picked up the slack in controlling the groundhog population that once fell upon a long-gone legion of hunters, who shot groundhogs for sport and for the meat.

Yes, young, smaller groundhogs are very tasty and can be fixed in a variety of ways.

Mother used to parboil them in a pressure cooker and finish cooking them in spaghetti sauce or fry or bake the meat like chicken.

None of our groundhogs ever went to waste.

My Uncle Jack left the Mon Valley to find work in Detroit after the Great Depression.

Among his friends were many other individuals who grew up in this and other rural areas who ate groundhog in their youth.

I always took a picnic cooler groundhog hunting and put our harvest on ice. I cleaned them, wrapped the choice pieces in freezer paper and packed them in a large box in our chest freezer. When Uncle Jack made his annual visits back home, he would take the groundhogs and any raccoons I might have trapped or killed while hunting that year back to Detroit, where he would throw an annual game feed or two for his buddies.

Not only did the groundhogs I killed not go to waste, but they were appreciated far more than most people can ever imagine.

For a great way to break up a day during the dog days of Summer while sharpening your shooting eye and answering the question of “What’s for dinner?” call your hunting buddy and try groundhog hunting.

When groundhog hunting were a fluorescent orange cap for safety, but it is also the law that groundhog hunters must wear at least 100 square inches of orange on their head while afield.

On a hazy summer afternoon, a person’s head bobbing on the horizon can just a lot like a groundhog at long distance, so always be sure of your target.

Remember to always check your backdrop when hunting groundhogs. A missed shot can carry miles at times so it is important to think beyond the point where you see your intended target.

Enjoy your hunt, and be sure to ask permission before entering private property.

In this day and age, good hunter-landowner relationships are more important than any single hunt.

Rod Schoener is the Herald-Standard outdoors editor.

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