Thread: Video: The first outing with my mates new Tikka T1x 17hmr

I helped a good mate setup his brand new T1x 17hmr last week, mounted his scope onto it and got him out to zero it 1 inch high at 100 yards, and then validated it out to 200 yards and got him use to dialing the scope etc.

The rifle and him were shooting damn well, so off to the orchard on Sat arvo to find some rabbits....

Bloody good shooting,mince rabbit for the hawks.

Originally Posted by Trout

Bloody good shooting,mince rabbit for the hawks.

Mate, I'm sure the local hawkes know my vehicle. There were several circling as soon as we pulled up, at one point a hawke dropped down onto a rabbit before it had even stopped kicking.

Originally Posted by GWH

Mate, I'm sure the local hawkes know my vehicle. There were several circling as soon as we pulled up, at one point a hawke dropped down onto a rabbit before it had even stopped kicking.

That HMR does some damage! I've never used one, maybe I should be looking at one....

I should have hired your services last year. I was growing Japanese millet for seed and trying to keep the sparrows away, I threw heaps of dead rabbits and hares around the paddock as the crop grew to try to attract hawks, to scare the birds away. No hawks, but lots of sparrows. The only thing that saved me from the Hitchcock nightmare was the guy down the road growing hemp, the birds loved that stuff and cleaned it up before hitting my millet.

Fantastic calibre aye. I've been using one a bit here on the farm too. If you can see them, you can take them.

Originally Posted by tac a1

Fantastic calibre aye. I've been using one a bit here on the farm too. If you can see them, you can take them.

Yes, I love my T1x 17hmr, so did my mate, hence him now having one too

The 17hmr and it's 17gr Vmax at 2550 fps is pretty good, a 17 cal 20gr Vmax at 3700 fps is even 'betterier' lol.

Awesome mate! Thise pukekos are tempting fate too

Nice video, what camera did you use?
I like rabbits hunting, and cook rabbits in many ways, smoked is my favorite, spicy rabbits head...HMR, even.22 cause big much damage to carcass, pellets do `t have the range, 20g shotgun with bird shots #3 still is my first choice. Of course, you are doing professional job, not for fun.

Originally Posted by GWH

Mate, I'm sure the local hawkes know my vehicle. There were several circling as soon as we pulled up, at one point a hawke dropped down onto a rabbit before it had even stopped kicking.

That `s right, birds can tell who was that man.

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

That HMR does some damage! I've never used one, maybe I should be looking at one....

I should have hired your services last year. I was growing Japanese millet for seed and trying to keep the sparrows away, I threw heaps of dead rabbits and hares around the paddock as the crop grew to try to attract hawks, to scare the birds away. No hawks, but lots of sparrows. The only thing that saved me from the Hitchcock nightmare was the guy down the road growing hemp, the birds loved that stuff and cleaned it up before hitting my millet.

What you are going to do with those millet seeds? for chicken? I never saw millet field in NZ. Any farm grow sorghum? Good stuff for your stock, and can use to make very tasty strong alcohol, 65+.

Originally Posted by Black Rabbit

What you are going to do with those millet seeds? for chicken? I never saw millet field in NZ. Any farm grow sorghum? Good stuff for your stock, and can use to make very tasty strong alcohol, 65+.

I was growing the millet seed to sell into the seed industry for people to use for cattle feed. Most went to dairy farms, it makes a good high yielding summer annual that the cows love. Sorghum is grown too, probably more commonly than millet these day. Neither crops are common compared to maize which is widely grown. The advantage of millet and sorghum over maize is they can grow 60-80% of the biomass in less than half the time, so you can fit other cops around them more easily. Also they grow best in a hot dry summer when temperate pastures struggle.

This crop was close to the beach and other houses, but still had deer living in it! Couldn't shoot in there though, far too many people around and in amongst the crop you can't see anything.

Here's the crop from a few years ago, it was seeding at about 1.8m with biomass yield around 30tDM/ha at 4 months after sowing.

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

I was growing the millet seed to sell into the seed industry for people to use for cattle feed. Most went to dairy farms, it makes a good high yielding summer annual that the cows love. Sorghum is grown too, probably more commonly than millet these day. Neither crops are common compared to maize which is widely grown. The advantage of millet and sorghum over maize is they can grow 60-80% of the biomass in less than half the time, so you can fit other cops around them more easily. Also they grow best in a hot dry summer when temperate pastures struggle.

This crop was close to the beach and other houses, but still had deer living in it! Couldn't shoot in there though, far too many people around and in amongst the crop you can't see anything.

Here's the crop from a few years ago, it was seeding at about 1.8m with biomass yield around 30tDM/ha at 4 months after sowing.

That's all very interesting Ben.

Originally Posted by Black Rabbit

Nice video, what camera did you use?
I like rabbits hunting, and cook rabbits in many ways, smoked is my favorite, spicy rabbits head...HMR, even.22 cause big much damage to carcass, pellets do `t have the range, 20g shotgun with bird shots #3 still is my first choice. Of course, you are doing professional job, not for fun.

It's a Canon SX60 super zoom, pretty popular type of camera used for hunting purposes these days. I use it to film alot of my longer range deer hunting shots too, great for seeing exactly what happened after the shot.

Originally Posted by GWH

That's all very interesting Ben.

Yeah sorry @GWH, I apologise, I should not have moved from your topic. Suffice to say it would be hard to shoot rabbits in that stuff.

Originally Posted by Ben Waimata

Yeah sorry @GWH, I apologise, I should not have moved from your topic. Suffice to say it would be hard to shoot rabbits in that stuff.

Nah seriously I genuinely found it interesting, as not crops I had heard of before, but I also don't know much about cropping