So me and a couple of my buddies decided that we will try our luck at some groundhog hunting this summer, since they are running rampant around here and are legal to hunt year round in P.A. The thing is non of us has any experience hunting them, so I am looking for any info you might have, like what time of day would you say they are most active, would judo heads work ok on them and so on and so forth? Any advice would be appreciated, Thanks.
Are you trying to bowhunt them or rifle hunt them? They are going to be tough to bag consistently with a bow. With a rifle I always just find a spot that I know they have some holes in, I'll try to mark the holes with a small branch stuck in the ground so I can watch it easier, then I'll back off 150-200 yards to a place where I've got something to break up my outline a bit and wait. Usually once the sun gets overhead you can get them to pop out and feed/sun themselves.
We are bow hunting them, we went to recon a spot we are going to hunt this deer season and we saw quite a few groundhogs on the way in, to the point my cousin got a little worried they will eat all the plots he wants to plant. So we got to talking and thought it might be fun to try and hunt the groundhogs over the summer for some practice and to hopefully thin them out a bit. But like I said we have never hunted them before with a bow or a rifle, so was just looking for any helpful info.
If I were bowhunting them I'd probably setup a ground blind and let it set there for a few days before sitting in it. I can tell you they don't get skittish around round bales or farm equipment that's sitting near their holes, so I can't imagine they would around a ground blind either.
I shoot them all the time with normal field tips. I normally only get 60-80yds to them, so make sure you got pins setup for shooting far. If you see one and spoke him and he goes back in setup a ground blind and wait for him. on a nice sunny day they will be out within a hour or so
Ok, thanks. My bottom pin is set to 60 yards, so I should be good. We were actually coming up pretty close to them though on the way in to the woods. The closest one was probably only 25 yards away when he popped his head up out of some tall grass before he took off. Hopefully we will get lucky like that when we go back with our bows, though it usually doesn't work out that well.
They like to come out for dinner a couple hours before sundown. Set up close to their holes in a ground blind. They love fresh greens, especially growing soybeans and lettuce type plants.
