Do you remember that brand and model of pellet gun you had?
Depending on the brand of the cartridge, the 17 HMR is rated at something like 2500 feet per second with around 250 ft/lbs of muzzle energy.
I don't think any of the squirrels that I wound really survive for long.
I was down at the blind this evening and eventually a squirrel showed up. He was on the far side of a bamboo shoot that had already been chewed on, so the shoot tip was kind of thin and narrow. I guesstimated where his body was based on what I could see of the tail and put one where I figured his chest area would be. He did a double summersault into the air and hit the ground, and then climbed slowly up the nearest pine tree. Yeah, I should have fired again, but I was really expecting him to just fall out of the tree dead. Not sure if that one counts as a hit or not, as just a little bit later I saw a squirrel coming DOWN that tree acting like nothing had happened. Once he got to the ground, he just vanished, though. So I'm not sure if I just stunned that first squirrel with a near miss that got deflected by the bamboo shoot he was chewing on, or this was a second one. Squirrels around here seem rather nonchalant about gun shots unless they actually SEE a person. That is what makes a hunting blind so darn useful.
That bamboo grove sure seems to be infested with the tree rats this year. Never seen this many of them around there before. But I have LOTS of ammo, so eventually I will thin them out. I might have to get an earlier start next season. The number of squirrels this year just took me by surprise and they did a LOT of damage.
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