Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2019 i Sporting Shooter

DO-IT-ALL cartridge? .308 Winchester. I know I have several others and I have not hunted much with it, but if I was limited to one – that's it. RIFLES? I love my Brno Model 2 .22 and its Leupold 3-9x33 EFR scope. With it, I feel I could eye-shoot most game up to deer off a rest. Then I really like my Bergara sporter, my Sauer 202 and my .303 No4 Sporter. CLOTHING? Ridigeline of old used to be a struggle with quality and detail issues. No more, it'll do me for 99 percent of all my hunting. For casual wear when a hunt is offering I like Carrhardt Carhartt Duck Work Pants, rugged and comfy. BOOTS? With dodgy old worn out knees, boots matter. The lighter and softer the…

THE land is doing it tough at the moment. While we can’t make it rain, plenty of us spend enough time on private property to know that hunters like us giving our farmers a helping hand is the right thing to do. I’ve been lucky enough to be given more freedom with my hunting in some spots as a result of the drought. Some who allow me on their properties are fond of the deer and other game animals they see around the place, but with feed being in high demand, there are only so many mouths they are comfortable feeding. Now, while I enjoy there being huge numbers of deer on the places I hunt, being asked by the property owner to thin them out a little means I…

LUIGI Franchi has been making guns in Brescia Italy since 1868. In the world of fine side-by-side game guns, the Imperiale Monte Carlo Extra, a bar-action sidelock was a famous ejector gun of the postwar era. Modern over-unders such as the Franchi Model 2003 were variations of "Dickson's" round trigger-plate action which have trigger and lock components mounted directly atop the trigger plate rather than inside the frame or coupled to sideplates, thus rendering the frame amply strong for magnum loads and/or continuous clay-target shooting. Today, Franchi offers a wide selection of shotguns, with a wide range of over-unders, side-by-sides, pumps and semi-autos. The Brand-new Horizon bolt action is the company's first-ever centrefire sporting rifle and represents a tremendous departure from Franchi's traditional baseline. Franchi's Italian designers and technicians have…

WHEN we hear the name Swarovski, we immediately think of top end optical products. Whether it be binoculars, riflescopes or their spotting scopes, the Swarovski Optik engineers have pushed the boundaries of optical excellence to bring us the brightest, clearest, and sharpest images you will find in the optical world today. Wilhelm Swarovski had a fascination with stars and it was this passion as an amateur astronomer that had him start his company way back in 1949. Swarovski has been expanding the properties of light and glass ever since. The Personal Ballistic Cam - PBC - is just one of the many innovations Swarovski has added to its riflescope range. This isn’t available to every scope they make, but those that feature the Ballistic Turret can be easily fitted with…

Gerber – Vital Big Game Folder Whether you’re a trophy hunter or small game hunter skinning requires a sharp knife. When trophy hunting in particular, to remove the cape or skin I use a Gerber Vital Big Game Folder. This particular knife utilises disposable scalpel blades, which are extremely sharp. While the blades are available in a couple of lengths I prefer the full size ones for splitting lips ears and eyes as they allow you to get into hard to cape areas like around the eye sockets and around the coronets. What makes this unit a little better than most is the fact that The Vital Big Game Folder by Gerber has one of the safest exchangeable blade systems I’ve seen. Featuring their Split Sec Technology, the unit offers…

MY father, brother and I went for a fox whistle one morning in the misty rain. We made our way to a scrubby gully and sat between some rocks while dad got the Silva Fox Whistle out. He blew on it for about 10 minutes, then stopped. We sat there for a bit and dad was just about to blow the whistle again, when my little brother Jasper spotted something white walking through the trees towards us. Dad told me to get ready. It was a young fallow buck; he kept coming and stopped at about 50 metres and he didn’t know we were there. I put the crosshairs on his shoulder and pulled the trigger. He ran about 30 metres and stopped and looked around and then started stumbling…

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 Impressed By Barnes Q I have become quite a fan of Barnes projectiles for hunting. They consistently impress me with their ability to produce clean one-shot kills. Please answer a couple of questions for me. Using a heavy-barrel Ruger MkII Varminter in .25-06 calibre, can you recommend a load for the Barnes 100gn TTSX BT projectile? Also, a load for the Winchester Model 70 in .308 calibre for pigs, goats and another load for deer? Finally, could you recommend a couple,of accurate loads for each of these calibres for club range shooting? – John Yates A…

THOUGH many rifle/cartridge combos come pretty close to being the mythical all-around rifle, the one outfit that's capable of handling all hunting situations perfectly is still as illusive as ever. Yet a single rifle can be adequate for a certain category of game such as deer if properly loaded and sighted-in. We've all heard that old saying: "Beware of the one-gun man, he can probably use it." I believe there is a lot of truth attached to that statement. I'm aware of several hunters who have succeeded in collecting all recognised species of deer in the South Pacific area with a single rifle. Gordon Alford even put a few in the Safari Club record book with a Brno Mauser in the modest 7x57mm calibre. Many a hunter cannot afford to…

DURING World War II, Ralph Waldo Miller, a Los Angeles gunsmith began experimenting with the .300 H&H case by "blowing it out" in an enlarged chamber to give the case a straighter body and a curved "Venturi" shoulder which he claimed handled gas at high pressure better than any other. Miller and engineer E.Baden Powell helped promote the new "improved" cartridge as the .300 P.M.V.F (Powell Miller Venturi Freebore." All P.M.V.F chambers had a "freebored" section ahead of the chamber to lessen breech pressure. Both the .300 H&H and the P.M.V.F quietly faded away. Then Roy Weatherby bought a P.M.V.F rifle in 1944, did some experimenting and was inspired to bring out his own version. The .300 Weatherby Magnum which appeared in 1948, turned the curve of the Venturi around,…

ENTITLED “Sportsmanship–What’s that?” Has much changed in the last 48 years? Some context: There were no mobiles then. No internet. The White Australia Policy was still in force. Aborigines were not counted in the Census. The war in Vietnam was in full bloody swing. A Remington 788 rifle cost $60; Super .243 cartridges $2.70 a box. And Nick Harvey was right: “Australians don’t know the meaning of ‘sport’ when it comes to taking game.” This generalization damned some of us who did – mostly trophy hunters - but as a generalization it was true enough. With a boxed warning from David Kelly, the-then editor of the widely-read magazine saying OUTDOORS did not want to offend true sportsmen, the article began: “Our Australian hunting ethics and standards of sportsmanship have never…