Northwest Sportsman – August 2019

162 Northwest Sportsman AUGUST 2019 | nwsportsmanmag.com

Brought To You By: KICK-EEZ

®

COLUMN

bottle caps – anything that approximates

the size of a grouse’s head.

I prefer either a 37-grain hollowpoint

or 40-grain round-nose lead bullet.

WITH MOURNING DOVE season also

coming up, it’s time to break out your

camo or khaki clothing and wash it up –

fluorescent hunter orange not so much.

While it’s drying, get down to the gun

shop or sporting goods store and stock

up on No. 7½ or 8 shotshells, and make

sure your gun is fitted with an improved

cylinder or modified choke. Remember, if

you hunt in steel shot zones for mourning

doves, you need to use steel.

Head to the range and practice leading

the targets, maybe up to several feet.

Doves are fast, and they’re hard to hit.

There’s a marvelous guide to hunting

doves published online by the Oregon

Department of Fish and Wildlife. It

notes, for example, that cool, damp days

are “generally poor for dove hunting.”

NEW .22 AMMO

Quiet-22 cartridge box. (CCI)

Call it good timing for the upcoming

hunting season, because CCI recently

announced the Quiet-22 Semi-Auto

cartridge, and even though it is

supposed to be a target round, I’ve

never seen a grouse or rabbit that

could take a head shot from a rimfire

and walk away.

It features a 45-grain lead round-

nose bullet that clocks a reported

835 feet per second from the muzzle,

which is plenty of horsepower to

terminate small game.

It’s supposed to be much less

noisy as a standard .22-caliber rimfire

round, and it should work well in any

semiauto rimfire.

The CCI Quiet-22 comes in boxes

of 50. They’re available now in gun

shops and sporting goods stores. –DW