Thread: your reason for owning a semi

Plus love my 11/87 Remington, which is left handed.

They are a great firearm for pest control, they are a great firearm for a competitive edge in three gun and multi gun and hither to it has been perfectly legal to own them.

Originally Posted by R93

Because they are very practical for what I use them for.

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+1
I've shot a lot of goats on properties where the numbers have been large. These properties are bounded by DoC land and always get repopulated, so the best tool to make an impact was a semi. At times I could take out a whole mob.
Another reason, I'm fascinated by functionality and form.

Because if I'm getting charged at by a pissed off hog I'll probably be too busy shitting a brick to be accurate with my first defensive shot at it.

Beavis, I'm jealous as right now, god bless you and you M1 garand.

I use semi autos because they're sometimes the best tool for the job. They are usually built to be simple, rugged, easily maintained, accurate, and reliable; all things that I look for in a hunting rifle. Somehow a lot of my hunts have been in cold, wet, muddy or icy conditions and involve pushing through thick bush and a gun that might choose to stop working because it got dirty two days out from home is a pretty useless thing.

A lot of commercial rifles rely on multiple sizes of screws, bolts, nuts and pins to just start disassembling them, and then once they're open you start finding the small stamped sheet metal parts and tiny springs used to make them. Military origin rifles tend to be able to be serviced with a basic flat bladed tool, cartridge, or no tools at all, and their components are often over built, rather than built to be as cheap as possible. I hunt on and off with commercial guns, but keep returning to different military origin firearms because invariably I get fed up with some aspect of commercial firearm design. The winchester 94 is an iconic firearm, but an absolutely miserable gun to disassemble after you've been out in the rain, sleet and mud all day and are trying to clean the moisture and muck out of it by the light of a fire or torch. I've had the stock of an over/under swell up in pouring rain and refuse to come apart, and once I got home two days later, got my tools (multi head screwdriver for butt plate and guard screws of different sizes, long shank for receiver, leather mallet to remove stock, padded pliers and spring vices for action, punches for action pins...), dried it out and persuaded it to open up, was greeted by a dribble of water out of the action and some rust where it had displaced the oil, despite having been oiled before the trip. By comparison, most MSSA's or similar semi's can be opened up by hand and taken apart with a cartridge or basic multi tool, and frankly haven't had an issue requiring major servicing yet. Ah - I remember another one: the twig that poked in past the side safety on a howa, snapped off and jammed the trigger.

That's just related to design. Weight, price point, ability for fast follow up shots or when shooting multiple animals, ergonomics, reduced felt recoil, accessories/options all contribute as well.

Ultimately you have to actually want to learn in order to understand why semi-auto's are useful, and I get the feeling that the people who are judging us don't want to learn and have already made up their minds, so my feelings on the subject aren't of value to them, but there they are.

Originally Posted by Beavis

Attachment 108052

Hunting with old mil surp rifles is also a niche interest of a friend and me. We were looking at writing a book on it.

Now that’s just plain beautiful.


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For the large mobs of goats that run in Hawkes Bay that I get paid to shoot

Target shooting and plinking mostly, but shooting possums and rabbits at night is easier with my semi auto 22 and duck shooting or clays I need all the help I can get.

The general public don't understand semi automatic rifles at all, every person I've spoken to says "why do you need a 30 round magazine clip on your assault rifle for hunting"?

The answer is;
I don't need 30 rounds for general hunting situations, I only need 1-4 rounds 95% of the time and that's why there are so many A category semis out there.
Just because the rifle is capable of taking 30 round magazines doesn't mean I used them.

No one is crying at duck shooters for having 5-10 shot tube magazines, when in reality an under over would be fine most of the time.
Semi auto 22s have managed to escape persecution when in reality the exact same reason you need one over a bolt action applies to centerfires,.

I’m left handed. I run an e cat AR15 I built to suit me. I do a small amount of competition with it.
Primarily it’s my work rifle, I use it at least once a week doing wallaby control. I recover them for Petfood aswell. Roos have to be head or neck shot so it gives you a target of 2”x3” generally standing or kneeling at ranges to 200m. Quite often you get groups of 2-5 together so fast shooting gets them all. It also carries really well in front of you the same way the army do and is a lot quicker than a bolt rifle to shoot especially running roos.
It will be a shame to loose the AR15 and high capacity mags as when shooting large numbers 70 or so it usually takes 100 rounds. 20 or 30 round loaded mags hold all the ammo needed not loose, not rattling and easily accessible in pouches.
Also the ar15 is one of the only semi auto platforms to easily suppress, ambidextrous and shoot all positions and capable of bolt action accuracy and able to attach torches close to the muzzle.

Originally Posted by canross

I use semi autos because they're sometimes the best tool for the job. They are usually built to be simple, rugged, easily maintained, accurate, and reliable; all things that I look for in a hunting rifle. Somehow a lot of my hunts have been in cold, wet, muddy or icy conditions and involve pushing through thick bush and a gun that might choose to stop working because it got dirty two days out from home is a pretty useless thing.

A lot of commercial rifles rely on multiple sizes of screws, bolts, nuts and pins to just start disassembling them, and then once they're open you start finding the small stamped sheet metal parts and tiny springs used to make them. Military origin rifles tend to be able to be serviced with a basic flat bladed tool, cartridge, or no tools at all, and their components are often over built, rather than built to be as cheap as possible. I hunt on and off with commercial guns, but keep returning to different military origin firearms because invariably I get fed up with some aspect of commercial firearm design. The winchester 94 is an iconic firearm, but an absolutely miserable gun to disassemble after you've been out in the rain, sleet and mud all day and are trying to clean the moisture and muck out of it by the light of a fire or torch. I've had the stock of an over/under swell up in pouring rain and refuse to come apart, and once I got home two days later, got my tools (multi head screwdriver for butt plate and guard screws of different sizes, long shank for receiver, leather mallet to remove stock, padded pliers and spring vices for action, punches for action pins...), dried it out and persuaded it to open up, was greeted by a dribble of water out of the action and some rust where it had displaced the oil, despite having been oiled before the trip. By comparison, most MSSA's or similar semi's can be opened up by hand and taken apart with a cartridge or basic multi tool, and frankly haven't had an issue requiring major servicing yet. Ah - I remember another one: the twig that poked in past the side safety on a howa, snapped off and jammed the trigger.

That's just related to design. Weight, price point, ability for fast follow up shots or when shooting multiple animals, ergonomics, reduced felt recoil, accessories/options all contribute as well.

Ultimately you have to actually want to learn in order to understand why semi-auto's are useful, and I get the feeling that the people who are judging us don't want to learn and have already made up their minds, so my feelings on the subject aren't of value to them, but there they are.

Excellent post

Pest Control, both Goats and Possums on 650 Acres of bush. One moment I can have it in .223 then within a few second change it over to 22lr.

....and all of these answers ain’t gonna matter.... Sorry to be the fly in the ointment


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matter about what

Only feature I care about is magazine capacity. I'm on e-cat, so largely unaffected.