Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2016 i Sporting Shooter

A FEW WORDS FROM THE EDITOR NOW I am your classic Gemini personality type, pretty outgoing, moderately creative and hard to pin down – just ask my Publisher. Another characteristic of the twins' star sign that manifests in me is the love of target shooting and hunting. Now I know people who say things like, “If it don't bleed, I don't shoot it,” and that's fine by me. That means there are less good shots out there to give me a run for my money on the range. Over the last few years I have rekindled an interest in the .22 Long Rifle, shooting 50-metre Smallbore Prone with an ancient BSA International MkII, which will easily put 10 shots under 5-cents at 50 metres with Eley Match or SK Rifle…

QI know you have a Model 70 Featherweight rifle in 6.5-284 with 600mm Tobler barrel. I’ve read how you used it on one occasion to bag two fine fallow bucks at Water Valley in S.A, and I understand you also take red stag and several large boars with it. I own a Winchester Model 70 like your own in .243 with a badly eroded throat. Is the action long enough to have it rebarreled for the 6.5-284, or would the Norma cartridge be better served in a long action? If it is O.K, how long a barrel? What bullets would you recommend for fallow and red deer and what loads? – Trevor Warne A My rifle is built on the .308 length Model 70 action and it handles the 6.5-284 just…

Bushranger Recovery Bushranger 4 x 4 gear is excited to announce the release of the updated Bushranger Recovery Hitch Range. The new design Bushranger Recovery Hitches now includes 2 different lengths to suit a wider range of hitch receiver towbars. These include a 170mm and an extended 215mm unit. They also come with mounting slots for both horizontal and vertical mounting directions, with the mounting slots making fitment a breeze. Designed and tested in Australia, the recovery hitch is zinc coated to protect the hitch from the elements and tested to 5,000kg and built to perform and last. The bow shackle attached to the hitch itself is rates to 4.7 ton and the complete unit is quick and simple to attach when required. For further details ask at your local…

IF a 100 metre hit on a large animal like a deer is good enough, then don't bother reading any farther. I am familiar with those slapdash guys who sight in once and then spend the rest of their hunting days blaming their misses on anything but the real cause. They won't admit that it's really their hits that are accidents and the result of their rifle not being properly zeroed. Sighting in a hunting rifle sounds a simple enough chore, and is necessary as the first step toward a successful hunting trip. But even after it's been meticulously zeroed, there are dozens of reasons why it doesn't always shoot where you want it to. Some of them are the rifle's fault; some of them are yours. Back in my…

HE has no idea why his loads won't feed into the rifle's chamber as easily as they did before or why the bolt of his rifle won't close on them. He is sorely puzzled and looking for a solution. Of course, the necessity for case trimming has never occurred to him, thus he has no idea what is causing the problem. In the interest of assembling troublefree reloads, a tremendous amount of significance has become attached to the length of cartridge cases. Obviously, there is a correct length for each and every case (calibre) established by the manufacturers when the case was designed. Maintaining this length is critical and we cannot ignore it. We can assume that unprimed cases are of correct length when we buy them new, or when…

OVER the years I've written about a wide variety of riflescopes taking in everything from cheap Chinese-made optics to those in the higher price bracket. A few in the mid-price range, particularly those from Germany and the Czech Republic are free from all frills and not only offer good optical performance but are rugged enough to give years of reliable service in the hunting field. After gaining experience with a variety of reticle styles in hunting and varmint scopes, I have become convinced that the regular duplex style is best for all-around game hunting. This type of reticle goes by different names among various manufacturers - Duplex at Leupold, Plex at Burris, Z-Plex at Zeiss and 4-Plex at Redfield - but all are basically the same. In combination with a…

BUT how many must lose their lives in the process, fighting to the death, or rather fighting for their lives. I remember a story about a red stag that wore the skull and antlers of another stag it had fought, their antlers intertwined during battle. Whether the other stag was fatally wounded during the stoush, the surviving stag had carried around his dead rival until he was either eaten by wild dogs or simply rotted away, allowing the victorious stag to live a normal life, albeit with another stag's head stuck to his. He would have cast his antlers soon and we would have been none the wiser. Although the stag was finally shot (great trophy for the hunter) he was lucky to have survived the ordeal. You’d wonder how…

RIDGELINE PHOTO COMPETITION Keep the entries coming in for our Ridgeline Hunting Photo Competition. There are some great prizes to be won, so send your pics to marcusodean@yaffa.com.au. Some great pics have already rolled in, so check them out on the website. READERS’ COMMENTS “Yep, another step towards a police state, seems the fastest way to get legislation passed is for executive police to recommend it. Public servant or public dictator?” – Douglas on Call for off-site storage of guns while on holiday. “Sadly another victim of our restrictive licencing system. Of course those determined to get a gun by any means aren’t going to be thwarted by prescribed storage requirements.” – James on Tassie thieves steal 15 guns and bash 82 year old owner. “wonder if the media will…

AN entirely new design of straight-pull rifle, the Browning Maral is all set to compete with the Blaser R8 and Merkel RX Helix for supremacy in the field of straight-pull bolt-actions. Made in Belgium by the great FN (Fabrique Nationale Armes de Guerre) factory and assembled in Portugal, the Maral combines modern high-tech design features with slim, trim European stock contours to make a practical well-balanced sporting rifle that's an outstanding example of old world craftsmanship. And it's just as easy on the eyes as it is to operate off the shoulder. The two-piece stock is spectacularly figured AAA walnut with a high, slightly curved comb that can barely be described as a hogsback type. Nor is the Bavarianinspired cheekpiece overdone; it is subdued, and gracefully blends in with the…

THE ammunition that is fed into an air rifle has a tremendous bearing upon that guns' performance. There is an inseparable relationship between airgun ammo and the results produced by that ammo in any given gun, whether one is shooting in a competition or at bunnies out in the bush. Feeding inferior pellets into a precision air gun can not only result in poor accuracy, but in the case of spring-piston air guns, pellets whose skirts are out of round or otherwise misshapen could cause the piston to bottom out by allowing some of the compressed air to escape past the pellet. This could result in damage to the internal components of the gun sooner or later, and call for costly repairs. The rear edge of the flared skirt of…

YOU HAVE TO BE very patient if you’re waiting for a full custom gun or rifle. Two to five years is not unusual in my experience for a rig that’s got it all. I’m talking about new chambered barrel, tuned trigger, metal-worked action, tried and true, new bottom metal and safety. Then there’s the bespoke stock from plain to fancy walnut, perhaps engraving, though not many blokes are doing that any more. It’s just too time consuming and too few people – at least tight Aussies - are prepared to pay a fair price for a quality job. You also have to be very patient waiting for your hunting trophies to be finished, especially if you’ve ordered any full mounts, which can take one artisan a week to complete. Try…