On a portable bench rest in a prairie dog town, the author used the VRS system, a portable, steady, exceptionally versatile rest. This is stationary, precision varminting at its finest, where accuracy and stability are all-important. The rifle is a Dakota/Nesika Bay varminter in the wildcat .20 Tactical cartridge.

The term "varmint rifle" is thrown about almost as loosely today as the term "deer rifle," and it can be just as misleading. In either case, it sort of depends on where and how you hunt. A scoped .270 is always a good deer rifle. But if you hunt in really thick cover, a good old lever-action .30-30, which is also a deer rifle, might be just as useful. Or, if you hunt big-bodied deer in really open country, you might feel better with a magnum .30 and a bigger scope.

A scoped .22-250 is always a varmint rifle, and I suppose the quintessential varmint rifle is a heavy-barreled, blocky-stocked rifle chambered to a fast .22 centerfire and wearing a big, powerful scope. But is such a rifle the ideal varmint rifle for all purposes, or for your purposes? Not necessarily.

Just as deer hunting takes many forms from coast to coast and north to south, so does varmint hunting. Let's start just at sunrise. You make a few calls for coyotes, changing locations three or four times and maybe bringing in two or three. A couple hours after sunrise you know predator activity has slacked off, but it's still nice and cool. So you wander a bit. In my area you can pick off ground squirrels. Elsewhere in the West you might run into rockchucks or prairie dogs. Back East you can stalk along fencelines and hedgerows, and you might get a shot at a woodchuck. After awhile you set up your portable bench or unroll your shooting mat on the edge of a prairie dog town, a cut barley field full of ground squirrels or overlooking rolling meadows where the occasional woodchuck will pop up. Sure, that super-accurate, heavy-barreled .22 centerfire could handle all these chores. But I submit that it's no more ideal for all of them than any given deer rifle is ideal under all conditions. Let's take an across-the-board look at the full spectrum of varmint hunting.

PREDATOR CALLING
It seems to me that varmint hunting takes two forms that are highly specialized, and for altogether different reasons. These are predator calling and shooting smaller pests at long range. The latter calls first and foremost for extreme accuracy. Predator calling is different. The intent is to call the coyote, or fox, or bobcat as close as possible. In thick cover this may mean a matter of a few feet, in open country maybe a couple hundred yards, and this may change as you move from calling site to calling site.

Stationary varminting is not a foot race. Especially in high-volume situations like a prairie dog town, you have to pace yourself to avoid overheating your rifle, and if the shooting is good, you will have to take periodic cleaning breaks.

Regardless of range, predators offer a much larger target area than the various rodents. Raw accuracy is not a big issue, and the better you are with a call, the less an issue it becomes. There are, however, two characteristics to a "calling rifle" that do not apply to many other forms of varminting. First, the setup must be fast-handling and responsive. No matter how carefully you've set up your calling site, you have no idea exactly where or how a critter might appear. There is no advantage to a heavy barrel because you won't fire enough shots from one stand to heat it up. I do prefer a barrel with a bit of weight since, at least for me, it makes the rifle steadier in an unsupported position and allows a smoother swing on moving targets. But a genuine heavy varminter is far from an ideal calling rifle because you have to carry the darned thing.

Also, and perhaps more important, the powerful scope that you will most likely mount on a heavy varminter is the last thing you want on a calling rifle. You want a larger field of view so you can acquire your target more quickly, and you want to be able to turn the power down so when a coyote steps into your lap, you don't see a fuzzy patch of fur through the lens.