Thread: What little pesties did you bowl over today?

Chilling out before bed at 3.34am - a very pleasant shoot tonight on a site near Christchurch. Had opportunity to play with my Howa 1500 223 after shooting it in on range recently - thoroughly enjoyed it! Very accurate rifle.

Boys shot 93 in 4.5 hours wandering big farm area in the truck. Thermal and spotlights, couple of 223s, and @gadgetman busy on the 22 magnum.

Always good to get out with a good bunch of mates, and wander some delightful terrain. Good for the soul..

Bloody cat brought it in live ,3 am in the morning chased it with a broom for a bit until light bulb moment ,fucken slug gun sacked it

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Originally Posted by NRT

Bloody cat brought it in live ,3 am in the morning chased it with a broom for a bit until light bulb moment ,fucken slug gun sacked it Attachment 241442

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Only good rat is a dead rat.

Originally Posted by mudgripz

Chilling out before bed at 3.34am - a very pleasant shoot tonight on a site near Christchurch. Had opportunity to play with my Howa 1500 223 after shooting it in on range recently - thoroughly enjoyed it! Very accurate rifle.

Boys shot 93 in 4.5 hours wandering big farm area in the truck. Thermal and spotlights, couple of 223s, and @gadgetman busy on the 22 magnum.

Always good to get out with a good bunch of mates, and wander some delightful terrain. Good for the soul..

I have your Howa hostage, locked away.

Aahh!! That's funny ... I have your Marlin!!! Grabbed the wrong gunbag!

Will get it over this weekend - poss this arvo if you're home

That's probably a bit better than me using the 22 to shoot 1 under the fridge made quite a mess but glad I didn't miss and warm up the fridge

Originally Posted by NRT

Bloody cat brought it in live ,3 am in the morning chased it with a broom for a bit until light bulb moment ,fucken slug gun sacked it Attachment 241442

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Was rather funny , although the wife was crying absolutely petrified she was up on the kitchen bench,both cats had it bailed up under a wicker basket just a case of sliding barrel in to eight inches off and pulled the trigger .Kind off like a pig hunt in mini scale

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Originally Posted by Twodiffs

These 6 pesties

Attachment 241418

If you call them pests feel free to drop them off at mine, I'll assist with disposal...

Been doing ok on the f**king rosellas this year so far, knocked off a breeding pair on the 5th and picked off another pair at lunchtime today - out of the same apple tree ironically. I haven't seen such helpful behaviour out of the damn fruit thieves like that before, shoot the first one and drop it and the second flies down and lands looking down at it's mate wondering why they've decided to have a little lie down... Thank you, I'll accept that. Using a .177 air rifle with flat nose target pellets (as the pointed hunting jobs cut straight through rosellas without dropping them cleanly leading to wounded birds). The interesting thing I've found is you never ever get all of the parrots - once you've got the numbers down the remainder seem to sod off to less risky parts of town giving you a several-month break without fruit trees getting hammered. Then a new batch take up residence followed by a flurry of 'on the job training' letting them know where they are welcome to land and where they find things flying through or past if I don't do my job...

It's a bit of a shame, the wife loves birds and likes looking at them but absolutely cannot tolerate what the rosellas do to her garden which she loves more than birds! But for those that don't know, rosellas can strip a fruit tree in under five minutes dropping everything onto the ground and rather than flying down like most birds they just move to the next fruit and tear that off too. Total wastage!

Originally Posted by mudgripz

Aahh!! That's funny ... I have your Marlin!!! Grabbed the wrong gunbag!

Will get it over this weekend - poss this arvo if you're home

Make sure you inform the required regulatory peoples of the transfer haha.

Originally Posted by NRT

Was rather funny , although the wife was crying absolutely petrified she was up on the kitchen bench,both cats had it bailed up under a wicker basket just a case of sliding barrel in to eight inches off and pulled the trigger .Kind off like a pig hunt in mini scale

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Don't do what I did with the first one the damn cat brought in, pinned it to the wall with the diving handspear then got cute with the wife and made her deal with it for me while I tried not to laugh. Took me a few hours to clean the blood up and fix the eyes-closed stabs with the kitchen knife done amid screams and retches. She's still pissed off about that but I claimed I couldn't let they weight off the spear (it was true as the rat was pinned by the shoulder fluff roll). In retrospect it would have been smarter to grab the thing with pliers and deal with it outside as the mess was horrific...

Damn! My Mum warned me not to make friends with strangers!

First walk with a rifle for over 2 months. Good to get my eye back in.

I used some bird shot on a rat worked ok didnt put a hole right through my house just looked like borer it the bits where it did hit the wall

Very pleasant shoot last night on one of our team sites near Christchurch, with @alan and @gadgetman from this site.

Wandered the big paddocks in the 80 series Cruiser with maxtochs and thermal. Very challenging - strong winds made precise shooting hard esp at distances, but the boys did very well on 223 and 22 magnum. Well pleased with success - we nailed 154 bunnies in about 5.5 hours. That's a good strike rate of about one bunny per 2 minutes, and our record tally for this site. About 85% hares and 15% rabbits.

Lots of different strategies for different spots - you'll get more time for the shot using thermal because they don't think they're visible. But you are lucky to get 2 seconds with the little rabbits around the woolshed, yards, homestead treelines etc - so often shrewd little sods. Speed shooting! At other times you may be circling in truck in big paddocks to get between a hare or three and any sheep in the paddocks, or you're flat out across paddock to cut off a hare, or get him at his fenceline pause. Or the variety of yips and yells and whistles the boys use to stop a moving running hare for a moment to ID the noise.. Boom! That fatal pause. Or giving the hare a 'Texas' - i.e. when he runs away from you in straight line so you have a moment's line stability to shoot him up the arse. Known as the Texas heart shot!! -always good for a laugh..

I had my Howa 223 beside me but didn't bother shooting last night - left it to the other two in the back. Quite happy to do the driving and spotlighting. Dam those maxtochs we (Brian gadgetman and I) designed few years back are still amazing. Used two sets of batts in 5.5 hours on full power. No step downs, beautiful beam balance and colour tint.. Mmmmm..

A very enjoyable and efficient night. Popped 701 so far since lambing in 7 outings - and we haven't made it to Tekapo/McKenzie yet for the BIG numbers. Bumper season coming...

Was certainly an interesting trip, @mudgripz. Strong winds, light winds, dry and dusty then rain. Considering the conditions the shooting was both exceptional and challenging. I was impressed with the little 22mag. With the rate we were bowling the little pesties it was difficult keeping up with the mag reloading.