Thread: What little pesties did you bowl over today?

@rossi.45 - the quality of the evening light you've captured in your pictures recently is just amazing! They provide perfect daydream material for the time when I can wander the rolling hills of an evening with a rifle picking off wee critters. Definitely my idea of a happy place ��

Quick wallaby hunt before the weather packed in. Shot 4 hares and one very stupid wallaby that watched me pack up truck then see him about 30 metres away then do a comical scramble for packed rifle, bolt etc while in the pouring rain. Didn't even move with all the unintentional noise plus a wet and foggy scope (on the outside luckily had a pillow close by to clean lens's. Howa .204.

That's tomorrow's sammies sorted.

1st of the evening . .

Originally Posted by rossi.45

1st Rabbit for the evening . . i could see the ears and top of its head at 194 yrds
.204 Ruger No.1

Attachment 189653

Were you aiming for it's eye perchance, @Rossi? Bet he didn't see that coming... it should have been keeping a better eye out...

Cripes that's a cracking shot. Bravo!

cheers @yeah_na _missed it was a memorable shot . . i couldnt sea its eye, just the ears and the very top of its head, say .5 inch high by 1.5inch wide target size.
thats the bastard of gentle rolling paddocks, you can see them standing up and they can see you but when you get down to shoot they always seem to be on the wrong side of the mounds . . give me the hills any day.

normally i wouldnt take the shot but if i go back a bit youll see why i did.
i go up to the farm on my bike a Triumph Scrambler . . as i see it the reticle gets the shit shaken out of it all the way there and all the way home . . so i am constantly checking the zero before i head off


the rifles zero is 180 yards, so .5inch high at 100 yards and .25inch low at 194 yards . . . if i do everything right i would land the bullet right on target
this Ruger No.1 in .204 if i do everything right will shoot tiny groups . . recoil is non existant and with a 20X i will take shots that i would pass up with a less accurate rifle . . shot this group before i walked

and thats why i love Varminting . . if you have done your best with reloads, put the time in with good gear you get the pay back with a great shot . . and the Rabbits have a really bad day which keeps the farmer happy

Wouldn't believe it 2 white 1s in a month

Originally Posted by Padox

Wouldn't believe it 2 white 1s in a monthAttachment 190454

Shittttttttt , even @ Joe_90 could see that one.

@Padox what is that? Cheers

A white possom

Both in the same area ?

So wile sitting have my morning coffee I spy squirrel deciding to get fat off of my bird feeders.
Not on my watch buddy!
Now I have to sneak to the laundry to get the air pistol with out him seeing me and not wake the dog who is asleep in front of the window.
The view

Got to laundry. Dogs still asleep and old mate is enjoying his nuts
Range 10 yards straight through the neck.
Was aiming for the airhole but hey he’s brown bread.



That’s the exit wound. He was facing toward the river.

Now time for the rest of that coffee

Originally Posted by Padox

A white possom

You mean the rare endangered NZ Snow Possum?

Yea that's the 1

Man I love it when a plan comes together….

When we got back from our hunting hols we discovered we’d been invaded by a mob of ten mostly juvenile magpies. These 10 birds had moved in and they weren’t going anywhere. But they were acting differently to the norm; instead of coming to the Bluetooth caller and first landing in the tree to scope out what’s what, they were coming in ultra hot, swooping straight for the UE Boom low and fast and often knocking the speaker off the gatepost. If they landed at all it was on the fence right next to the speaker and there’s no safe backstop there (high risk of ricochet). This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this behaviour, but usually it’s a lone bird attacking the speaker only after spending a fair while looking for the “bird” that’s making the noise.

Anyway, lots of aggressive behaviour and very little in the way of calmly sitting on a branch 40m away and allowing me to kill them easily. It was very frustrating. A change of tactics was in order.

I selected a corner of the one fence line with a good backstop, made a log cairn about 4m in front of the strainer post, and put the speaker on the top log. (If you put the speaker on the ground in the grass the acoustics are very poor to the point of useless.) I then cut some branches from windfall limbs that are everywhere after Cyclone Dovi, and carefully laid them against the cairn so the speaker was camouflaged but not covered.

Because the Bluetooth range on the phone is only about 10-12m, I took the one looped 15 minute recording of magpie morning chorus from the Ruapehu - totally different to the calls here and guaranteed to instantly wind up the local birds - and with an .mp3 editor, added 5 minutes of silence in front of the first call. This enabled me to leave the phone playing the .mp3 in the cairn, and enough time to walk back to the well concealed shooting position in the hedge, 60m away, and settle in.

It took about two minutes of Ruapehu magpie to cause the mob to aerially riot. They came hooning in, swooping over the corner of the paddock but unable to pinpoint what it was making the noise. One just needed to land on a fence post… as long as I didn’t have an inexplicable fail, and miss, the rest would ignore the sound of the shot because of their fascination with the new “lie in the grass and flap a bit” game their mate was playing.

And so it began… The first bird landed on a post two down from the strainer, and had about three seconds to consider his options before unexpectedly departing for magpie Valhalla. The rest then followed the plan perfectly, one after the other. A couple were shot on the ground next to their fallen comrades, and the rest off the top of the fence posts. To make this tactical plan even more satisfying, the last two birds were a 2-for-1 off the strainer post, which always puts a smile on my face. So eight bullets and nine birds and there’s still a couple left. It was all over in about five minutes.

Unfortunately I forgot to fully load the mag and bring ammo to my clever tactical plan (doh), so when I got up to go to the shed, that’s when the last remaining bird decided he’d better bugger off sharpish, something was badly wrong. I was very glad I did at least have eight rounds loaded and not only two or three… shan’t do that again.

Great fun before breakfast, good start to another perfect summer day.