Thread: What little pesties did you bowl over today?

I like your kill ratio. I clean out peacocks from around polyhouses for my neighbour with a M2 Benelli. Last time I was able to sneak up on them, got the first on the ground, and the other three on the wing. 4 from 4. Love it!

Originally Posted by 30.06king

if my luck holds those big cocks should be there for me to find next time.

you mayyyyyyyyyyy want to rephrase that

Originally Posted by schwen

I like your kill ratio. I clean out peacocks from around polyhouses for my neighbour with a M2 Benelli. Last time I was able to sneak up on them, got the first on the ground, and the other three on the wing. 4 from 4. Love it!

You must be skilled taking them on the wing. I am a barely adequate shotgun shooter and don't think I would do as well as you.
I've noticed that Peacocks are strong and fairly rapid flyers, especially if starting from on high and flying downhill. Even on the level when springing up to clear the ground into flight they do pretty well. Those massive tails on the biggest roosters don't seem to impede them much at all.

Originally Posted by vulcannz

you mayyyyyyyyyyy want to rephrase that

Haha .... yes, probably not the best chosen phrase. I posted late at night and probably wasn't as alert as I could have been. Oh well, too late to edit now so it will stand.
You must have a mind like mine. Probably I would have thought the same if reading it posted by someone else

Originally Posted by 30.06king

You must be skilled taking them on the wing. I am a barely adequate shotgun shooter and don't think I would do as well as you.

If you look at this Peacock taking flight, you can see that more than half of its length is in its tail feathers. If you don’t have the lead placement correct with your shot gun the fall of shot can be into the tail feathers.

Originally Posted by 30.06king

You must be skilled taking them on the wing. I am a barely adequate shotgun shooter and don't think I would do as well as you.
I've noticed that Peacocks are strong and fairly rapid flyers, especially if starting from on high and flying downhill. Even on the level when springing up to clear the ground into flight they do pretty well. Those massive tails on the biggest roosters don't seem to impede them much at all.

I shoot clays every weekend and sometimes during the week. I shot a 90/100 at skeet the week before last with my Benelli, and that's my gun of choice for sporting and compak too. Shooting those peacocks was like swinging through 3 low house targets from station 4.

Originally Posted by Rushy

If you look at this Peacock taking flight, you can see that more than half of its length is in its tail feathers. If you don’t have the lead placement correct with your shot gun the fall of shot can be into the tail feathers.

It's better to miss in front than behind.

Thursday evening walk then quick walk spotlight in North Canterbury. One of those awesome but frustrating outings with wind and not enough long range .22 practice. Ended up with about 20 rabbits/hares over a couple of hours. I was going over/under left and right while the rabbits laughed at me (before the next round hit). Had some really good shots though. Rifle was spot on just operator error.

Mate recently introduced me to shooting off a tripod. Life changing for the areas I regularly shoot.
I tended not to head out after it rained, as I'd get a tad wet when shooting off the bipod, and used shooting sticks when the grass was long.
Now I can stand and shoot, with accuracy only slightly less than using the bipod.
Just waiting for my Arken Zulus scope with the rangefinder to arrive, and then the excuses for missing shots due to bullet drop guestimation, shooting through long grass, etc are things of the past. Problem then is my average shooting capabilities will get highlighted.

Went for a shoot last night to North Canterbury site that has been amazing for us over 17 years. We used to pop over 1000 an evening at times - legend shooting and all then with 22s and 12g. These days after pindone programmes and virus the numbers are few. But... terrain is as beautiful as ever and its great to wander spotlighting, with occasional thermal support. This is where Brian and I designed the Maxtoch hunters of several years back.

Not many animals but a real variety. Total of 41 included 30 bunnies and hares, 2 feral cats (farmer's request), 7 possums, and 2 pigs. Lucky enough to run into a small mob of young porkers - about 20kg - popped a couple and left the rest for another day. They WILL be tasty. Also saw a nice stag but no time to get into position. Treat to see him - looked like a 10 pointer.

An enjoyable shoot - ticked all the boxes. Enough animals, everybody shot some, we had fun using the gear, shared lots of tales as we wandered a legend site, and enjoyed the outing with mates.

Hardly worthy of the mention, though adding to the list anyway... Just the one hare - yep just one... Saturday night was a real struggle with ground fog greeting me as I drove up the cattle race... Thermal spotter was working , though the IR torch was scatted by the fog in the NV scope - so just the one. Anything else disappeared in the clag haze.
Lesson learned on air temps and dew points temps crossing streams....

Deep into Kaiangiroa, stalking the same covey of quail I was.

Last Thursday I finished on the Waikanae Golf Course. 7 Shoots in total for 229 Kills: 110 Rabbits, 2 Hare, 95 Possum, 12 Canada Goose. Interestingly I didn't see any mustelids and although there were six "domestics?" cats cruising the golf course, not a single cat was harmed in the making of this tally!

These fellas in the back of the golf buggy were seen heading out of town before the shooting started!

The chomped on mallard proves there are mustelids there.....

I'm off the golf course until August, for a pre spring shoot, unless they call me to say the geese are back!!!!

I have a little saying about shooting rabbits in the winter, "Every rabbit you shoot during the winter is six less you have to shoot in the spring!" So keep up the pressure on those little hoppers!

Mallard might have been chewed on by one of the cats.

Noisy bastards