Courtesy of Tactical Life

Easing along the creek bottom, I was 300 yards shy of the base of the ridge I would have to climb to try to catch up with a buck that had left plenty of early season signs. A sudden sound halfway up the ridge to my left caused me to freeze and snap my head in that direction. It was too loud, and it certainly wasn’t a squirrel. It wasn’t a deer or turkey, either. It only took a couple of seconds to identify the critter making the disturbance. I raised my rifle and centered the offending armadillo in the crosshairs.

The .300 Whisper coughed once, and I heard the bullet impact with a solid “thwunk.” The varmint rolled down the hill and came to rest about 10 feet from where I stood. One more leprous Southwestern invader had bit the dust. I kept right on stalking up the creek bottom toward my stand, pleased with the benefit of hunting with a suppressed weapon.

Animal damage control, or just whacking varmints, is one of the areas in which the .300 Whisper shines. And Smith & Wesson’s decision to chamber its M&P15 rifle in J.D. Jones’ brainchild makes perfect sense, as did dressing it in Realtree AP camouflage.

The .300 Whisper

It’s been nearly 20 years since I first met J.D. Jones. I had a rental car, and J.D. needed a ride to a pre-SHOT Show press event in Las Vegas. As he read the hand-drawn map and navigated, we talked guns. He shared news of his recent work with the subsonic suppressed rounds he was building for the military and other government agencies. He talked about the Whisper family of cartridges.

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Photos courtesy of Tactical Life