Things were winding down at the old Cluck-n-Neigh farm & we were about to go to bed when Hell broke loose. When letting our own dogs out for their final constitutional of the evening Claire heard a commotion coming from the direction of the hen-house. The noise was the all-too-familiar combination of barking dogs & chickens in distress. This is so common that I have the routine down like a fireman. Pants, shoes, radio, flashlight, hearing protection & rifle: check! And away we go…

From a distance of thirty yards I pull back & release the charging handle to chamber a round, bring the rifle up & hit the weapon-mounted light. The light reveals a pack of six dogs, none familiar to me for a change, trying to tear into the brood enclosure to get at the mother hen & chick. I’ll take some photos of the damage in the morning. Instead of scattering at the appearance of a 200 pound adult human with a spotlight and making clickee-clackee noises, the dogs turn to start barking at me! Safety in numbers I suppose? Not so much.

If you have delicate sensibilities you might want to stop reading here. I’m going to get clinical in detail, but suffice to say “I won.”

Given where I am standing and the vast amount of things I don’t wish to put holes in, I only have a shot at a couple of animals. The glowing green circle goes on the first, BANG! Bad shot & dog runs off, fatally wounded. Next target gets Mozambique’d just to be safe. All the others have now taken the better part of valor route, and we move on to the assessment & clean-up phases.

The dead animal is a tan male pit bull mix. I guess he weighed in at sixty-five to seventy pounds because I could not lift it alone. It was emaciated, too, which is even scarier. His coat was a mess of mange & old wounds. It was late & I was tired so it gets buried tomorrow.

Another validation in this is my choice to abandon the .22 long rifle weapons in favor of the 7.62x39mm carbine. The terminal effects of the 123 grain Hornady V-Max bullet leaves no doubt as to why it is nicknamed the “Varmint Grenade.” It is utterly devastating. Normally, I would be fretting over allowing a wounded animal to escape, but even a peripheral hit would lead to exsanguination, and the escaped dog was holed amidships.

Claire called 911 to make a report. I agreed completely because even by my standards, that was quite a lot of rifle fire around midnight (when there isn’t a wedding reception going on). Two deputies responded very promptly. I secured my rifle & sidearm in the barn, figuring it would be about fucking perfect to get shot by cops in my own driveway while wearing plaid pajama pants, so I could go speak with them. The deputies were totally cool with everything. When we explained the ongoing problem & described the steps taken in attempting to solve them, they seemed sympathetic as well as mildly impressed. Each had his own story to tell about dealing with feral or aggressive dogs on duty.

One interesting aside that made me wryly smile, a deputy asked what I was shooting with, obviously expecting a answer along the lines of “my Daddy’s .22 rifle.” When I answered “an AK-47 set up for Three-Gun competition” I got a holy shit… look in return. In my limited experience, cops hate being out-gunned.

Lesson learnedS: I simply must do more extreme close quarters shooting on-the-move & in low-light. This rifle & optic combination is zeroed for 100 yards & the sight offset caused poor hits. Over all, this was a dismal performance, but I did respond rapidly, choose my field of fire well & got effective rounds on target.

Dog population reduced. Chickens saved. Report filed. It’s bed time.