Hunting by warm sun and cold rain.

[pianoman 3,587]

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

Tonight has been the culmination of two intensive days/evenings of hunting on deeper into my permission that has not been shot over in ages. I mean years, literally.

 

PART ONE. HEAT.

It started yesterday, Wednesday at mid-day when Andy arrived at my home with his rifle and his chrono. A really great unit which, he'll explain and describe better than I. But, I needed a really accurate appraisal of all my rifles individual power outputs; and for my HW77 for Hawke's marvellous Chairgun software I've become a convert to. (Thank you Si!)

 

I use a Hawke 6-18x44AO SR12 scope which is fantastic on my HW77 .22 with H&N FTT pellets. The chrono gave me a reading on the HW77 of 590 FPS with H&N Field Target Trophy .22 ammo. That's 11.44 foot pounds and only five feet per-second variation over a ten shot spread with these pellets.

 

Pretty good I'd say!

 

Set the scope on 14.5 TO 15 mag and the mildots are calibrated at 5-metre increments from a 25 metre zero. Down the ladder scale and the tip of the bottom post of the reticle and you are dead on 60 metres. Time to go!

 

We arrived about 1:30pm in peerless sunshine with barely a cloud against the blue and set to zeroing. Andy goes for a basic 30-metres with his Simmons scope. Despite a simple 30-30 reticle Andy can hit a bottle cap at 50 yards with his HW90 gas-ram rifle and this scope. Proof you do not need mega-mag scopes and a reticle full of dots if you are prepared to practice your shooting and learn your rifle and pellet's performance to the enth degree.

 

Then our usual long range practice session. Basically, this consists of setting up old pellet tin lids at 50 metres -laid on their side edges! (well, head-on the full disc is too bloody easy!) down to bottle tops at 55 metres on my measured-and-laid-out 20 to 60 metre range. Basically one side of the field to the other. These sessions get the guns warmed up, zeros tuned to single hole perfection and our heads into what we are about. When you hit a tin lid's edge with a parabolic shot, it flies spinning like a frisbee off the rock. Give it a go; great fun!

 

My HW77 is an absolute joy to shoot with. Incredibly, blisteringly accurate as it's possible for an air rifle to be and powerfully smooth to shoot with. A rifleman's rifle. Andy has done an amazing job of honing and polishing the internals till it shoots like a tuned and blueprinted custom special. He told me, pleasingly, how beautifully finished internally Weihrauch have built this particular rifle from the inside out. I doubt I could commission a better rifle with money no object, than this German masterpiece.

 

For shooting at very long range with precision accuracy, I zero my HW77 on the 3rd mildot of my SR12 scope at 35 metres and tighten up my mildot zeros at 40 and 45 metres on the vertical plane. This allows me to shoot rabbits with confidence out to 50, 55 and 60 metres and still take a short range target from 25 metres on the crosshair centre, back to 7 metres without worrying about hold-under. Chairgun is an amazing tool to use for calibrating your scope's accuracy and I love it to bits.

 

Every shooter should take time to stretch him/herself with a series of challenging targets at difficult ranges this way. Makes a rabbit's head at 45 metres look like shooting at a barn door!

 

With 50-55 metre range busted tops, a spent shotgun cartridge case and tin lids with more holes and ripped-up edges than Bin Laden's bonce, we figured we'd best go try it out on fur and feather.

 

A short drive and park up by the Farm house and onto a nice juicy Barley field by 4pm. On my farmer mate's huge barn, is a ferral pidgeon. Andy take the honour of first shot (guests on my permission with me have first dabs. It was my dad's way when he brought his shooting friends here)

 

The .20 Barracuda from the HW90 whacks it from a decent 40-metre standing shot. It rolls back with a chunk out of it's head and teeters on the edge of the roof. That brings over another ferral we didn't see at first from further down the roof. It toddles over to where it's dead mate is doing a "Will it/won't it?" teeter in the breeze on the guttering edge. THWACK another 40 metre stander, another dead ferral pidgeon. It falls off the roof edge taking the other dead un' with it! I leave Andy to tidy up the death scene and we part company to hunt alone.

 

I load up and stalk down the hedge line towards a thick copse of trees. Good for Squirrels and pidgeons I remember. I'm about 200 metres from these when out pops a three-quarter grown doe at a shade over 50 metres. I drop to kneel and give it 6 mildots holdover. Thwack! No.1 in the bag. A quick reload and out tumbles two others further on. Maybe they were startled by the pellet hitting their mate? I don't know but, they are wary as hell.

 

I slow crawl to close as much distance as I can and get to within 40 metres. Both still there. I target the nearest and fire on the 5th mildot on it's ear lobe. I relax my exhale through my nose down to the pause. I never hold my breath. The gentle breeze does the rest to put the shot clean into the brain to left of my aim and a backflip wraps up No.2.

 

Now it's mate bolts into the hederow and the next field safely out of harms way, as you'd expect. But then it comes flying out again clearly uncertain of where the threat is coming from. It stands high on its hind legs trying to look for a clue but, it's in the scope...5th mildot...nice and relaxed... and I feckin missed!

 

As soon as I let the shot go, this rabbit hit the gears and was back into safe cover faster than my shot passed it! Oh well. I pick up my two rabbits and work on toward the copse.

 

Here proves very proftable. Four more rabbits from 23 to 56 metres was straightforward work. I then had a fifth pop out at 40 metres range. A mature male buck. Nice one. I settled on the rabbit's eye and released the shot. Again, it too hits top gear and darts but there's a sound thwack and a ping of ricochet, the rabbit skids a second's twist on it's hindfeet, dust and dirt goes flying up, but it makes the hedgerow... Jesus THAT WAS FAST!

 

I gather up all the shot rabbits I have and string up their hind legs with loops that I can string onto a length of fallen tree branch as a carrying handle for them all. I can safely stow them into a tree and collect them later if needs be.

 

These are the moments I love about shooting on a warm spring's evening in the fields I'm lucky to have to shoot over.

 

I'm just returning settling into my cosy little prone-shooting hide, among the grasses, wild roobarb and shades of the trees by the corner gate and enjoying that wonderful aroma of fresh air scented with the perfumes of the fields cooling down in the low evening sunlight; when I see a thrashing of nettles and long grasses about 65 metres ahead.

 

A rabbit bolts out persued by a stoat and heading straight for me! The strange thing is, this rabbit is not moving anything like as fast as the ones that escaped my shots. Maybe it was getting worn down, I don't know but, the stoat is with it all the way as they zig-zag and dart into the taller green barley stems. They dissapear from my scope but, there soon comes the inevetible squeals and screams from the barley. The stoat has got her supper too!

 

This part of the field has gone very quiet. So onwards to another area, past a narrow gap and depression in the hedge bottom...and that's where I saw my bolter rabbit, lying dead in the bottom.

 

It hadn't been quite fast enough but, the shot had gone straight through it's head and it had run on. Amazing that, as I saw it skid but correct itself, or so it seemed, as it made the hedgerow and apparent safety. But here it was with it's head covered in blood and an nasty exit wound on the opposite side of it's temple, just behind the right eye. That explains the ping of riccochet I heard. Oh well. add in rabbit No.7.

 

This happened again with No.8; a 40-metre, young 3/4 grown male. Only this time, after it fled into the scrub on the shot, it came tumbling and bouncing back out, back flipped a moment then lay kicking in the dusty earth. Dead.

 

Three more medium rangers brought the dusk to dark and my final Tally to 11 rabbits for the pot. Rather, a delicious curry among other dishes. I'm stringing them up when I hear Andy's rifle crack a shot off, followed by an almighty "YESSSS!!!""

 

Turns out Andy had bagged a total of three woodies with his ferrals and then, had spent the entire, remaining evening session in stalking persuit of a large black rabbit. It had been darting in and out of range and he'd tenaciously kept on it's tail. Till finally, it had given him just enough to draw a good bead on. He pulls up the the biggest bloody black bunny I've yet seen. A real whopper..and he hasn't brought his bloody camera! Hey ho.

 

We head back to the car, well chuffed with what we have. A good supper and home to bed for day 2 to begin...

 

 

 

PART TWO: COLD.

 

Or rather wet and cold.

We met up today, Thursday at around 2pm. The warmth of yesterday has passed into a colder, strong wind and cloudy overcast. We press on to the permission and into a zero and a session as before. All's going well then, the winds calm as rain falls. There is a deeper part of the valley, not yet shot over and it's now raining like hell at 6pm.

 

So, we head off for the valley!

 

But not before we spot a rabbit right out to the other side of our practice field. Andy is up with his rifle off the car roof...and delivers a cracking shot at 60 metres and sends the rabbit bowling into a nettle bank with an audible THWACK right across the field. He found it eventually but, it was deep in the stinging stuff, so left it. Fantastic shot though. And from a 30-30 reticle scope zeroed at 30-metres don't forget!

 

We start from my mate's garden which runs down to it. The rain has given way to a thin miserable drizzle and at the garden's bottom, it is running with rabbits. I leave Andy with these and head down for a spot I know is shot over very little. But there is a rising mist and the light is poor, still I see a few here and there moving in the hazy distance. I'm wearing summer weight DPM cammo trousers and they get instantly soaked in the muddy wet grassland of a huge warren of holes and diggings covering a huge area of the hillside. Still, my parka over my DPM jacket is keeping the top half of me warm and dry.

 

I get a shot on a rabbit after about half an hour's wait. Definate hit but, it's bolted into cover. That happened a second time with a really nice 35-metre rabbit that should have toppled. But, soon as the shot goes, it's off ..like a shot!

 

Strange how any other time there would be a real hard thwack and down it goes kicking. But then comes this thwack and run! Oh well. nothing comes out after this.

 

The light is almost gone, I'm wet and cold and fed up. so, I pack my rifle into its slip and trudge back to find Andy. Thats when, as I began the climb up the hillside, 25 metres upslope, I spot a rabbit's silhouette against the darkening sky. I unzip my gunbag and slide the rifle out. It's still there. I cock the lever and load up. It's still there; how the hell hasn't it bolted after hearing all this unzipping and cocking sound? I take the shot standing and I'm sliding in the mud. I re-check my aim, re-breath..Fire! THWACK!

 

About five kitts and another adult rabbit bolt over the brow of the slope and flash past ahead. 'Oh well, that one's gone too then, with a bloody great hole in it someplace', I thought. Shouldered my rifle and trudged up to the top. When I got up the top, there it was, a good sized adult, very dead. God knows where I hit it but, I found Andy making his way back towards me in the rising gloom.

 

" You could do with a silencer on that thing! Jesus I really heard your shots -and that whacking hit from down there!" he said pointing out the far, opposite end of the garden. He'd not fared so well here.

 

"Missed a shot at a rabbit due to a bit of error in my range estimation in the dark. Always a tricky one, that" He shrugged.

 

"You can have this one mate" I told him. "I've done plenty enough."

 

He looked at the rabbit, turning it's fur over, looking for the point of impact.

 

"Can't see it" he said; "Lot of blood at the mouth though."

 

"Chest, heart/lung shot? I asked. "It was 3/4 profile upslope".

 

We'll see when I get it home.

 

Home to thaw out, dry off and a good supper for us both from my dear Jo. Then Andy said goodnight for his drive home.

 

Oh well. Not a bad way to spend a couple of days. A fantastic rifle each and a hell of a lot of great sport coming for the summer and autumn from the huge numbers of kitts we saw.

 

We'll be doiung it all again in a few days or so.

 

Fancy a Sunday session Andy?

 

THanks to any of you who've been kind enough to read all of this .

 

Simon

[pianoman 3,587]

I am so sorry I've written this and in a senior moment, I've somehow, posted it up in the wrong bloody section. Will some kind mod please move it to Airgun Hunting?

 

Thank you.

 

Simon.

[Sweeney-Todd 208]

Hi Simon.

 

What a brilliant read,you and Andy certainly had a good outing.

Well done on a excellent bag too.

 

Good luck on Sunday to you both if you go

 

 

 

ATB.

 

 

Bill.

[Phantom 631]

Very well written Simon Exceptional read

 

Tony

[markha 99]

A great read bud, you 2 had a fantastic time of it, I will make a trip up to see you, honestly

[hw97k 36]

good read simon ,but would of been a better story if you had a 97k mate ,sounds like you can relly handle the 77 atb carl

[andyfr1968 772]

Sunday's good

 

Great right up, Simon but it seems wierd to me reading about things I've done!! Piddled off about missing that last bunny, I really did get the range way out. On an open-ish field in the near dark it was an easy enough mistake, I guess..... I reackoned on about 45 yards but when I paced it out, it was barely 30. Ah well, clean miss.

 

See ya Sunday, 2 ish....??

 

Cheers

[secretagentmole 1,701]

Nice write up as always Simon, will be spending time on the range to get the gun/sight/range finder set up for each other first, get it so I can hit bottle caps at 60 metres too! That way when the long distance bunny hops into view I will be able to despatch. Your write ups always inspire lesser shooters to attempt better shots and with your help and advice I would like to think I am getting there, slowly, but still getting there! Great write up, keep them coming and you will soon be reading more about Mole's exploits, hopefully soon with Mrs Mole!

[gwill09 2]

great post mate really enjoyable read

[festa 206]

its good to seeing two mates enjoying what we all have in common

 

cheers simon i enjoyed that ... have an sp ,,,

 

 

atb gary

[pianoman 3,587]

Sunday's good

 

Great right up, Simon but it seems wierd to me reading about things I've done!! Piddled off about missing that last bunny, I really did get the range way out. On an open-ish field in the near dark it was an easy enough mistake, I guess..... I reackoned on about 45 yards but when I paced it out, it was barely 30. Ah well, clean miss.

 

See ya Sunday, 2 ish....??

 

Cheers

Sunday at 2-ish is fine Andy. Better if you can get over earlier but, alright mate. You did em, and with great shooting mate. It's a sod missing due to inaccurate range estimation in the very low light but, that's part of the human process sometimes. I've had misses in broad daylight where I've seen the rabbit actually look up and swing it's head to see what this zipping thing is whizzing past! I have no answers, save using a good rangefinder, as it happens to me, despite using known-range-landmarks like fence posts and trees. Things look different in the darkening light. It happens to everyone else at some point mate.

 

Thanks Moley.

Long range precision is not difficult to achieve mate, all it needs is the work and practice for it. But I must advise you to try and stick to just one rifle and practice hard with it, old love! Chairgun is a fantastically accurate software programm that gives you the numbers but, it still comes back to how well you can hold, aim and stabilise yourself and your rifle through the shot. I plan for it by taking a 60-metre line of sight as my extreme hunting range and work it back to 30 metres as my minimum. That gives just 30 metres of ground that rabbits will most likely be emerging at. But, don't set your stall out for it exclusively. Most misses happen at much shorter ranges in moments like above, with Andy.

 

Mark.

Whenever you can get up you'll be most welcome mate.

 

Thank you for the kind compliments everyone.

 

Simon

[secretagentmole 1,701]

Sunday's good

 

Great right up, Simon but it seems wierd to me reading about things I've done!! Piddled off about missing that last bunny, I really did get the range way out. On an open-ish field in the near dark it was an easy enough mistake, I guess..... I reackoned on about 45 yards but when I paced it out, it was barely 30. Ah well, clean miss.

 

See ya Sunday, 2 ish....??

 

Cheers

Sunday at 2-ish is fine Andy. Better if you can get over earlier but, alright mate. You did em, and with great shooting mate. It's a sod missing due to inaccurate range estimation in the very low light but, that's part of the human process sometimes. I've had misses in broad daylight where I've seen the rabbit actually look up and swing it's head to see what this zipping thing is whizzing past! I have no answers, save using a good rangefinder, as it happens to me, despite using known-range-landmarks like fence posts and trees. Things look different in the darkening light. It happens to everyone else at some point mate.

 

Thanks Moley.

Long range precision is not difficult to achieve mate, all it needs is the work and practice for it. But I must advise you to try and stick to just one rifle and practice hard with it, old love! Chairgun is a fantastically accurate software programm that gives you the numbers but, it still comes back to how well you can hold, aim and stabilise yourself and your rifle through the shot. I plan for it by taking a 60-metre line of sight as my extreme hunting range and work it back to 30 metres as my minimum. That gives just 30 metres of ground that rabbits will most likely be emerging at. But, don't set your stall out for it exclusively. Most misses happen at much shorter ranges in moments like above, with Andy.

 

Mark.

Whenever you can get up you'll be most welcome mate.

 

Thank you for the kind compliments everyone.

 

Simon

 

Only got one scope with MAP it, so will be using the Daystate (the BSA has had to go in for some urgent attention as it was a trifle close to the limit, thank goodness for Chronos).

Edited May 6, 2011 by secretagentmole

[Daz 7 563]

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

Tonight has been the culmination of two intensive days/evenings of hunting on deeper into my permission that has not been shot over in ages. I mean years, literally.

 

PART ONE. HEAT.

It started yesterday, Wednesday at mid-day when Andy arrived at my home with his rifle and his chrono. A really great unit which, he'll explain and describe better than I. But, I needed a really accurate appraisal of all my rifles individual power outputs; and for my HW77 for Hawke's marvellous Chairgun software I've become a convert to. (Thank you Si!)

 

I use a Hawke 6-18x44AO SR12 scope which is fantastic on my HW77 .22 with H&N FTT pellets. The chrono gave me a reading on the HW77 of 590 FPS with H&N Field Target Trophy .22 ammo. That's 11.44 foot pounds and only five feet per-second variation over a ten shot spread with these pellets.

 

Pretty good I'd say!

 

Set the scope on 14.5 TO 15 mag and the mildots are calibrated at 5-metre increments from a 25 metre zero. Down the ladder scale and the tip of the bottom post of the reticle and you are dead on 60 metres. Time to go!

 

We arrived about 1:30pm in peerless sunshine with barely a cloud against the blue and set to zeroing. Andy goes for a basic 30-metres with his Simmons scope. Despite a simple 30-30 reticle Andy can hit a bottle cap at 50 yards with his HW90 gas-ram rifle and this scope. Proof you do not need mega-mag scopes and a reticle full of dots if you are prepared to practice your shooting and learn your rifle and pellet's performance to the enth degree.

 

Then our usual long range practice session. Basically, this consists of setting up old pellet tin lids at 50 metres -laid on their side edges! (well, head-on the full disc is too bloody easy!) down to bottle tops at 55 metres on my measured-and-laid-out 20 to 60 metre range. Basically one side of the field to the other. These sessions get the guns warmed up, zeros tuned to single hole perfection and our heads into what we are about. When you hit a tin lid's edge with a parabolic shot, it flies spinning like a frisbee off the rock. Give it a go; great fun!

 

My HW77 is an absolute joy to shoot with. Incredibly, blisteringly accurate as it's possible for an air rifle to be and powerfully smooth to shoot with. A rifleman's rifle. Andy has done an amazing job of honing and polishing the internals till it shoots like a tuned and blueprinted custom special. He told me, pleasingly, how beautifully finished internally Weihrauch have built this particular rifle from the inside out. I doubt I could commission a better rifle with money no object, than this German masterpiece.

 

For shooting at very long range with precision accuracy, I zero my HW77 on the 3rd mildot of my SR12 scope at 35 metres and tighten up my mildot zeros at 40 and 45 metres on the vertical plane. This allows me to shoot rabbits with confidence out to 50, 55 and 60 metres and still take a short range target from 25 metres on the crosshair centre, back to 7 metres without worrying about hold-under. Chairgun is an amazing tool to use for calibrating your scope's accuracy and I love it to bits.

 

Every shooter should take time to stretch him/herself with a series of challenging targets at difficult ranges this way. Makes a rabbit's head at 45 metres look like shooting at a barn door!

 

With 50-55 metre range busted tops, a spent shotgun cartridge case and tin lids with more holes and ripped-up edges than Bin Laden's bonce, we figured we'd best go try it out on fur and feather.

 

A short drive and park up by the Farm house and onto a nice juicy Barley field by 4pm. On my farmer mate's huge barn, is a ferral pidgeon. Andy take the honour of first shot (guests on my permission with me have first dabs. It was my dad's way when he brought his shooting friends here)

 

The .20 Barracuda from the HW90 whacks it from a decent 40-metre standing shot. It rolls back with a chunk out of it's head and teeters on the edge of the roof. That brings over another ferral we didn't see at first from further down the roof. It toddles over to where it's dead mate is doing a "Will it/won't it?" teeter in the breeze on the guttering edge. THWACK another 40 metre stander, another dead ferral pidgeon. It falls off the roof edge taking the other dead un' with it! I leave Andy to tidy up the death scene and we part company to hunt alone.

 

I load up and stalk down the hedge line towards a thick copse of trees. Good for Squirrels and pidgeons I remember. I'm about 200 metres from these when out pops a three-quarter grown doe at a shade over 50 metres. I drop to kneel and give it 6 mildots holdover. Thwack! No.1 in the bag. A quick reload and out tumbles two others further on. Maybe they were startled by the pellet hitting their mate? I don't know but, they are wary as hell.

 

I slow crawl to close as much distance as I can and get to within 40 metres. Both still there. I target the nearest and fire on the 5th mildot on it's ear lobe. I relax my exhale through my nose down to the pause. I never hold my breath. The gentle breeze does the rest to put the shot clean into the brain to left of my aim and a backflip wraps up No.2.

 

Now it's mate bolts into the hederow and the next field safely out of harms way, as you'd expect. But then it comes flying out again clearly uncertain of where the threat is coming from. It stands high on its hind legs trying to look for a clue but, it's in the scope...5th mildot...nice and relaxed... and I feckin missed!

 

As soon as I let the shot go, this rabbit hit the gears and was back into safe cover faster than my shot passed it! Oh well. I pick up my two rabbits and work on toward the copse.

 

Here proves very proftable. Four more rabbits from 23 to 56 metres was straightforward work. I then had a fifth pop out at 40 metres range. A mature male buck. Nice one. I settled on the rabbit's eye and released the shot. Again, it too hits top gear and darts but there's a sound thwack and a ping of ricochet, the rabbit skids a second's twist on it's hindfeet, dust and dirt goes flying up, but it makes the hedgerow... Jesus THAT WAS FAST!

 

I gather up all the shot rabbits I have and string up their hind legs with loops that I can string onto a length of fallen tree branch as a carrying handle for them all. I can safely stow them into a tree and collect them later if needs be.

 

These are the moments I love about shooting on a warm spring's evening in the fields I'm lucky to have to shoot over.

 

I'm just returning settling into my cosy little prone-shooting hide, among the grasses, wild roobarb and shades of the trees by the corner gate and enjoying that wonderful aroma of fresh air scented with the perfumes of the fields cooling down in the low evening sunlight; when I see a thrashing of nettles and long grasses about 65 metres ahead.

 

A rabbit bolts out persued by a stoat and heading straight for me! The strange thing is, this rabbit is not moving anything like as fast as the ones that escaped my shots. Maybe it was getting worn down, I don't know but, the stoat is with it all the way as they zig-zag and dart into the taller green barley stems. They dissapear from my scope but, there soon comes the inevetible squeals and screams from the barley. The stoat has got her supper too!

 

This part of the field has gone very quiet. So onwards to another area, past a narrow gap and depression in the hedge bottom...and that's where I saw my bolter rabbit, lying dead in the bottom.

 

It hadn't been quite fast enough but, the shot had gone straight through it's head and it had run on. Amazing that, as I saw it skid but correct itself, or so it seemed, as it made the hedgerow and apparent safety. But here it was with it's head covered in blood and an nasty exit wound on the opposite side of it's temple, just behind the right eye. That explains the ping of riccochet I heard. Oh well. add in rabbit No.7.

 

This happened again with No.8; a 40-metre, young 3/4 grown male. Only this time, after it fled into the scrub on the shot, it came tumbling and bouncing back out, back flipped a moment then lay kicking in the dusty earth. Dead.

 

Three more medium rangers brought the dusk to dark and my final Tally to 11 rabbits for the pot. Rather, a delicious curry among other dishes. I'm stringing them up when I hear Andy's rifle crack a shot off, followed by an almighty "YESSSS!!!""

 

Turns out Andy had bagged a total of three woodies with his ferrals and then, had spent the entire, remaining evening session in stalking persuit of a large black rabbit. It had been darting in and out of range and he'd tenaciously kept on it's tail. Till finally, it had given him just enough to draw a good bead on. He pulls up the the biggest bloody black bunny I've yet seen. A real whopper..and he hasn't brought his bloody camera! Hey ho.

 

We head back to the car, well chuffed with what we have. A good supper and home to bed for day 2 to begin...

 

 

 

PART TWO: COLD.

 

Or rather wet and cold.

We met up today, Thursday at around 2pm. The warmth of yesterday has passed into a colder, strong wind and cloudy overcast. We press on to the permission and into a zero and a session as before. All's going well then, the winds calm as rain falls. There is a deeper part of the valley, not yet shot over and it's now raining like hell at 6pm.

 

So, we head off for the valley!

 

But not before we spot a rabbit right out to the other side of our practice field. Andy is up with his rifle off the car roof...and delivers a cracking shot at 60 metres and sends the rabbit bowling into a nettle bank with an audible THWACK right across the field. He found it eventually but, it was deep in the stinging stuff, so left it. Fantastic shot though. And from a 30-30 reticle scope zeroed at 30-metres don't forget!

 

We start from my mate's garden which runs down to it. The rain has given way to a thin miserable drizzle and at the garden's bottom, it is running with rabbits. I leave Andy with these and head down for a spot I know is shot over very little. But there is a rising mist and the light is poor, still I see a few here and there moving in the hazy distance. I'm wearing summer weight DPM cammo trousers and they get instantly soaked in the muddy wet grassland of a huge warren of holes and diggings covering a huge area of the hillside. Still, my parka over my DPM jacket is keeping the top half of me warm and dry.

 

I get a shot on a rabbit after about half an hour's wait. Definate hit but, it's bolted into cover. That happened a second time with a really nice 35-metre rabbit that should have toppled. But, soon as the shot goes, it's off ..like a shot!

 

Strange how any other time there would be a real hard thwack and down it goes kicking. But then comes this thwack and run! Oh well. nothing comes out after this.

 

The light is almost gone, I'm wet and cold and fed up. so, I pack my rifle into its slip and trudge back to find Andy. Thats when, as I began the climb up the hillside, 25 metres upslope, I spot a rabbit's silhouette against the darkening sky. I unzip my gunbag and slide the rifle out. It's still there. I cock the lever and load up. It's still there; how the hell hasn't it bolted after hearing all this unzipping and cocking sound? I take the shot standing and I'm sliding in the mud. I re-check my aim, re-breath..Fire! THWACK!

 

About five kitts and another adult rabbit bolt over the brow of the slope and flash past ahead. 'Oh well, that one's gone too then, with a bloody great hole in it someplace', I thought. Shouldered my rifle and trudged up to the top. When I got up the top, there it was, a good sized adult, very dead. God knows where I hit it but, I found Andy making his way back towards me in the rising gloom.

 

" You could do with a silencer on that thing! Jesus I really heard your shots -and that whacking hit from down there!" he said pointing out the far, opposite end of the garden. He'd not fared so well here.

 

"Missed a shot at a rabbit due to a bit of error in my range estimation in the dark. Always a tricky one, that" He shrugged.

 

"You can have this one mate" I told him. "I've done plenty enough."

 

He looked at the rabbit, turning it's fur over, looking for the point of impact.

 

"Can't see it" he said; "Lot of blood at the mouth though."

 

"Chest, heart/lung shot? I asked. "It was 3/4 profile upslope".

 

We'll see when I get it home.

 

Home to thaw out, dry off and a good supper for us both from my dear Jo. Then Andy said goodnight for his drive home.

 

Oh well. Not a bad way to spend a couple of days. A fantastic rifle each and a hell of a lot of great sport coming for the summer and autumn from the huge numbers of kitts we saw.

 

We'll be doiung it all again in a few days or so.

 

Fancy a Sunday session Andy?

 

THanks to any of you who've been kind enough to read all of this .

 

Simon

 

Superb write up again Simon,

 

Andy & Yourself are some of the best role models for New Shooters starting out with springers, Proves with skill and alot of practice you can outshoot most PCP Shooters and match some of the best with a recoiling Rifle.

 

I'm not yet up to that standard yet but with alot more practice i will endeavour to get there,I can now hit the small Spinners about the size of a two pence piece @ 55 yards consistantly, so need to push abit further now with my

 

Deadly HW 97 KT the Modern day HW 77..

 

Regards Daz.

[pianoman 3,587]

Hi Daz,

Very kind of you to say mate .

 

You just need to know how shoot a rifle correctly, to shoot a spring or gas ram rifle well. There is no difference in accuracy between a good spring rifle and a top dollar PCP. It's knowing the correct techniques and a few marksmanship principles to shoot by, that really seperate them. You tell me how a shot straight into a rabbit's head at 25 or even 55 metres with my HW77 is any different to the same shot with a Daystate wotsit; because I can't see it.

 

If you can comfortably settle down and shoot a series of targets like small, 1-inch spinners at 55 yards, consistently, with your HW97K, then I'd say you are good and proper there already Daz, old pal.

 

Simon

[TheYorkshireHunter 2]

I am so sorry I've written this and in a senior moment, I've somehow, posted it up in the wrong bloody section. Will some kind mod please move it to Airgun Hunting?

 

Thank you.

 

Simon.

 

'I unzip my gunbag and slide the rifle out. It's still there. I cock the lever and load up'

 

im sorry but do write softcore porn storys

 

ATB