Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2020 i Airgun Shooter

The British Shooting Show is back, and with less than a month to go until this year’s show takes place at the NEC, the organisers have given us a flavour of the scale of the event – and it’s huge! More than 600 manufacturers, distributors and retailers will be there, spanning every corner of the shooting industry, from rifles to pistols, scopes to coats, ammo to camo. And despite the name ‘British’, the event will feature over 50 stands from all manner of international exhibitors. Show official John Allison said the reason for its success is the people who matter most – the visitors. He explained: “It’s driven by shooters and not the accountants, and that’s the reason we have success. The progress of the show to date has all…

A solution that will finally resolve the issues surrounding shooting at the Commonwealth Games in 2022 has been found after a year of negotiations. Shooting had been removed from the 2022 list of sports by the Birmingham Committee, as members felt there was no local venue to host the sport and the proposed location for shooting, at Bisley in Surrey, “offered little or no benefit to the West Midlands”. Over the past 12 months the International Shooting Sport Federation proposed several options to see the return of shooting sports to the 2022 Games programme. Following a meeting in Munich between ISSF president Vladimir Lisin and Commonwealth Games Federation president Dame Louise Martin, it was agreed that India will commit to hosting the shooting competitions – a decision that has the…

STRAPS, NOT NAILS I have recently started using feeding stations on a permission, since they’ve ceased their pheasant shoot that had been running for many years. The pheasant feeders were always a good draw for squirrels this time of year and yielded good results. Now this food source is no longer available, I had been struggling to get big bags of squirrels. I never liked the idea of nailing feeders to trees, so came up with using the strap in the picture. It provides a secure fit, and using some sticks to pack out the fit helps to keep it stable. Thought it might be worth sharing with readers as it is a good alternative to nailing feeders. Also makes them more portable if you need to relocate them. I…

Digital scales are far quicker to use than an old school set of balance scales, but care does need to be taken to get accurate and consistent results. Where you use the scales is important, as they must be placed well away from any electronic sources that could interfere with the reading. It’s also important to keep them away from draughts or direct heat sources like a radiator as any movement of air can also cause a false reading.…

Most farmyards hold a resident population of rats, and it is common for numbers to increase significantly through the winter months. Now that farmers have brought in their harvests and the autumn abundance of natural food has long passed, rats start to find life in the open countryside very difficult. The sudden decline in food combined with the arrival of cold, wet weather forces scavenging rodents onto farmyards in their droves. The farm I am targeting tonight is on an area of high ground surrounded by fields that are prone to flooding. A prolonged spell of cold weather followed by a week of heavy rainfall has pushed rats away from the low ground and onto the farm. The mixed holding is home to poultry and cattle, and also has a…

So what an interesting year I had last year in airgun shooting, from the WHFTO World Championships in Poland – to sitting in a cold barn testing new equipment. And don’t you know, I loved every single minute of it. Being able to write for this magazine (nearly joined up!) has been brilliant fun too. Maybe not for you lot, but for me it’s been great fun. The WHFTO World Championships was so, so much fun, and being held in Poland was superb to say the least. The British team did sterling work as ever, and worked together really, really well. It’s lovely to see a cohesive team that all help each other out all the time. The only downside to Poland was the fact that the beer was too…

It hardly seems like more than a couple of weeks ago that the premier round of HFT shooting commenced at the end of April when the weather was turning for the better – unlike now of course! As usual, the United Kingdom Association of Hunter Field Target (UKAHFT) series proved to be very closely fought, with one shooter in particular managing to maintain his position at the top throughout all of the rough and tumble of range traps, crossing winds of unknown velocity, varying weather conditions and managing to control the nerves. The individual shooter who this season managed this particular feat was Elliot Compton. I have known Elliot and his brother Harry for a decade or so now. Both of them have been regular shooters within the North West…

Now, I don’t want to dismiss or trivialise the very real problem of rural crime today, but thankfully drive-by shootings in sleepy south Oxfordshire are still something of a rarity, especially those that involve multiple victims. However, that’s exactly what I found myself caught up in a couple of weeks ago. And I loved every minute of it. Yes, of course I’m talking about crop-damaging bunnies, not gang members, and I was cruising the fields of my latest permission and not the streets of downtown LA. I wasn’t alone either – Neil was by my side. The permission covers more than 300 acres of polytunnels that are filled to bursting with strawberries, raspberries and blueberries in the spring and summer, but at this time of the year, with the crop…

STRUGGLING with a scope? Having hassles with your hunting? Well, don’t despair because you’ve arrived at the right place to discover remedies for your airgun anxieties! Whether you’re looking for a quick fix to a nagging problem or simply want advice on your next piece of gear, email us at airgunshooter@futurenet.com or write to us at the address below: one of our experts will soon get you on the right track! Airgun Shooter, Future Publishing, Units 1 & 2, Sugarbrook Court, Aston Road, Bromsgrove B60 3EX CALL A SHOT Q Can you tell me what it means when someone talks about ‘calling the shots’? A THOSE OLD ENOUGH to remember Jimmy Cagney, Edward G Robinson and village cinemas will have heard countless times the expression ‘calling the shots’. Always it…

Outside of indoor target-shooting circles, a PCP with open sights is an almost unthinkable concept, but Turkish gunmaker Hatsan dares to be different, and the Hercules Bully isn’t just a pre-charged pneumatic with opens, it’s a semi-bullpup hunting design to boot. And what a bullpup it is! The first thing that struck me on seeing the Bully for the first time was the massive sight rail that runs from the breech and extends beyond the forend, reminding me a little of the huge handguard that sits on top of the French FAMAS assault rifle. It’s not just the rail that’s big, however, as this is one chunky puppy, weighing in at 4.65kg (10.3lb), making it a real bulldog of the bullpup world. STOCK Hatsan has sensibly clad the Hercules Bully…

Mention the name ‘Braendlin’ and many people will reply “Who?”, but although the airgun is rare and the name unusual, it’s not completely unknown. Anyone who’s into vintage firearms will know the name Snider and their breech-loading conversions of old Enfield muzzle-loading muskets. Based in Birmingham, Braendlin – along with an associate, an admiral in the Italian navy called Albini – had collaborated on their own ideas around this same work. But only Snider was successful enough to be remembered now, and the Braendlin name all but disappeared. Think VHS versus Betamax, or vinyl versus CD. It had, however, been allegedly bought out by another more famous gun name in the British shooting scene, WW Greener. History lesson over, that last bit may have caught your attention. Greener is known…

FX Airguns is teaming up with Sportsman Gun Centre, and from February the British firm will become the sole UK distributor of the Swedish brand. SGC believes the partnership will have a profound impact on the UK airgun industry as it brings FX airguns to a wider British audience, meeting the historically high demand for the Scandinavian company’s products. Owner Gary Lamburn explained: “SGC are proud to be representing FX in the UK – we have been keen to add a premium airgun brand for quite some time, and in FX we believe we have the very best.” FX founder Fredrik Axelsson said he welcomed the move to SGC, adding: “We wanted to work with a company that is aggressive like we are, and once we looked at the company…

How did you get started and why? My dad owned a pawnbroker business that also stocked second-hand airguns, as my dad had a wealth of knowledge. In November 2011, we opened up the dedicated airgun shop, and in 2019, we moved to much larger premises that would permit shooting to take place, and give us the scope to expand our product range, offer repair services to shooters, and facilitiate a dedicated 28-yard indoor shooting range. Do you specialise in a particular area of the market? Not particularly – we retail sub-12 ft-lb air rifles and pistols. We are also an authorised service and repair centre for the Daystate, Brocock, Weihrauch and FX brands. Our in-house gunsmith can and will also work on all other brands if need be. Later this…

If ignoring good advice was an Olympic sport, I reckon I could clean up at this year’s games in Tokyo. When it comes to disregarding wise counsel offered in good faith, frankly nobody does it better. “Buy in haste, repent at leisure” is a bit of a recurring theme for me and now, as I peruse the website of a nearby airgun club, I’m starting to worry that I might have gone and done it again. “Don’t go out and spend money on an air rifle,” they caution sagely, “until you’ve come and spoken to us about your needs.” Great. What am I supposed to do now? Turn up and pretend I haven’t bought one? To be honest, it’s not the first bit of advice I’ve come across suggesting it…

The Legends Cowboy Rifle from Umarex offers all the fun of a typical lever-action with a surprisingly high level of accuracy. Guns in the Legends line-up are replicas of historic firearms, such as the Makarov pistol or MP 40 submachine gun, and in this case the Cowboy Rifle has been fashioned after the legendary Winchester Model 1894. John Browning’s lever-action repeating rifle was chambered in a multitude of calibres for both black powder and smokeless cartridges, but here we’re talking about a rifle that shoots 4.5mm BBs propelled by two CO2 capsules working in tandem. With 10 steel BBs pressed into the base of the 10 dummy cartridges, the ammo can be loaded into the Cowboy Rifle. Each cartridge is loaded into the tubular magazine via a loading gate in…

The Pelletgage lets you measure the head size of an individual pellet to within 1/100th of a millimetre. Please note that this device is used to take measurements, not to resize a pellet! Using it takes time and patience, but does yield incredibly precise results.…

For a long time our sport has been dominated by a relatively few brands hailing, in the main, from Western and Northern Europe with a few interlopers from the other side of the pond. Names such as Weihrauch, Air Arms, Daystate, FX, Brocock and BSA have been our stock in trade. However in recent years, as interest in airguns grows, the world gets smaller and the internet broadens our knowledge, brands from other parts of the world have appeared to challenge the status quo. They’re not all new kids on the block – just new to many of us. Eastern Europe has been something of a hothouse for airgun design and manufacture, with rifles emerging from Ukraine, Turkey, Czech Republic and Slovenia to name just a few. And thanks to…

Unless you have the luxury of driving to your firing point when you’re out hunting, you’re going to have to do some walking. And if you’re on a roving hunt then you’ll be doing some stalking too, and that requires the use of versatile footwear that provides you with comfort and confidence. Ariat’s Conquest Explore boots fit the bill rather nicely, with their blend of leather uppers and high-tech materials making them breathable and waterproof. Ariat is a Californian footwear, clothing and accessories company that’s probably best known for its equestrian and Western-type products, but the firm also has a decent catalogue of hunting footwear too. The Conquest Explore 8” Gore-Tex 400g Outdoor Boot, to give these boots their full (and rather lengthy) name, are advertised as having superior traction,…

You may not have heard of Rifle, but this pellet manufacturer’s ammo has propelled at least two top-flight pistol shooters to international success. Felipe Almeida Wu won a Silver medal at the Olympics in Rio in 2016, while Geraldo von Rosenthal took Gold at the WSPS Word Cup in Croatia the following year. These two athletes shoot flathead pellets from Rifle’s Premium Series, and it’s from the same series that the subject of this issue’s test has been drawn, the aptly named Premium Series Round. Despite the name ‘Round’, the head on these pellets has a distinctively squashed look to it, leading me to wonder how well they would fly over distance. They come in a tin of 500 costing £10. The tin is slightly larger than usual, and the…

No doubt about it, there’s a definite trend for smaller, lighter PCPs these days, as witnessed by the multitude of bullpups that are currently on offer – with plenty more still to come. So there’s been a corresponding desire for more minimalistic scopes to match, such as the Airmax 30 Touch. In this case, minimalistic refers only to the size and weight of this scope, as its features and accessories are anything but. The Touch is referred to as a scope offering zero eye relief. In fact the distance between your eye and the ocular lens is roughly 3cm when looking through this sight, but the ocular focus ring itself can be placed very close to your face, even touching it if you want, hence the name. This helps create…

We take eye safety very seriously here at Airgun Shooter, and eye protection is an absolute must for shooting particular disciplines at certain distances. But shooting glasses don’t just protect your eyes from errant ricochets, they can actually enhance your vision in specific lighting conditions – and that’s where Riley Edge Spotlight shooting glasses come into play. These glasses are supplied as a set rather than a single pair, the idea being to select the appropriate lens for the weather and lighting conditions you find yourself shooting in to enhance your clarity of vision. In addition the impact-resistant polycarbonate glasses are anti-scratch, anti-fog and moisture-repellent on both sides of the lens, and also provide UV 400 protection. The set also comes with a prescription insert and Riley can provide you…

The NSRA has suggested charging members an individual fee instead of the tariff levied on their club. Many airgun-only clubs are affiliated to the NSRA in order to take advantage of its insurance cover. As of 2019, there were some 982 clubs or organisations affiliated and almost 5,000 individual members. Clubs affiliated to the NSRA pay the organisation between £130 and £300 depending on the number of members. Individuals can join for about £80 per year. Membership benefits include insurance and the ability to enter competitions run by the NSRA. The NSRA also publishes rules and provides targets used in its competitions. There are also training programmes for instructors, coaches and county coaches. The NSRA believes there are over 50,000 club members who do not directly pay into the NSRA,…

Air rifle and pistol shooters have returned home after a successful four days at the latest RIAC championship in Luxembourg. The competition was shot over a 10M range for both rifle and pistol, and there were individual and team events for Junior and Senior athletes. Joseph Baker, who was shooting for the English Small-bore Shooting Union, won the Junior Air Pistol Event on day one, while British Shooting’s Conell Evens came in seventh. Junior Women saw British Shooting’s Emilia Faulkner take fourth place. One of the most exciting finals was in the Junior Mixed Pistol where Emily Shawyer and James Miller (both previous In The Crosshairs interviewees) went down to the very last shot, winning gold for Wales. James followed this up by taking Gold in the Ibis cup the…

HUNTING TALES I have every copy of Airgun Shooter from number 1 to 129 to date. I must congratulate you today on such a modern looking airgun magazine. I’m typing this in front of the fire with my best friend, my old dog Bella. We are both old and grey and can’t get out in the woods and fields like we used to, so I’m asking for a favour. Would it be possible for one of you writers to write a story of the days they go hunting in the woods and fields? It would not matter if they did not shoot anything, just being out there would be good, and it would be like me and my dog would be out there with them. I know you have excellent…

Do you pamper your projectiles? Unless you’re a committed target shooter, the answer is probably “No”. And I know a fair few high-level paper-punchers for whom pellet prep amounts to no more than checking the head size on the bottom of their latest tin is the same as it was on the last. But there must be something in it, mustn’t there, otherwise why would people do it? And if it really does have an effect, is it only target shooters who can benefit? Maybe the rest of us could reap the rewards too? And maybe you don’t have to be shooting an ultra high-end rifle to notice any difference. A few years ago I was a bit of a zealot when it came to pellet prep, as I genuinely…

I have often wondered why it is that female participants in either shooting or fishing sports tend to do really well at their chosen hobby. Not wishing to upset any of the ladies that I personally know who either shoot or fish on a regular basis, I would have to say that, in my opinion, it’s because they tend to listen better than the “you can’t teach anything to me as I know it all already” attitude often displayed by their male counterparts. Being a teacher by profession, I am well aware of how this attitude tends to display itself, as in a lot of cases girls just tend to listen more closely and are generally more likely to take on board good advice and guidance. In the case of…

I am sure that many readers will have experienced disappointment as frequently as I have when it comes to putting in a run of good scores with an air rifle. It is an often used comment that ‘we have never had it so good’ – regarding the ability of our guns to be super-accurate – and just as importantly, consistent – when we compete in either outdoors or indoors competitions. As those of us who use airguns regularly for any purpose will be aware, the selection of the ammunition that best suits any individual gun’s barrel can only be achieved following much experimentation, unless you are lucky and discover the particular brand and batch number early on in your accuracy testing regime. However you achieve this barrel/best pellet partnership does…

There was a time when you could be forgiven for sticking to rifles made from the established brands we all grew up with and dismissing guns made in far flung places by companies we’d never heard of. The world is a much smaller place now and technology helps break down such illogical prejudices. And thank goodness for that, because there are some excellent rifles out there for people prepared to do a bit of research. I would say ‘and take a risk’ but in truth, there is no more risk in buying a rifle from an Eastern European manufacturer than from one made in the UK or any other part of the world, thanks to responsible importers and distributors. Like manufacturers everywhere, Eastern European companies offer products that span the…

Q One of my favourite types of airgun hunting is shooting squirrels over a feeder, but there are a few trees nearby that attract woodpigeons. Am I allowed to shoot them now or not? A In England, the short answer is yes. This is confirmed under the Defra general licence GL36 to prevent serious damage to crops and livestock. This general licence allows the killing or taking of the following pest bird species for the purpose of preventing serious damage to livestock, foodstuffs for livestock, crops, vegetables, fruit, growing timber, fisheries or inland waters: • Carrion crow• Jackdaw• Magpie• Feral pigeon• Rook• Woodpigeon• Monk parakeet• Ring-necked parakeet For more information on general licences and how they differ around the UK please see here: www.basc.org.uk/gl…

A lot of shooters make the mistake of dismissing CO2-powered airguns as being little more than a compromise between a cheap springer and a PCP. They are missing out; guns like the subject of this test are great fun to shoot, surprisingly accurate thanks to their recoilless firing cycle and, in some cases, powerful enough to tackle live quarry. Over recent years, the Umarex 850 Air Magnum has established itself as something of a classic among CO2 guns; easy to use, kind on the eye and churning out quite a clout, it is a serious piece of kit. The iconic gun has received a revamp in the shape of the 850 M2, and I have spent the last few weeks testing it in the Empire Kit version. Distributed in the…

FOR SALE, SWAP OR PX: SMK CP1M pistol, .22, 2-8x32 scope, silencer, spare mag, bipod. Very powerful, very accurate, just a bit dull. Would like powerful old springer pistol .22 or vintage underlever rifle .22. Cash either way. £200. Martin Day, Chesterfield. Tel: 078 1825 4253 FOR SALE: Webley Hawk 22 4x40 scope. £110. Webley Osprey 22. £100. Webley Mk1 pistol. £145. Webley Nemesis pistol. £65. For collection. WANTED: Air Arms 2000. FR Ford (Somerset). Tel: 019 3586 3825 FOR SALE: .22 Huggett Belita. 1/2” UNF. Great condition – as new. £55. Mr M Baker (Prestatyn). Tel: 077 8011 3749 FOR SALE: BSA SuperTEN MkII Carbine, .22 cal, action only. To include Volumetric silencer, three mags, two buddy bottles, BSA one-piece adjustable S-mount 1” body. £250. Greg Bradley (Conwy). Tel:…