AT LAST !!!!!

[philpot 5,182]

For a number of years, my shooting partner and myself have had an amazing rat perm where we used to take approx 1100 rats per year and they just kept coming back year after year. Well all good things come to an end and this rather scruffy dairy farm that had all the cow feeders on the ground, cleaned up their act and replaced all the feeders to off ground feeders and almost overnight the rats had gone...................what a sickner, I loved those cold winter nights shooting rats and only 5mins from home.

With no rats we turned our attention exclusively to feral pigeons, woodies and corvids which gathered every day along the barn roofs, dropping down into the barns to steal as much cow pellets and maize as possible. Summer evenings were good fun with around a dozen or more pigeons to the tally and then three years ago came the ban on people entering the local farms due to Defra ruling in our area. This lasted quite a while and right through the winter which scuppered things there. I contacted the farmer who said he would like to just leave it so no more shooting, to say I was fed up was an understatement as I used to pop down even if it was only for an hour and pop off a few shots and home for tea. 

I have been driving along the lane where the farm is situated for quite some time hoping to see the farmer, the signs stating no entry were still on all the gates son I didn't want to just walk in to find him but yesterday as I was passing, he was just coming out of the yard.........................yahooooo. I jumped out of the car to have a word, long story short, we have it back again whenever we want so plans are now afoot to have a look next week.  To give you an idea of what we are looking at here, about 40 - 60 feral pigeon, up to a dozen woodies and perhaps 50 - 90 crows are found on the barn roofs and yard floor and they have not been shot for a long time so I think we will be having some fun very soon.

In the past I have used fac Impact and fac wildcat because I was able to cover all the roof tops and upto around 75mts but now I only have a rimfire so the air rifle is my HW110 sub 12 .177 which will do the job but not the range I used to enjoy with my fac guns. Now we have this perm active again, I may well put in for an fac air rifle but not my beloved FX as they are just too expensive and I will be looking for something else....... perhaps a Rapid which I have had before and despite them being a bit heavy by modern standards, they are cheaper  and accurate which suits my pension and with these total feckin wankers in government who keep wacking my tax up and up so the days of shiny new FX guns are no longer possible for me.

Anyway whatever, I am really looking forward to getting back on my dairy perm very soon when these high winds have calmed down.

Phil

[philpot 5,182]

I have a confession to make so you can all have a laugh at my expense.  I went to the dairy farm this evening which, believe it or not was the first time I have shot the pigeon and crows with a sub 12 as for years I have used one of my fac guns at this venue resulting in me not even thinking about range finding the distance of birds, it has simply been in the cross hairs.  

Well feck me, this was not so easy, I have always shot pigeon in either breast shot or behind the neck but perhaps I will have to refine my aim points somewhat as well as checking my rangefinder rather more often.  Even my regular stand points are not usable any more because either distance or the farmer has changed positions of equipment, haystacks etc so a new learning curve is the order of the day. I did manage 3 feral pigeon and one crow but to be honest I expected at least a dozen in the hour I was there.

I am using H&N FTT 8.64gr which is well suited to the hw barrel but I am going to try JTS Dead Centre 10.4gr and JSB Knockout slugs 10.3gr as I believe a bit more weight up front may help along with ensuring I place it correctly.  As a matter of interest, all you sub 12 boys who shoot pigeon, do you always go for head shots or body placements.  I must say that I need to range the barn roofs from the new shooting positions I have looked at today so it's all new stuff for me but I AM going consider getting another fac air rifle...................why I hear you say, well I just like the advantage they give me and yes you may say I need to be a better sub 12 shooter which perhaps I can't argue with that but sometimes I find certain guns / cal can be a major advantage in certain situations. I have used fac air rifles for a long time and I confess I am beginning to miss having one in the cabinet.

Onward and upwards, I will be spending some time with the two pellet / slug mentioned earlier and spending more time getting holdovers worked out although I will be popping back to take distance readings in advance and use those to decide what distance is going to be zero.  I did this on a big rabbit perm with a zero using my rimfire at 60yds and a two mildot holdover is good for the two other distances being 105 and 107yds so using this as an example, I think I can do something similar with the hw110.

Phil