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1.5 inches @200 would work.

I guess it would, but not sure I want to make a career out of it.

That sounds like a Prairie Dog rifle, just how small are woodchucks?

I think that one will shoot back Michael.

The groundhogs (they call em woodchucks farther east) around here are about 5" wide when standing and I'd say average shot you can see the top 8" of their body, so I think a 3-4" 200yd gun would do just fine in Indiana.

Thanks Bryndon,

As a lad I lived for a few years in Missouri and accompanied my grandfather when he was shooting groundhogs on the farm. I was small but remember that some must have been around ten-pounds.

I just thought it would be fun to use the rifle on a target as it was used a hundred years ago. I found a couple of woodchuck targets and will have a go at them.

Remember that's how the "Hamburg" rifle got it's name from making hamburger out of woodchucks.

Back in the day the jacketed bullet had been barred from the Schuetzen range and bench-rest shooting as we know it today was a long way off. The were used in the "Chuck" fields.

2" @ 200 yds., give or take.

I've long felt that the minute-of-angle benchmark came about from early varmint hunters needing that much accuracy to reliably kill woodchucks out to the distances limited by their sighting options of the day.

I took Dr. Baker's Borchardt .25 HP to the range this morning put on a scope checked my scope book set the scope and fired ten, no warm ups, at my 'Chuck" target.

Next up was Dr. Mann's .25HP.

Are these 25 HP cartridges both the same? Are they the same as the 25 Krag used in the rifle in the first part of this topic?

I dug into the two C.S. Landis classics "Twenty Two Caliber Varmint Rifles" and "Woodchucks and Woodchuck Rifles". The woodchuck rifle book has more than anyone probably needs to know about woodchucks. Michael's 100-yard groups are in keeping with the several groups shown in both books.

On page 444 of the Varmint Rifle book, Landis discusses Lightning powder. makes me wonder if some of the faster "Reloader" series, maybe Reloader 7, were not Lightning revisited. If you read p. 444, turn to page 441 and read about HiVel 3.

The first rifle, the high-wall Winchester with the Mann barrel is a very early .25-HP made 1909. If you look at the chamber cast the case neck outside diameter is the same (.257") as the bullet.

The case acts as a bullet seater and for everything to fit I can make longer base-bands and shorter cases.

The rifle is made along the lines of a Schuetzen rifle, one case is de-primed, re-primed, filled with powder, a wad is then placed into the case mouth. A bullet is dropped into the chamber and seated with the loaded case.