Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2020 i Airgun Shooter

Sportsmatch has a massive range of mounts designed to cover virtually any scope-mounting scenario you can think of, and to prove the point the British manufacturer has released a new set of extra-high mounts. Sportsmatch points out that these mounts, which have a model number HT0113MM, are suitable for scopes with a body diameter of 30mm and a rifle with a wider-than-usual 13mm dovetail rail. Sportsmatch mounts are now supplied in new distinctive packaging. The red and white blister pack offers a more modern look and also includes mounting instructions and other useful information, including the recommended torque settings, on the rear of the packet. Go to www.sportsmatch-uk.com to see the full range.…

A great pair of boots will only be able to perform at their best if they’re accompanied by a correspondingly great pair of socks, like the Merino Boot Sock from family-run sock-maker HJ Hall. These socks have been designed to deliver all-day and all-weather comfort thanks to their construction and choice of material. The firm has been going since 1882, and all that experience has been put to good use in creating a rib leg design in a chunky knit with a fully cushioned foot, offering good impact-absorbing properties. Merino wool is soft, breathable and hard-wearing, and it’s also renowned for its natural body temperature-regulating properties. This, combined with the reinforced heel and toe feature of these boot socks, should ensure your feet will be protected whether you’re stalking rabbits…

Judges have a tough time ahead of them in choosing the winners of this year’s Julian Gardner Awards, a photo competition that celebrates all aspects of the countryside including the landscapes and wildlife as well as the people who live and work there. The recent lockdown may have given people an opportunity to hone their skills or try photography for the first time, and the judges are hoping that this will be reflected in this year’s entries. “We are really looking forward to seeing lots of inspiring images, whether taken on a local walk, in a nearby park, or your own back garden,” said judge James Swyer. “We love to see entries from young people and from people just starting to get into photographing nature. The standard last year was…

LETTER OF THE MONTH A SHOOTER OF CALIBRE Every time I hear of the .177 v .22 debate I have to chuckle, so the letter from Neil Edwards published in issue 134 made me smile. The point of impact for precision kills is what matters and to be honest nothing else, as has been stated repeatedly and justifiably so. But there are points to ponder and these have been made many times before as well. The .177 has a flatter trajectory, but not as much energy to transfer to the target area from the pellet at point of impact. Then there is ballistic coefficient and sectional density to be thought about. We should all be able to work out holdover or under and allowances for wind. Range is easily taken…

It was my first permission in 10 years – but on arrival I nearly turned it down. I had a call from a retired chap who lived in a large house near me and heard I offered a free service to control grey squirrels and rabbits. We arranged a mutual time and I headed over. He mentioned on the phone that the house sat in an acre of ground – plenty I thought, to properly and safely use a rifle to control vermin. So my hopes were high when I turned into the private road and drove slowly looking out for the house. It wasn’t long before I had my first glimpse. In total honesty, my heart sank. I looked up to a beautifully-kept lawn, with carefully tended shrubs and…

Although supercompact scopes are very much in fashion at present, there are times when bigger really is better. That’s certainly the case when it comes to getting a good view of something; if you want proof, ask yourself when you last heard someone bragging about how small their television screen is. The same applies to riflescopes, and it stands to reason that it’s far easier, and more affordable, to cram high-end features and performance into a large package than a tiny one. I found myself guilty of setting up with a scope that was a bit on the small side for what I was doing a few months ago. Out on the range testing the performance of slug ammo at longer than usual ranges, I decided to set up with…

A series of videos showing people how to cook with game meat has been released by Wild and Game, a not-for-profit company that aims to boost the consumption of game meat across the UK. Chef Oliver Moal shows how to create six dishes, including woodpigeon in a creamy mushroom and sage sauce and pheasant breast schnitzel. The recipe videos are designed to appeal to people who have already tried Wild and Game’s ready-made products and now want to have a go at cooking with game. Co-founder Steven Frampton said: “We have always worked to encourage people to start cooking with game themselves. Our products demonstrate how well game can work in dishes people are already familiar with, and our range of ready to cook meats makes it easy for people…

How did you get involved in shooting? I first started pistol shooting through the Pony Club where I competed in Tetrathalon (run, shoot, ride and swim). An accident with my horse while eventing left me unable to compete. During my recovery period, I focused more on shooting and discovered my passion for 10M Precision Pistol. Which achievements are you proud of? One of my proudest moments was winning the Scottish Open when I was 13. I was awarded the Wilkinson Sword for shooting the highest final score, beating the adults! I’m proud of becoming GB#1 in 2019 and making my debut with the GB team at the Meyton Cup in Austria and the H&N Cup in Munich. Have you competed during lockdown? I have, which has been fantastic! Indian Shooting…

Some bipods can be very fiddly to attach or detach, especially in the field when you’re wearing gloves, but Spartan Precision Equipment has got round this problem with the Javelin system, where an adapter stays on the rifle all the time, while the bipod itself is carried in a pocket until required, then snapped in place using a magnet. The airgun-friendly Javelin Lite is made from high-quality carbon-fibre and CNC-machined aluminium components. Three different leg lengths are available for the Lite – Mini, Standard or Long – with the shorter leg being designed for rifles that have a larger buddy bottle or a lower bipod attachment point. This prize comes with all three sets of legs, a universal adapter to fit it to your rifle, three rubber grommets of varying…

Most airgunners nowadays will use a sight with a magnification between 10 and 16 for their average shooting session. This specification allows for the target to be viewed as large as required in order to shoot accurately. When wound up to max magnification, a scope like this will let the shooter view the target accurately and witness the fall of shot easily. This ‘mid-range’ specification, displaying an objective lens of between 40 and 50 millimetres, is adequate for a high percentage of scenarios, including target shooting and hunting. Years ago, back in the dark ages of mechanically powered rifles and lesser scope options, many of us used optics with a 4x magnification and a 20 or 32 millimetre objective lens for our shooting. These scopes could be described as ‘average’…

BUNNIES IN THE SUN I suppose it is inevitable that I’m kicking off with what I should be doing right now, and that is shooting rabbits. Where I live in the South West, we usually see our first young rabbits in February, which means there are plenty of half- to three-quarter-grown ones that are perfect for the pot around by the end of spring. Rabbit haemorrhagic disease has really taken its toll in some areas, but numbers have remained fairly high in my locality, and some farms were overrun with rabbits last year. The place I shot most frequently last spring was a farm where the paddocks are used to keep horses and ponies – a very dangerous scenario for rabbits to get a hold as horses can break a…

FOR SALE: AGT Uragan Compact in .177. Bag, two mags, fill probe, extra custom riser cheekpiece. Four months old. Cost £1,350. For sale at £950 ono. Paul Ford (Denbighshire). Tel: 0784 1457260. FOR SALE: Artemis M16 PCP rifle in .22. Only had 50 pellets through, all went through the same hole. Comes with two magazines and silencer, all in original box. Only selling due to upgrade. Cost £415 plus £26 for spare magazine. Mint and new condition. £315. FOR SALE: Logun Eazi-glide pump. Nnever used, still in original box. Offers. Gregory Heath (Cambridgeshire). Tel: 07534 574406. FOR SALE: Feinwerkbau 300s. Not mint, but good condition, many medals to confirm accuracy. No marks or dings. Custom wood case. New breech and buffer seals last year. Piston ring in good condition. New…

Element Optics is a relative newcomer to the world of rifle scopes, and while the company name may not be that well known at the moment, several of the team members behind this firm will be very familiar to airgun shooters around the world. Matt Dubber from South Africa and Ted Bier from the United States are passionate airgun shooters, competition winners and YouTubers, while Johan Axelsson of Sweden is best known for his involvement in FX Airguns, which is run by his father Fredrik. Extreme benchrest and speed shooter Shane Kellar plus optics industry expert Brad Bonar round out the team. They have three models in their current line-up – the Helix, the Titan and the Nexus. The Helix is a second focal plane scope, with the Titan and…

Measuring just 11.4cm (4.5”) long, the Macrostream USB Everyday Carry Flashlight from Pennsylvania-based Streamlight fits comfortably in the palm of your hand or pocket, and with a highest setting of 500 lumens provides a huge level of performance for its size. But what is everyday carry, or EDC? This simply means a collection of useful items that someone carries on their person every day. These items fulfil two roles: being useful and letting the owner be prepared for some unforeseen eventuality. An EDC torch like the Macrostream can prove invaluable to the airgun shooter, whether they’ve forgotten to take their main light with them when hunting, or want to check the breech is clear at a poorly lit firing point at their club. In 500-lumen High mode the £69 Macrostream…

Members of a shooting group on WhatsApp have banded together to help provide their founder with a complete air rifle combo after he ran into difficulties amid the current circumstances. James Smith, a member of the Outdoor Sports group, explained: “We have a WhatsApp group of like-minded shooters and hunters. Now very recently Steve the group creator fell on hard times and had to sell his prized gun, so me and another lad called Richard Hargreaves came up with the idea of asking for donations to try and get him another gun, maybe a cheap springer.” As James started to ask around, the group gathered quite a head of steam, and the initial idea of a cheap springer then became a cheap PCP, finally evolving into a 2020-model BSA Ultra…

Regular readers may remember a recent article I wrote in which I described an inter-club shooting match between my own Rivington Riflemen and Rochdale Air Gun Club. The shoot involves the targeting of benchrest cards, but instead of the normal distance of 25 yards, are placed at a full range-length distance, in this case at 56 yards. At just under 12 foot pounds, legal-limit air rifle shooters will find that the trajectory of the pellet is very much at the outer levels of accurate performance due to the massive amount of drop and velocity at this range. It is still possible to shoot accurately at this distance, although this remember is from a bench and does not represent the range at which shots should be taken with an air rifle…

Let me tell you about my guns. Normally I spend a couple of weeks contacting airgun manufacturers, scope-makers and all manner of accessory companies for products to include in our group test. But amid the lockdown, and with many of those companies temporarily closed, all that has ground to a halt. What to do? Well, this time I thought I’d tell you a little bit more about my own modest collection. It’s not that my air rifles are any more interesting, exotic or eclectic than the next person’s. But when you meet someone for the first time, get chatting and discover a fellow airgun enthusiast, it doesn’t take long before the conversation turns to ‘what guns have you got?’. So I thought I’d extend the principle here. It seems only…

As a general rule of thumb, a lighter pellet will fly faster than a heavier one when shot from the same gun and will have a shallower trajectory, making it arguably easier to shoot, although it won’t retain as much energy as the heavier projectile at range. While the pellets being tested here are the Sniper Light, H&N caters for all weights with its Sniper family, as the German manufacturer also produces the Sniper Medium and the Sniper Magnum. H&N describes the Sniper Light as a barrel-shaped high-velocity competition and hunting pellet that’s been designed specifically for shooting in air rifles that do not exceed 12 foot pounds of muzzle energy out to a maximum distance of 50 metres. I’ve previously tested this pellet in .22 calibre, and in fact…

Never before did one atom of carbon and two of oxygen combine to promise so much fun for shooters! ‘Gas guns’ have been around for a good long time, becoming popular in the mid twentieth century, mostly in the United States with the likes of Sheridan, Schimel, Benjamin and of course Crosman all making guns utilising CO2 as a propellant. Helped by North America’s elevated summer temperatures, carbon dioxide gas pressure was sufficiently high to generate an acceptable velocity in small, compact rifles and pistols of astonishing and varied design. Obversely, in the UK interest was for many years significantly stifled by the legal requirement of a Firearm Certificate for the ownership of low-powered gas guns, a situation not changed until relatively recently following a relaxing of the law. This…