Fieldsports Britain - Airgun safari round a British garden + hunting red hartebeest

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Welcome to Fieldsports Britain. Coming up, how do you keep your police force happy? Where
do you site your gun cabinet? Big calibres after big game. We are after red hartebeest
in Namibia. But first the other end of the scale. We are looking at accurate air gunning
with our legend in his own underpants, Roy Lupton.
Most people are introduced to shooting through air rifles. Many are then eager to step up
onto proper rifles - but there is a lot to be said for endeavouring to master the art
of one before moving onto a bigger bang.
Roy has always been an airgun fan but for a bit of an experiment and more importantly
to improve his accuracy we are going to do some back of envelope calculations - well
actually back of cardboard box.
As I have not used an air rifle for quite some time, we thought it would be a good idea
to just come out and have a bit of play on the target. So we are going to put a series
of dots on here and just figure out where we are shooting at different ranges. Because
obviously with a sub 12ftlb air rifle then the tragectory can be quite steep. .35 and
then we shall do one at .50. So we will just see where our ranges are and exactly where
the gun is shooting before we go out and use it in anger.
Roy has zeroed in at 25 yards but will start at 10 and work backwards.
A range finder is a vital bit of kit for this sort of work. It is essential if we want to
find out just what happens to our pellets as they battle against gravity and the forces
of nature.
You are obviously trying to shoot head shots on a lot of animals. So you have a very small
target area. So what you are trying to do is to make sure you can be as precise as possible.
So having a range finder really does enable you just with pin point accuracy to figure
out where you are and with the mil dots in the scope if you know where you are on the
range then you can easily adjust up or down just with a little bit of hold over or hold
under and you should be smack on the target.
And we will send the pellet on the way, like that. So actually at .10 that is not too low
at all. So we will just put another one in just to make sure, and same hole. That is
exactly what we should expect from an air rifle of this sort of quality. So it is the
same hole grouping. So we will move back to .25 and see where we go.
Right, ok so we are smack on 25, all focused in. We shall just put one up the chamber,
almost same position. So we will do it again. And we are there again. So actually it is
just a touch over to the left.
At 35 yards things start to get a bit more tricky and Roy has to compensate for drop
off with hold over and there is the gusting wind.
So we are on .35 yards here and I am just going to hit the recall button and I would
have expected that we will get may be a mil dot drop on here, but we shall soon found
out. Hit that on the target. There you go. Actually mil dot and a half and yet we are
slightly to the left on here shooting through. So we will put another one down. See if we
get the same result. Down there like that, so yes the wind is interfering. So that one
is a little bit further down as well. So we have just got to take into consideration that
we have a bit of side wind. So what we would do now at .35 yards is if we were aiming straight
at that target with no wind, we would put that mil dot straight on it at .35 yards and
we then we should be straight onto it. But we have also got a little bit of windage as
well. So with the windage what we are going to do is come across, a mil dot across like
that. So we are going to aim off the target like so and we will just see whether we can
get anywhere near the target there.
So what you saw on the shot there was a perfect height. We had adjusted up, so we were absolutely
spot on on line of where we wanted to be, but obviously with the different wind strength
it is going to always going to affect the pellet depending if you hit or shoot in a
gust or a lull in the wind. So that is what you have always got to try and do. If you
are having to go out and are shooting in the wind always be aware of it especially with
an air rifle. And then just make your compensations.
At fifty the shot has dropped about 6 inches - but a couple of shots with adjustment puts
Roy bang on the money.
You can see we have a huge drop off on .50 being zeroed at .25. So then we adjusted for
it so we know where we need to be on that. We came up here and then just adjusted for
the windage and the height from that shot to there so we knew where we were. Another
final adjustment and we were smack on at the .50 yards. So hopefully we know pretty much
where we are going to be.
So with a clear picture of where that pellet is flying it is time for an airgun safari.
Roy's eccentric family home has a wide range of bird life from eagles to doves to peacocks
- so there is plenty of food about for crows, pigeons, rabbits and squirrels.
With the camera watching Roy's every move we can analyse where he's putting the cross
hairs and see just how the quarry reacts.
OK so we have got a carrion crow which has just landed in the tree there. I reckon he
is about 20 yards.
Oh, no way. That just parted his feathers by the looks of that. I just want to look
at that on replay. I think I just undercompensated where he was sitting high up in the tree there.
The shot looked like it just went straight over the top of his head and skimmed it. And
I think that must be down to the angle that I was shooting at. I was aiming smack on,
but the pellet went above. So I think I didn't compensate because we were shooting at quite
a steep angle up. Oh well, hopefully another one will come in.
OK so about 40 yards. Ooh excellent. I want to have a look at that. He was just on about
45 yards. And you can see that look. And it just drops. I didn't quite allow enough but
with the angle of where the drop off was coming it was directly in line of where his neck
was. So luckily it took him out there. So that was a nice clean kill. So he was done.
Right let's see if we can get a couple more. We have got a feral pigeon sitting up here.
We will see if we can put a few ferals in the bag. Keep the ferrets going for a few
days. See if we can get him. He is about 20 yards. So that should be aiming smack on.
Ok just wait for his head to come round. And, yes, ok, perfect, excellent. Right any more.
No nothing there at the moment.
The reason we are shooting the ferals is that we have quite a big population of white doves
here and with the white doves obviously they attract in a lot of other pigeons. When they
come in they can bring disease and whatever else in so we are constantly trimming the
feral pigeons and what have you as they come in. And we also trim up the white doves as
well, because we end up with a flock of about 2 or 300 come the winter otherwise. It is
always a good source of food for the ferrets and what ever else through the season. So
when we get the opportunity to pop a few off, we certainly take it.
This is a shot we had a bit earlier and it was a miss on a rabbit. I just want to see
exactly what happened. I am presuming I must have hit over the top. So that is the wonderful
thing with this camera. It shows you your mistakes and where you went wrong. Hopefully
we can see the muzzle go in a second. Wow look at that. That is phenomenal. You actually
see the pellet arcing just over the top of his head and him ducking down. I don't know
whether he saw that coming or just felt it. I think he just felt it as it went over his
head. Again that really just hightlights how effective you have got to be on your range
finding. You have got to really either take a range finder out with you, or be as good
or as accurate as you can in getting your ranges. It is probably worth going out and
trying beforehand, because that rabbit was, I think, 35 yards and I had allowed for a
40 yard shot. So I just aimed a little bit too far above his ears. This was a rabbit
shot by a young friend of mine Jordan and it really does
demonstrate how bad the windage can be or your windage adjustment needs to be, as we
showed when shooting at the target. So when the pellet goes, you can see it was taken
by the wind. So on this shot we have got a left to right wind. You can see it taking
the pellet right over and rather than hitting in the head of the rabbit it goes in and hits
it square in the chest. Still a very clean kill shot, but not the one he was after. So
you can see that he had already come forward. He had come forward to allow for the windage,
but just not quite enough. Luckily the pellet still found its mark.
We've had some success but Roy is not overly happy. He thinks that some fine tuning could
improve his accuracy. One of the problems has been changing the magnification on the
scope - this has been putting the mil dots out, which means the adjustments he has making
are not precise.
He also wants to re zero at 35 yards and work through the ranges again. He believes this
will deliver a flatter trajectory, which means less time worrying about compensating for
the shot in the field.
That is about right, level wise we are just a touch off , but that is ok. Ok and spot
on. So we are now at 20 yards. Just make sure we are on. See where it is going at .20 give
us some sort of idea. Just to make sure, always take a couple of shots. That one is exactly,
one mil dot high there. On to the .40, again the wind is taking a little bit there. On
to the .50, it seems to be more in line, but the wind stops there, we didn't get any windage
issues. This is out to .60 and we will see how much more drop away we get with just that
extra 10 yards.
So let's now look at the complete picture for four different scenarios.
.22 zeroed at 25 yards there and we have got a huge curve off and drop off like that. So
from the very start all the way through we were just trying to catch our tails all the
time. The pellet from the moment it was leaving the barrel was curving away from us. With
a .22 zeroed at 35 yards, excuse my writing it is awful. You can see here we started off
at 10 a little bit high at 10, then we have got the curve going up, over, round, dropping
off and then really dropping away there. This is .22 zeroed at 30 yards. Slightly low at
10, but not enough off to really matter then we just go up a bit to 20, through 30 perfectly,
and drop down to 50. So that is almost a more useable curve of the trajectory on there.
And then just to show the differences. What we have got here we shot the same targets,
the same ranges with a .177. So we have got a .177 that was zeroed at 40 yards. So you
can see spot on at 10, little bit high at 20, still rising at 30, smack on at 40, down
through to 50. It was dropping off there. But
throughout the range of 10 to 40 a much better trajectory.
Interesting stuff and with this is mind Roy chooses to zero at 30 and head off after some
more bunnies - The first is at 30 yards so in theory should be spot on. Even though it
takes some grass seeds with it, the pellet finds its target, exactly where the cross
hairs came to rest.
The second rabbit Roy has since described as a "ninja" - This shot is at 17 yards - again
remembering we are zeroed at 30 Roy puts the cross hairs level with the eye. He expects
the pellet to be rising so will find the target between centre and the first mil dot. However,
this rabbits has other ideas and ducks - not in response to a low flying object soaring
over his head but just before the pellet reaches its target. Slowing the shot down further
it clearly shows the ear being clipped - did it hear the shot? - did it see the pellet?
- you tell us - whatever you think it is a great excuse if you miss!!!!
Lots of our air gunning videos if you look at the screen which is appearing over my left
shoulder.
Now it is off to David on the Fieldsports Channel News Stump.
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This is Fieldsports Britain News.
The first 100lb-plus carp has been caught by an Austrian angler in Hungary. Roman Hanke
caught the mirror carp earlier this month at the Euro-Aqua Fishery, which costs 700
euros a week to fish. ThePrevious record was jointly held by Brits, Ambrose Smith and John
Bryan with a 99lb fish from Le Graviers Fishery in Dijon, France. The new record fell for
a birdfood boilie.
The Countryside Alliance has published 'the case for hunting'. Four years ago it produced
the ĹCase for Repeal' but, has not until now produced a single concise document on
the positives for hunting. It has now filled the gap. Download it from www.countryside-alliance.org
Pacific Bluefin tuna caught off the Californian coast have been found to have radioactive
traces from last year's Fukushima nuclear accident. The bluefin tuna breeds and spends
its first couple of years off Japan before swimming to the Claifornia coast. Yellowfin
tuna, which tend to stay put around the Californian coast, are not radioactive. Scientists say
there is no danger from eating Californian bluefin.
Once upon a time there were eagles soaring all over the English countryside. New research
in the journal Bird Study uses place names to show the distribution of both golden and
sea eagles during the Dark Ages.Village names beginning An or Arn mean 'eagle' so they believe
places such as Adlington, Arden where home to these great birds. Of course an RSPB spokeswoman
quickly blamed gamekeepers for the birds' decline.
Clips from the Jeremy Wade series about big game fishing are now on YouTube. Visit the
AnimalPlanetTV channel to see films such as this one, about shark fishing for the requiem
whaler shark.
And finally a nasty story about a rogue kangaroo who stalked a woman for two days before attacking
her. Australian housewife Kirrily McWilliams was confronted in her own back yard by a growling
female eastern grey kangaroo. The usually placid animal attacked her in her driveway
the following afternoon. It ran towards her at high speed. She sustained a foot-long gash
and other scratches. The local wildlife service has hired a shooter and issued a permit to
destroy the animal.
You are now up to date with Fieldsports Britain News. Stalking the stories. Fishing for facts.
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Now where do you site your gun cabinet? We asked the experts at Browning.
Andy Norris is looking for a good place to site his new gun cabinet.
So we need to find somewhere we can place our cabinet that is going to be out of sight,
out of mind and safe as houses. We can't keep it outside on an external wall where it is
going to be visible and easy to access. We don't want to keep it in an outbuilding that
is also going to be easy to get into, like a barn. So we need to keep it indoors where
it is also warm and we can keep an eye on it and it is looked after by your household
security. You can't put it on a stud wall because you can get something behind it, gem
it off and you have got nothing to fix it to. So what we are looking for here Nevil
is a solid indoor internal wall that we can fix this cabinet to, so that the raw bolts
are really going to be able to do their duty and lock in there nice and solid and not easy
to gain access to.
Well that is jolly clear. Clever Andy Norris - or should that be clever Browning. Visit
www.Browning.eu
Next, let's take those guns out of the gun cabinet and take them big game hunting in
Africa.
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What kind of African hunting lodge does not have a show-off collection of mounts? There
can be good ones and bad ones. This giraffe is quite special. It is in the Blaser Safaris
catalogue and Blaser is often contacted by people asking for more details about how it
is mounted.
Of course it takes a lot of hard work to get to this from this. We want to go out with
Spanish hunter Alejandro as he looks for a red hartebeest, one of the largest antelope
in Namibia. First he has to get to grips with big game calibres on the range, ammunitions
supplied by Norma, rifles by Blaser, optics by Zeiss.
Stefan Buehring from Karl Zeiss is Alejandro's host in Namibia and he explains what the hunter
is using.
In this specific scope we have a very unique, new lense design. Which was developed by our
sister company Schott and which just gives us an extra percentage up to 95% of light
transmission. So that is especially for the very early morning hours or for the late evening
hours that gives you another 5% compared to other scopes.
As usual with big game hunting, nothing happens easily. But then at last it all starts to
go right.
Was the shot good? Alejandro is not sure. He walks up to where he hopes he will find
the animal and there it is.
The situation was that I was close behind the guide when he asked me to come forward.
He positioned the shooting stick and asked me to aim. But when I was aiming from the
shooting stick I was only able to shoot in one position. I knew that I would get just
one opportunity to shoot - so I shot. I knew that if I didn't shoot within those two seconds,
the animal would probably have moved and disappeared.
Aleandro's wife and fellow hunter Patricia is soon on the scene and they have an emotional
reunion. Jorgen is also happy, but mainly about the performance of his ammunition.
The design behind the Norex bullet is that it is bonded which means it will retain a
lot of weight and it will also penetrate very deep and crush bone and also the bonding makes
it very strong so it doesn't disintegrate when it goes through. Especially on heavier
game like African large antelopes and moose. It is important that you have a bullet that
really penetrates deep enough to reach the vital organs. Like the heart and the lungs.
The process is not over. The carcase has to come back to the lodge to be skinned and butchered.
This gives Jorgen a chance to look for the bullet.
It has mushroomed to a very large mushroom and it has penetrated right through the animal
and we found it on the skin side.
How much of the bullet is left inside the animal?
Very little. Since this bullet is bonded most of the lead and all of the jacket is bonded
together and this means we have a very high weight retention.
Now we are heading for that heady moment when Alejandro will be able to admire the head
on his wall. Here in the cutting room the meat goes one way and the hide or head, or
both go the other, into the salting room for drying.
He has had a good hunt. He has had a hard hunt. He has got his trophy. Now comes one
of the most important parts of this whole process is dealing with this animal. It comes
into the skinning shed. It gets off loaded as soon as possible. It gets, depending on
what the client wants, it gets cut up into a flat skin or a cape or whatever the case
may be. The skinners and the trackers do the skinning. The heads are cleaned off and the
skins are brought here. They get put into salt. They get spread out layer of salt at
the bottom. They get salted very well for a couple of days.
What does that do?
That ensures that there is no decomposition, or minimises decomposition and kills the bugs.
Trophies are not super-fashionable in the UK these days but they are a fantastic way
of celebrating your African adventure.
That is what he takes back with him. The memories. Years after he has come to Namibia and hunted
this animal and he has got this trophy up on the wall. That is actually what he retains
of this whole experience.
Call them a souvenir if you like, they are long way up the scale from a straw hat or
wooden giraffe. This red hartebeest mount will take pride of place as a mount in Alejandro's
house.
So that is what we have been doing. Let's have a look at the rest of what the hunting
and shooting and fishing community on YouTube has been up to.
It's Hunting YouTube.
Roebuck, Coke cans, rats, rabbits, pretend wild boar and a new use for an old oil filter.
They're all on Hunting YouTube this week, which aims to show the best hunting, shooting
and fishing videos that YouTube has to offer. Thanks to everyone who has sent in their favourite
films.
YorkshireRoeStalking continues his epic series on bucks that can no longer be seen in Yorkshire.
This one, called Trevor's first outing, shows a buck succumbing to a 6.5x55.
Viewer Tristan Ball says of this video: "It is, I'm afraid, all in French and some of
the shots are a bit crap but it's quite fun. Uploaded by Seladang, it shows kids going
roebuck stalking in France. Some of the shots are a bit dodgy, that terrier is clearly untrained
(and I should know) and stone me if they don't celebrate a successful shot by kissing each
other in most unBritish fashion but Tristan is right, "it's quite fun".
Coming from a world where there is no such thing as an ordinary roebuck, TeamWildHunting
is after monster roebucks in Hungary. The hunt is, as usual, 'awesome'. When is it not?
A couple of weeks ago we showed you a film about YouTube gamers putting down their pretend
AK47s and picking up proper Brownings to try out clay pigeon shooting. We explained how
they were becoming famous on YouTube for showing film from video games such as Modern Warfare
while talking about their girlfriends and their exams. Well now there's a spotty Continental
lad called FlabbergastingMe doing the same over footage from a video game called The
Hunter. Dear me - it's just not healthy.
In this film, ASA37MM and his mate Tom test the Econo Can on pistols, rifles, and full
autos. What is the Econo Can? It's one of those mad ideas that land on the gun trade
from time to time: a threaded attachment that allows you to improvise a moderator out of
a car's oil filter. Oh yes. The thing is, as this video shows, it really works. Neil
Hawkins, who sent in the video, says "I'm not sure my local Firearms Liaison Officer
would agree"
Lots of people hated our Test Splat Special series but a handful of you clearly loved
it. Here is a tribute act by Jimbarbwe1985 showing in fabulous slow-mo a CZ .22 rimfire
thumbhole laminated stock with moderator plus Winchester Super X .22LR 40GR subsonic hollowpoint
ammunition shooting lemonade, coke, tomato, milk and apples, all set to Beethoven's Piano
Sonata No 8 in C minor known, as Test Splat Special haters doubtless already know, as
the Pathetic.
What says rabbit shooting on YouTube these days more than the mellifluous Northern Irish
tones of HuntersVermin? In this film, rabbit hunt number 29, things don't go as planned
as he messes up a long range shot and is lucky to pull off a good second shot to finish the
job properly.
Diggers and dogs. That's how to go ratting as this film by AJJ0700 from January 2010
shows. It has had a quarter of a million views in that time, showing the enduring popularity
of rats as a sporting quarry. Dutch viewer Rijk van de Water suggests it for Hunting
YouTube, with the message "Keep up the good work guys! We love your stuff in Holland!"
You are all right, Rijk.
You can click on any of these films to watch them. If you have a YouTube film you would
like us to pop in to the weekly top eight, send it in via YouTube, or email me the link
charlie@fieldsportschannel.tv
If you enjoyed our show this week you might enjoy the Shooting Show. You will see a clip
of it in the sky above my left shoulder just there. Or you can subscribe to us on YouTube
or go to our shows page which is www.youtube.com/show/fieldsportsbritain or indeed our website www.fieldsportschannel.tv
where you will find a link to our Facebook page where you can like us or our Twitter
page where you can follow us. Or best of all scroll down to the bottom of the page where
you will see our constant contact box, pop your email address into that and we will contact
you. This has been Fieldsports Britain.
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