The 5MM Craig in Wyoming

By

Lowell Kenney

“This whole area is full of Prairie Dogs” said Paul as we met between the rear of his pickup and the front of my SUV in the hot settling dust of a Wyoming August afternoon, sweeping his arm across the western horizon.  “From here to the far fences belong to this ranch and you are welcome to shoot as long as you want.  Just be aware that they have cattle and natural gas crews working everywhere so watch the background.  You won’t see many ‘dogs outside where there are grassland grazing or hay circles”. 

Paul, who worked for one of the companies that were building roads, reservoirs and pipe lines from the Natural Gas wells to major pumping stations, was right, there were prairie dogs feeding, watching, playing games almost everywhere we looked.  As my eyes became more attuned to the area, mounds and prairie dogs see to emerge from the afternoon heat as if by magic. 

Turning to my partner, Ken Coleman, I said, “Let’s get our rifles out and let’s show Paul what we are shooting”.  The hard rifle cases were extracted from the confines of the Santa Fe, opened and the rifles uncased, ammo was secured from the confines of the car and we were ready to shoot.  “There is one there, Ken, take him”.  I wanted Ken to have the first kill of the hunt as this was his first venture into the wilds of Wyoming and prairie dog shooting.  Ken had chosen to use the Thompson Center Encore action with a brand new 5MM Craig barrel on it.  Slipping a 5MM Craig cartridge into the rifle and centering the 4.5x14 Nikon scope, Ken squeezed of our first shot of the hunt.  The 30 grain Berger bullet pushed by 5.2 grains of Accurate #9 powder ripped out of the barrel at about 2200fps.  Dog Down! And the hunt was on.

Ken and his first Prairie Dog holding the TC Encore 5MM Craig

I showed Paul what we were shooting and handed him a Remington M591 with a box of our cartridges.  Ken had his laser rangefinder out and was marking range points for us to reference from.  “The point of the sagebrush is 235 yards, it is 414 yards to the back bush line” Ken called out.  “Big mound directly in front is 135 yards”.  The wind was quartering from our left. 

Since both the 5MM Craig rifles were in use, I took an Encore with a Ruger .204 barrel on it. “I’ll pick up the back ones” I told the other shooter as if anyone was really concerned as I filled the chamber with a Hornady 40 grain V-Max topped cartridge, spot, sight Squeeze, shot high.  The one really nice thing about either of these 20 caliber rifles was that there is so little recoil; you can see the bullet strike through your scope.  The hood of the pickup was so hot from the engine and summer sun that we soon scrounged up jackets to rest our arms on.  Noticing the difference in muzzle blast, Paul asked what I was shooting and we soon traded rifles. 

Plenty of Targets

With me gladly taking the Remington 591 that we had converted to Centerfire.  I still had a hard time holding low enough at long distances to make good shots.  I was single loading this magazine fed rifle as there was not time to reload a magazine and as I ran through the various bullets we were testing most had to be seated out too far to fit the magazine anyway.  I found this rifle like the other 5MM Remington Magnum rifles I have shot handled a wide verity of bullets, placing them all very close together.  I had loaded up several hundred cases with Berger 30 and 35 grain bullets as well as a hundred rounds each of Hornady VMax 32 grain and 40 Grain bullets and Sierra’s 32 grain plastic tip.  All the cases were charged with 5.2 grains of Accurate #9 powder except the Hornady VMax which were loaded with a straight 5 grains of #9. 

Here Paul and Ken work over a prairie dog town.

Far too soon Paul had to leave us and go back to work, leaving Ken and I to roam the pastures and ranch roads.  I had planned on being very careful and recording all our shooting with some science in mind but that soon flew out the window with the challenge of prairie Dog after prairie dog presenting challenging targets.  After moving a couple of times we were on our agreed last exploration as we drove North up a road to one of the natural gas well water settling pits that was being built to control the outflow of water from the wells.  Finding no prairie dogs and several people around the equipment we turned around and headed out. 

Here Ken is shooting on our last pasture for the evening.  The far power line pole in the pasture is 295 yard from Ken.  If you look just in front of it you can see the dust from a prairie dog shot at about 275 yards from our position on the private farm road and legal to shoot from.  This pasture was just loaded with ‘dogs.  We shot here for almost two hours and still had ample targets popping up but more carefully than when we first stopped.

The next morning we moved to another ranch and this time I was going to try to do some real field testing.  We found these collapsible work benches from Home Depot made very handy shooting tables.  One we modified for a reloading bench.  The two grenade cases hold all of our reloading and shooting gear as well as make pretty good benches to sit on.  Anywhere you can see green grass in this picture there were prairie dogs.

Here I am assembling some test loads.  Size, Prime, fill with powder , seat the bullets and then pick up a rifle and look for a target.  I had one rifle with a test dual firing pin that we are working on thus the box of original 5MM Remington Magnum cartridges.  To be honest I had never shot the 5mm as a Rimfire until this trip.  Anyway the dual firing pin shows promise but needs more work.

The Reloading Bench.  I like to use the old Bedding and Muhler  powder measure for these light loads as I can see the powder charge before I dump it into the case.  The Lee hand press is just plain handy for reloading the 5MM Craig in the field.  I brought both presses because I was not sure how well the Lee press would work over a long period of reloading.  It did just fine.  If I had had a week I might have made it through all of our purposed tests.  In the Herter’s box is a digital scale that was away to sensitive to wind to be used in this exposed setting.  I had to be careful with the RCBS scale and the breeze also.

Some prairie dogs we could not shoot.  We moved from one area of the pasture to another so we would not disturb this fellow and his two friends. 

Only to have him walk right into our test area and bedded down in front of our Chronograph.  I had to walk out and spook him off so we could continue to test.

From in front of the firing line on my way back from dealing with the antelope.  We had a Chrony Chronograph setup out front so were testing velocities as well as some new cases which we are working on for you.  We shot Prairie Dogs from 15 yards to 312 (lasered) yards with three bullets, two of which we can't supply any more but the most successful was the Berger 30 bullet pushed by 5.2 grains of AA#9 over a CCI 450 Primer with a mesured velocity of 2100 fps at 15 feet from the muzzle.  If we kept the shots at the 159 ard range and shorted they were very dead on contact.  Further out with the drop in velocity, the Wyoming wind and the lack of energy to open the bullets we had some crawl offs that took more than one shot to finish.  It was a great shoot in a wonderful area of the world with great people.