Varmint Battery

The idea of designing and manufacturing rifles and ammunition suitable of no purpose other than shooting varmints originated in the good, old US of A. And the first serious contender in this category was Winchester's .22 Hornet, introduced in 1930. Since that time, hunters of small critters have had ample reason to rejoice as manufactures have consistently produced very fast calibers expressly for their beloved sport. But choosing the right load is only part of assembling a reliable, dead-on rig. Use our guide to find all the pieces for the perfect set-up.

Sub-MOA Mandates

Any varmint hunter worth his salt requires extreme accuracy from his firearm.

Long-range varmint cartridge performance really has not improved since the .220 Swift was introduced seventy years ago, but varmint rifles have come a long way and some are capable of incredible accuracy.

These days, a serious varmint shooter is greatly disappointed if his heavy-barrel rifle does not consistently shoot five bullets inside an inch at 100 yards--and I'm not talking about custom rifles. My Cooper Arms Model 21 Varminter Extreme in .17 Remington averages .400 inch with a 30-grain Berger bullet, and my Sako in .22 PPC averages a bit better than that with a 52-grain Berger.

Magnified

You can't have too many Xs on your scope.

Back when fixed-power scopes outnumbered variables, I usually tried to match up a particular cartridge with the magnification I considered best suited for it, with a couple of favorites being a Weaver 6X on a Winchester Model 54 in .22 Hornet and a 16X Unertl Ultra Varmint on a Winchester Model 70 in .220 Swift. Now that variable-power scopes rule, I'm more inclined to take the lazy way out and use nothing but scopes with gobs of Xs, regardless of a rifle's caliber.

Having surplus magnification on tap doesn't hurt anything, and it can be fun to have in the field. On the other hand, if someone threatened to stop twisting my arm only when I become more specific, I would go with 4-12X for all cartridges up to the .22 Hornet, and something on the order of 6.5-20X or 6-24X for everything else.

While just how much power is needed in a varmint scope is debatable, its versatility is not. When shooting prairie dogs under ideal conditions in early morning and late afternoon, you can use all the magnification you bring to the field. But along about midday, too much magnification can become a nuisance as heat waves cause targets to sway to and fro. This is when a variable-power scope with its lower magnification option really earns its keep--you simply twist the ring downward until the heat waves become less obvious, then continue shooting.

Laser Scopes!

Rangefinding capa-bility may change the face of varminting.

The introduction of the laser rangefinder and special scope reticles have made first-shot hits on varmints at long range much more a sure thing than they used to be, and the new LaserScope from Burris combines those features in a single unit.

Last summer I used a prototype on a prairie dog shoot and found its optical quality to be acceptable and its rangefinder accuracy dead on the money. For now it's available only in 4-12X, which is a good compromise for both open-country big game hunting and close- to medium-range varmint shooting; I expect to see the higher magnification many shooters prefer for long-range varminting become available in the near future.