Left to right: .17 Remington, .222 Remington, .223 Remington. The author thinks these are all superb medium-range varmint cartridges, mild-mannered, accurate and effective. The .223 is the most popular, and in fact it is the most popular of all .22 centerfires.

How powerful the scope should be depends on the shooting you like to do. A heavy varminter might be used at just 200 or 250 yards, or it might be used at twice that and more. If you like to stretch your range envelope, there's no better place than a prairie dog town because even at extreme range it's still a matter of hit or miss, with minimal concern over wounding game. Most rifles set up for long-range varminting will wear powerful variables--6.5-20X, 6-24X and larger. Keep in mind, however, that mirage and heat waves become big issues, and these are magnified along with the size of the target. I've had very few days in a prairie dog town when I could actually utilize the full magnification of the most powerful scopes.

ULTIMATE ACCURACY
The predator caller and the roving rockchuck hunter are both varmint hunters. They may not be interested in setting up a portable bench and stretching their barrels. The guy who likes to do this is also a varmint hunter, but he has an overarching requirement that the others do not. Faster is probably better, because less flight time reduces wind drift. Heavier is probably better, because heavier rifles are easier to get perfectly steady. More powerful scopes are probably better, at least up to a point, because they help you see tiny targets at greater range. But the most important factor in long-range varminting is accuracy. Lots of it.

It isn't always essential to pay huge amounts of money to get good accuracy. Modern factory varmint rifles are very good. This is primarily because modern manufacturing techniques are very consistent and because you, America's varmint hunters, have demanded increased accuracy.

I have an over-the-counter Savage 110, one of the least expensive factory varmint rifles (also one of the heaviest), a .22-250, that will shoot sub-inch and occasional half-inch groups with the least expensive factory ammo. I have a carbon-barreled Christensen Arms rifle, another .22-250 on a Remington action, that will do better--sometimes. Come to think of it, my over-the-counter Ruger Number One in .204 does exceptionally well for a two-piece stock rifle, occasionally turning in a sub-half-inch group. Come to think of it further, I've seen factory varmint rifles from a variety of manufacturers--Browning, Sako, Remington, Winchester and others--that easily provide this level of performance.

For my purposes, rifles like these do most of what I need to do in a prairie dog town or ground squirrel field, and most of us would consider them accurate rifles. Truthfully, however, much more is possible--but generally not straight out of the box. My buddy Geoff Miller at Rigby is a true accuracy freak and a benchrest shooter from way back. In a ground squirrel shoot he likes to stretch his barrel and concentrate on head shots.

Left to right: .204 Ruger, .22-250, .220 Swift, .223 WSSM, .243 Winchester. The most ideal long-range varmint cartridges start with the new .20s, go up through the fastest .22s and then on up to the 6mms. Many varminters prefer faster 6mms, .25s and even 6.5mms, but for the author's purposes, the .243 Winchester is a sound upper limit.

To demonstrate what is possible, for the purpose of this article I took one of his personal varmint rifles to the range. It started life as a 40XB Remington, a rifle legendary for accuracy, but this one wasn't good enough for Miller. He trued up the action a bit and replaced the factory barrel with a heavy, 271?2-inch Pac-Nor match-grade barrel chambered to plain old .243 Winchester. The trigger was replaced with a Jewel single-set trigger of just a few ounces. The rifle weighs 121?2 pounds with a 6.5-20X Leupold 30mm scope. The rifle happens to like Winchester Premium 55-grain Ballistic Silvertip (this isn't the only .243 I've seen that really shoots this load). With that long (and fairly tight) barrel, chronographed velocity is 4,235 fps. Zeroed three inches high at 100 yards, it's dead-on at 385 yards, an inch low at 400 and a foot low at 500.

Yes, that light bullet starts to shed velocity and drops quickly as it runs out of gas. But in such a heavy rifle, recoil is nonexistent, and accuracy is dramatic. Geoff's best personal group--with this factory ammunition--is .047. Days are days, and people are people. My best group on that one day at the range with this rifle was .169 inch. That, by the way, is four times larger than the rifle's best-ever group--still a whole lot smaller than a quarter-inch. This is the kind of accuracy the most serious long-range varminters demand. Not all of us need this, and indeed such a rifle would be a poor choice for calling predators and awfully heavy to walk around with. But isn't it wonderful to know that accuracy like that can be obtained if you want it?