Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2017 i Sporting Shooter

THIS has become evident recently in Victoria; I covered this in my August column on the Combined Firearms Council of Victoria's VCAT action to find out what the police in that state had told their minister to approve to further restrict LAFOs enjoying the few freedoms they now possess. More recently, the NSW Police have drafted a new Draft Firearms Regulation 2017, which has more far-reaching and severe restrictions forecast for NSW LAFOs. The people who will be adversely affected, among others, are private land hunters and the associated landowners, small firearms dealers and new licence applicants. These complex proposed changes have been carefully drafted over a long time by police bureaucrats and rushed to the LAFO community requesting feedback in less than the statutory minimum mandated timeframe of 28…

“This poor showing convinced me the Roberts was a reloader’s cartridge.” Q I own a Ruger M77 .220 Swift which I have just had rebarreled with a 1:12 twist barrel. I’ve mainly used the swift for long range varminting on rabbits, feral cats and foxes, but after reading what you have written about the swift, I’d like to try it on pigs and goats. Which particular bullet or bullets would you recommend for this purpose? Can you suggest a powder and load? Many writers claim Swift bullets blow up too fast and lack penetration on larger animals. What’s your opinion on this? – David Barnett A I’ve gained excellent results using the .22 Swift and Wilson Arrow on goats and pigs. Back in the 1980s I loaded 60gn Nosler Solid…

ARB – Digital Tyre Inflator When out bush, sometimes you need to deflate tyres to lower pressure to get you through tricky spots like steep inclines and the list goes on. This will not only contribute to better fuel economy and a prolonged tyre life, but also offers better traction. While ARB have several options to choose from, they recently released a new digital tyre inflator providing you with an accurate digital reading. This new ARB digital inflator is easy to use and makes adjusting tyre pressure a fast and simple excersise thanks to its large, easy to read digital blue backlight display. It also offers a big thumb operated inflator button and easy access deflator bleed button. Being battery operated, I’m told it will last up to 200 hour…

FALLOW season was a ripper this year in southeast Queensland. It seems that property owners were being overrun by these European imports. Those worst hit were our friends with grape crops. Normally only one deer would be taken per weekend trip. But this year the success rate was quite high and there was plenty of meat for all. It these circumstances around the campfire everybody can expect a dish made from the tenderest cut of venison, the tenderloin. HUNTING TIP THE mid to high neck shot is desirable for maximum meat recovery.…

A BIG RUSA STAG I’ve been watching for almost five years grew a terrific head this year. Always shorter on one side, his rack went about 35 x 33 inches and 30 wide. I saw him two weeks ago (early July) when the rut started on the mid-North Coast (always later than in the Illawarra) and he was draped in his grassy crown to impress his 22 hinds. Then, just as he did last year, he disappeared. Had he been shot (quite possibly) or had he isolated a “hot” female and was guarding her in the forest nearby? A bad sign yesterday, though, when two smaller stags fought it out in the paddock for mating rights. I fear the trophy stag has been taken but the good news is I…

THESE most effective stories in mobilising shooters to political action in recent memory broke on the website and our Facebook page, garnering a combined 34,113 reach. Now we have had bigger reach in exciting hunting vids, but finally shooters are waking up that social media can work for them in getting anti-gun police departments to back off and initiate genuine consultation with shooter stakeholders over gun regulation change. Facebook posts like these will spur LAFOs to write to their pollies to put the heat on them through their voting intentions. Nothing hurts a minister or MP more than pain at the ballot box and we are generating that pain if they disregard us through our collaboration with shooter reps and our awesome social media penetration. This started with Victoria's Police…

HENRY Repeating Arms is an American company based in new Jersey and they list the widest range of lever-action rifles that I’ve come across throughout my six decades as a gunwriter. In addition to seven rimfire versions and four centrefire rifles they offer four traditional leverguns: The Henry Original Rifle in .44-40 with a hardened brass receiver,blued steel barrel and straight-grip fancy walnut stock with brass buttplate that’s virtually identical to the 1860 version except for the calibre; The Henry .45-70 featuring a pistol grip walnut stock and XS Ghost Ring sight; The Big Boy Carbine with Brasslite receiver, straight-grip walnut stock and 500mm octagonal barrel with 10- shot tubular magazine; and the Henry 30-30 Carbine which is the same as the Big Boy except for having a straight-grip stock…

“The noise free shutter release was evident as there was not one image where the deer were visibly looking at the camera.” BEING a self-confessed trail camera die hard I jumped at the opportunity to field test the Minox DTC 450 Slim trail camera. The camera was handed to me in perfect time for this years red and fallow deer rut. Out of the box, this is not your standard looking trail camera. The camera is about 1/3 the thickness of a standard trail camera at just 2.7cm. The camera is in camouflage livery and very discreet when on a tree. The unit features a 12 megapixel camera capable of recording HD resolution video in lengths of 10 to 60 seconds. The powerful infrared flash has a range of up…

OVER the years many new and innovative tools have crossed my loading bench, but it is several years since I bought my last Hornady product - the Auto Charge automatic electronic scale with a 1,000-grain powder hopper and 300-grain charge capacity. This unit proved to be an invaluable aid during the process of developing loads for specific cartridges. Now Hornady has caught my attention again, this time with its new single-stage Lock-N-Load Iron Press which is claimed to be the heaviest and most rigid press in its class. The sample sent for testing weighs a hefty 9.384 kgs, but it wasn’t until I got this hefty brute securely bolted to my bench that I got a chance to really assess its massive build, together with its functional usefulness for the…

FOLLOWING on from last months column regarding grouse hunting in the Scottish Highlands, there’s plenty more hunting to be had for those hunters keen to try something else, if grouse shooting isn’t your thing. For less money, some estates put on big shoots for pheasant and partridge. The Estate I worked on, Drumochter, had some big shoots and it was the norm to have 200 odd birds in the Larda at the end of the day, ready to be picked up by the Game dealer and whisked off to fancy restaurants. Myself and Shaun, a Kiwi hunter like me who got employed after the grouse season, would beat the Game dealer every time though, and we would pick the best birds to take home for our own meals. Woodcock and…

AN ASSORTMENT OF HUNTING FACTS & FIGURES “He also stated that he had taken black bears with this calibre.” OVER the years I have had considerable experience with more than a few .22 calibre wildcats, but the one that impressed me most of all was the Wilson-Wotkyns .220 Arrow - to give it its full title. The original .220 Arrow was a powerful, high velocity, high pressure, flat shooting wildcat made by simply fireforming the .220 Swift case and giving it a sharper 30 degree shoulder. It was a joint development between L.E "Sam" Wilson and Capt. G.L "Grove" Wotkyns. Wotkyns previously helped promote the .22-250 (which was the original of the .220 Swift) developed by J.B Sweany, of Winters California by necking down the .250 Savage case. Sam Wilson…

THE 2017 RUT was well and truly finished. Work commitments had only allowed me Mondays over the past couple of months to hunt. In fact over the past five Mondays we had passed up a total of seven stags ranging from a couple of 4 pointers to a 10 pointer. However we were looking for a monster stag with 16 points that the farm manager had seen over the last three years but had eluded many hunters to date, including us. On this particular Monday Giulio, Tony and I left at approximately 2:00am and made our way south to that property we'd been hunting for many years in search of the elusive big boy. Arriving we were confronted by thick fog. Rats! It was 5am when we made our way…

IT HAS not only become a hobby, but a source of great pleasure. Now handloaders have been given wider choice in components than ever, while new improved tools and instruments allow assembly of remarkably accurate, reliable homeloads in perfect safety. Now many shooters discover that handloading is an absorbing and relaxing hobby in itself, more than just a means to feed a rifle or handgun. It's a pleasurable pastime without limits; one can simply pick a suitable load out of a reloading manual and assemble reloads without further ado, or one can explore advanced theoretical ballistics, barrel harmonics, pressure and pressure curves, ballistic coefficientsand other profound subjects. No university degree is required, but handloading appeals to many people with varied levels of education. Most handloaders quickly become more knowledgeable about…