Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Sporting Shooter

HUNTING opportunities change all the time. New ones open up and old ones disappear, for all sorts of reasons. If you want to hunt, you need to keep tabs on it and you should never let yourself believe hunting’s status quo doesn’t constantly evolve. We often see opportunities dry up, which is depressing. Ten years ago we ran a feature on a South Australian conservation park which, being overrun by feral goats, opened its doors to recreational hunters alongside campers, four-wheel drivers and other tourists who enjoyed the place. Now it’s effectively closed to hunting except for a small group of regulars, not because hunting is seen as a problem but because the goats fetch a high price at the markets so the park managers trap and muster them now.…

THE Waypoint is the first rifle manufactured under the Springfield Armory name since the Model 1903 infantry rifle was discontinued in 1949. Typical of the new breed of precision, long-range hunting rifles, the Waypoint offers modern ergonomics, light weight, unusually fine accuracy and long-range capability superior to the average bolt-action sporter. It is a real go-to long-range hunting rifle that is not going to give anyone fallen arches carrying it in undulating terrain. It has all the features of a custom rifle that any marksman could ever wish for. Although designed with hunting in mind, the Waypoint is fully capable of hitting targets out to 1000 metres if that’s how you get your kicks. At first glance, it’s obviously not just another hunting rifle and hefting it showed the difference.…

GARMIN’S Xero A1i Pro is a further improvement on the company’s groundbreaking bow sight which not only has a built-in rangefinder but lights up an electronic pin to show you exactly where to aim at any target within range. When hunting live game up close, the Xero A1i Pro sight lets you point, range and shoot very quickly and accurately, and its controls are at your fingertips to eliminate almost all movement that might alert your target. The Xero mounts directly to you bow and features a highly accurate rangefinder, eliminating the need to separately measure distance before the shot. With the range measured, the Garmin then calculates the trajectory and sets an LED-illuminated pin on-screen for an accurate shot. The new A1i Pro looks very similar to the previous…

CONSTANTLY trying out new things in the hunting world means spending more time perfecting each activity. In my experience with how many things I work on, every time I start something new, my ability with something old suffers. It’s not a problem unless I maintain the unrealistic expectation that I’ll stay good at everything without having to work at it. I have an obsessive personality and in my adult life I’ve enjoyed becoming pretty good at new things in a short space of time because I’m fanatical in my approach to the learning. Since getting my new compound bow, I’ve neglected my traditional bow efforts. It’s not that my love for them has diminished; more that something different has occupied a bit more of my time. There are only so…

MY great-grandfather died in 2002 and left behind a collection of his old WWII army uniform and equipment that he’d stored in his shed. My father kept what he could salvage but, sadly, it had been neglected for decades so the slouch hat, webbing, paperwork etc were moth-eaten and rotten. His service rifle, however, had been properly put away in greased paper and so survived. Naturally, it was not registered and dad, who wasn’t a shooter, never did anything about it. The rifle was stored away again as a sort of awkward family heirloom and no one seemed to know what to do about it. Eventually, after serving in the cadets in high school, I got my gun licence and pestered dad about great-grandpa’s service rifle, which I’d heard about…

Some fox hunters wear denim jeans and any shirt they happen to have on when hunting foxes and do so successfully. Others, like me, go full camouflage. So, really, do we need to go to the trouble of full camouflage to hunt foxes? OBVIOUSLY, if you’re driving around spotlighting from a vehicle, camouflage is irrelevant but when the intention is to have foxes approach you at close quarters through the day and in some cases at night, camo can be a real asset. I never used to wear camouflage and grew up at a time when those who did were considered try-hard halfwits. But over the decades I’ve changed my attitude and the hunting clothes I wear — so much so that when I sit down to whistle foxes and…

ONE of the best parts of my job is definitely being able to see the many great places in NSW, especially when I am headed west. It was great to call in and catch up with David and Nancy from Walgett Newsagency, which if you haven’t been there, it is a newsagency, café and gun shop all under one roof! While I was there, David and I got to talking about hunting and shooting, and today’s topic: What is the right age to teach kids about firearms? So, what is the right age to correctly teach kids about firearms, firearm safety, and the consequences of misuse? Whether or not they grow up in a household where mum or dad have firearms, the majority of children are exposed to firearms through…

Letters containing questions for answering by Nick Harvey must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope. Mail your letters to: The Technical Editor, 3 Reef Street, Hill End, NSW 2850. LETTER OF THE MONTH Chamber Casts Q I have been given an old military rifle of European make which does not have the maker’s name or the calibre marked on it anywhere. It is a bolt-action which my gunsmith does not recognise. The rifle’s bore and the action are in reasonable condition and I’d like to try shooting it. My gunsmith suggested that the only way to find out what cartridge this rifle is chambered for is to get a chamber cast made. How do I go about it? What can you tell me about making a chamber cast? George…

RECOGNISED for precision, reliability and accuracy, Sauer is one of the world’s most highly esteemed gunmakers. It enjoys a well-earned reputation for innovation that has been confirmed once again in its latest version of the S100, the Stainless Classic. This attractive blending of a traditionally shaped laminated timber stock with up-to-date stainless metalwork in a classic hunting rifle results from modern engineering methods and up-to-date manufacturing concepts. Sauer’s value-priced Model 100 complements the Model 101 and top-of-the-range Model 404 but is more affordable and equally reliable. Most shooters would expect any design from Germany’s oldest gunmaker would have Continental styling with hogsback combs, Bavarian-style cheekpieces and slim schnabel-tipped fore-ends, but the appearance of the Model 100 took everyone by surprise. It is quite different in appearance. Stocked in a style…

THESE new binoculars are surprisingly good for their meagre $300 price. It’s not a lot of money at all for a full-size set of 10x42s and if you’d told me they were twice the price I wouldn’t have doubted it. The all-important optical quality is very good in this price bracket, probably because Ridgeline used BAK-4 prisms, which sets a high benchmark. The clarity and contrast are very high with great colour rendition in all conditions. Their low-light performance, without having a high-end optic handy to compare, seems quite good and I’ve used them on an overcast evening in a canyon without feeling handicapped as the last light faded. I did spend an evening out scouting with someone carrying a bigger and more expensive set of European binos and, despite…

IT’S official: the Commonwealth Government thinks you have too many guns and has openly stated its intention to reduce the number of firearms in the country. Not content with foisting a white elephant of a National Firearms Registry on us all, the feds have now explicitly said they think there’s too many guns out there and that rather than dealing with criminals, they’re just going to take guns away from everyone instead. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who was being interviewed by ABC Brisbane presenter Rebecca Levingstone on 4 April regarding the National Firearms Registry, said, “One of the things we have to do is reduce the overall number of guns in circulation.” This was in response to Ms Levingston’s very correct observation that criminals don’t register their guns, so why was…

THE red stag, a decent double-six, had been leading me on a merry chase for almost two hours. Twice the crosswires in my 3-9x scope had been aligned on his chest, but both times things had gone badly wrong before I could press the trigger on my Ruger Hawkeye in .257 Roberts. The first time the stag had simply walked out of sight and vanished into the brush. The second time another stag roared from somewhere nearby and he spooked, running back into the timber. By the time I caught up with him again he had picked up half a dozen hinds. I was sitting on the side of a low ridge glassing over the area when suddenly he appeared, herding his harem out of the timber into the open.…

Ridgeline Trail Camera After recently using several different trail camera makes and models, Ridgeline’s model is in my opinion the most simple to use. The camera is capable of taking 24 megapixel images and 4K video. You can view images without having to remove the SD card by bringing them up on the built-in screen. When setting up you have the option of selecting photo sizes from 1 to 24MP and various video settings for resolution. This camera also features three working modes: taking still images only, taking video only or capturing photo and video combined. Another great feature with the Ridgeline trail camera is its 5cm LCD screen that not only serves for viewing images but is also ideal for setting up, so you can accurately align the camera…

It was hot. Real hot. But we expected nothing less on Cape York in late October. It was just a prelude of things to come. My nephew Bronson and I had arrived the previous day after a three-day drive from the Gold Coast, and we were super keen to get amongst the action and put a dent in the local pig population. THIS being the first day, we left the homestead at the crack of dawn and checked out several of the waterholes close to camp, but we saw nothing. We were confident our luck was about to change as a large swamp loomed up ahead, deep within the confines of a dense paperbark forest. This place held fond memories for us because we’d scored a couple of absolute monster…

MEOPTA has gained a large following in Australia in recent years and for a very good reason. The riflescopes, binoculars and spotting scopes from this Czech company not only rival the quality of build and the optics of the major German and Austrian brands, but they are more realistically priced. This is something that appeals to the hip pocket of the average Aussie hunter and shooter. I’ve previously written about the history of Meopta, a factory in the industrial city of Prerov in the Czech Republic that I visited a few years ago. It’s a massive congregation of buildings and the company employs 2500 workers. Meopta is owned by an American, Paul Rausnitz, who married a Czech citizen. It is no longer a state-owned factory but a family-owned company. Meopta…

THIS is the most solidly supportive tripod I’ve ever shot from and it has features that were clearly specified by people who know tripods as well as shooting. Starting at the top, you’ve got the DeathGrip head, a large clamp to hold your rifle. One large knob closes both sides of the clamp around your rifle’s stock and, unless the rifle is severely unbalanced it doesn’t need to be on the point of balance. The clamp is wide enough to accept every rifle I can think of and closes to about 33mm wide. The head pivots up and down and rotates 360 degrees so any target is within its range of movement. The critical thing is to set the tripod’s legs so the head’s base is perfectly horizontal, but a…

At first, while sneaking in on a group of hinds in a gully, there was nothing to see. Then a shape materialised across the other side of a flat. Putting the scope to my eye, I spotted a beautiful stag looking straight back at me. Virtually immediately, he took off over a hill and disappeared. HEADING back to the bikes, Alan and I rode on a fair way, trying to use the wind and terrain to our advantage and sneak in for a look to where we thought the chital might be. This proved to be the right idea — we found the mob of hinds less than 200 metres away. Knowing the stag would be close, Alan placed his backpack on a large rock so I could lean on…

SOMETIMES a new cartridge starts out full of promise but fails to gain the kind of popularity it deserves and gradually fades into obscurity. The .307 Winchester was one. It was intended to give the company’s Model 94 Angle Eject XTR lever-action the extra reach and power of a .308 but it failed to dethrone the good ol’ .30-30. This was a shock because the .307 was a relatively simple redesign that produced a worthwhile ballistic advantage over the ancient .30-30. The .307 has become so redundant that the current Nosler and Speer reloading manuals don’t list data for it. The development of the rimmed .307 cartridge began in 1980 and it was introduced in a revamped Winchester Model 94 XTR Angle Eject carbine in 1983. The Angle Eject was…

WIN a GARMIN eTrex 22x EVERY MONTH! ENTRIES: Please email your high resolution .jpg or .png pig hunting image as an attachment to the email addressed to mickmatheson@yaffa.com.au – all images must be at least 1MB in size. For entry to be valid the following contact details must be included: First name, surname, full mail address, contact phone number and email address. A short explanatory sentence with the email is also needed. Garmin’s outdoor range features unparalleled innovation in hiking, camping and hunting tech in handheld or wearable configurations. Options span from navigation, communication, safety and tracking devices. Garmin also produces a range of bow sights with built-in rangefinder enabling better shot placement. A Garmin eTrex 22x GPS Navigator will be sent to the best entry every month, thanks to the…