Afield on Airguns | The challenge and joy of hunting with an airgun!

Scope talk

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Jim Chapman

One of the most important aspects of achieving excellent accuracy out of your hunting gun, is the scope that you set on top of it. While it is of course possible to hunt with open sights, as a matter of fact I grew up hunting this way; a scope will invariably provide better results. Especially as you pass through the decades, a scope becomes more and more critical. I find that besides the obvious advantage of magnification, the ability to pick up the target in shade or low light, let’s me hunt earlier in the morning and later into dusk. And when doing pest control in a dark building, a scope with good light transmission characteristics is a big part of being successful.

In the last few weeks I’ve hunted with my airguns in Minnesota, Texas, Arizona, North Dakota, and Indiana. I’ve been out at night, early morning, in bright sun, rain and rough conditions. Looking back at pictures from these trips, I noticed that many of the guns I’d used wore Hawke optics, and it got me motivated to go look in my gun room and see what was getting the most use.

The wolverine is a good platform for the Map Pro 3-9×50, and the scope looks and feels right on this gun

I carried the gun day and night, and always founf the image quality very good

I’ve got many scopes in the collection; at the lower price point Leapers and Center Point, BSA, Hawke, Simmons, Nikko Stirling, Bushnell, and Leupold. I also have the proprietary scopes from AirForce, FX, and other gun manufacturers that often come bundled in package deals. And while there are good to excellent scopes to be found in most manufacturer product lines, I do have my favorites. I think the old adage to buy the best scope you can afford, is sound advice, but I also think there is a place for budget priced scopes even for the serious airgunner.

I’ve been asked several times lately, what is my favorite scope? Let me start off by saying I have over a hundred guns in my personal collection, and a constant flow of loaner guns coming in and out. I like to keep my guns scoped and sighted, so I can pick up any one of them to go out shooting or hunting on short notice. For this reason, I use less expensive scopes on many of these guns for economic reasons. In this class I like many of the Leapers scope; the optical quality, features, controls, and ruggedness belie the budget pricing. But when it comes to my all around favorite scopes, I use Hake products more than any other. I find the optical quality to be excellent, the light transmission outstanding, the scopes are ergonomic and stand up to rough use, and I really like the reticles on many models.

The MAP 6 is a compact probe that goes well on size on a compact gun.

I use mildots of one style or another on all my hunting guns, to have the multiple aimpoints for a reference. I carry a range finder in the field, and have never had much success using the mildots for range finding. I like the MAP6 (Multiple Aim Point) style found on the airgun specific Airmax scopes. I use this scope on my Brocock Specialist, Benjamin Marauder, and Talon-P. The genesis of this scope is derived from Hawkes 30/30 Duplex scope, and vertically has one aiming point above the crosshair and three below, and horizontally two on either side of the crosshair. The three aiming dots below the crosshair are spaced increasingly further apart and corresponds to the arced trajectory of the pellet. You can download Hawkes BRC program, I have it on my iPhone, iPad, and laptop. By entering the rifles velocity, pellet weight and zero point you can calculate how the scopes vertical aimpoints relate to the pellets flight along it trajectory. I like this scope on field guns because it is compact and lightweight.

A bigger scope that I use on my larger rifles, like the Wolverine, is the Eclipse 30 which is a side focus model based on a 30 mm tube and a 50 mm aperture, which works very well in low light conditions. This scope has a magnification of 6-24X, and uses a traditional mildot configuration. My only reservation on this model is that it’s large, which is why I only use it
on my bigger guns where it balances better. I’m using this scope on the gun I’m building up specifically for long range prairie dog shooting of a gun mounted tripod.

I’ve used many Hawke scopes of one model or another over the last five or six years, and regardless of how I abuse them and my guns, they keep working. One of my rifles got knocked out of a stand, the rifles stock broke in half and the scope was knocked of the rails and ended up five feet away. But that scope survived and sits on top of one of my RWS springers today.

Regardless of the brand of scope I mount on my hunting gun, almost all of my small game hunting for rabbit, squirrel, and predators is done with the magnification set at 6-8x. This is especially true if I’ll be shooting offhand, where the higher magnification settings transmit too much jitter. The only time I routinely use a higher magnification is if shooting ground squirrels or prairie dogs, and using a solid rest or off sticks. And if I’m not going to use the higher magnifications I don’t want to confuse my settings or add the extra weight of the variable high power scopes.

What’s up?

I’ve been shooting the Verminator arrow gun this week, and continue to be impressed by the accuracy. I saw my buddy Kip’s video of him taking a hog in Texas and want to do the same hunt myself. Great video if you haven’t seen it, go to youtube and have a look. I also continue to shoot the Brocock Specialist, and have now run approximately 2500 pellets through it. I’m loving this little gun, plenty of power, dead accurate, and I shoot it very well offhand. Can’t wait to get this one into the squirrel woods when fall rolls around.

Have a good time with your airgun, and I’ll catch up with ya’ll later!

Categories: Ground squirrels, Rabbits, scope Hawke, Small Game Hunting, Squirrels | Leave a comment

Guinea Fowl …. the other big bird!

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Jim Chapman

I was talking to one of my friends over in South Africa this morning, asking what the conditions were like and how the wildlife had made it through the hot summer months, when he mentioned that there were lots of Guinea fowl over on one of our other buddy’s properties. This piqued my interest, as these large birds are one of my favorite African small game species to hunt with an airgun …. And also the first animal I shot in Africa with an airgun many years ago.

A very pretty bird, the Guinea fowl is one of those anilmals, like the warthog, that scream Africa at me. One of my favorite airgun quarry anywhere in the world!

Guinea fowl have the body size of a goose, but are shaped rather like a huge polka dotted quail, with a cartilage helmet on their heads and a bright red moustache. They travel in flocks, sometimes very large flocks, and travel over the ground foraging. When threatened they will take off on a fast run, only exploding into the air as a last resort. Talk about confusing a predator, if you’ve ever kicked up a covey of quail, imagine 20 or 30 birds the size of a small turkey bursting into the sky all around you! These birds are as wary as turkey, but instead of 5-6 sets of eyes on look out you have 10 or 20 times that number watch for signs of danger. It is a challenge to sneak up on, or get in front of and ambush, actively feeding birds.

I’ve hunted these birds in the bush on the Eastern cape, at a family friends vineyard down south, and as pest control quarry in my mother in laws garden down near the Capetown coast line. My favorite technique, and the most productive, is to figure out out where the birds are feeding and get into position wearing full camo so that an ambush can be set. You need to wear gloves and a face mask, and be perfectly still. Like turkeys, they will pick up on the slightest motion. I haven’t tried calling them yet, but am looking for a sound to go on my FoxPro, and would like to try next September on our trip down. They are vocal birds and have a unique call, I just can’t replicate it.

Many guns suit the bill for these birds, I like a standard caliber gun of at least mid power. I took several with this Marauder .25 caliber on one trip, using head shots or a placement at the base of the neck.

I’ve used a range of guns for Guinea fowl over the years; Quackenbush .25, .308, .457 (over-kill), Marauder .177, .22, and .25, my Dragonslayer .50 with roundball, Falcon .22, and a number of other rifles of varying power and caliber. While the larger calibers let you reliably take body shots and drop birds consistently, I like a standard caliber gun and taking head shots or hitting them at the base of the neck, which is also my preferred shot placement for turkey. In standard caliber guns, my preference is for a medium to heavy round nose pellet, and I’ve had a lot of success with JSB Exacts and Crosman Premiers.

Come on…. what’s not to love? My mother in law makes a great stew with these birds, from a recipie she learned growing up on a farm in the Transvaal

On my next trip, I will use the Verminator in .25 caliber and think the arrow barrel and carbon fiber bolts will be especially effective, but we’ll see come September. I haven’t decided, but think the Wolverine .303 will travel with me on this trip as well, which will also be an interesting Guinea fowl gun, as I think the .303 JSB pellets will be the right blend of penetration, energy transfer, and generation of a large wound channel …. But again we’ll see!

What else?

Just got back in from an interesting hunt in North Dakota over the weekend; I shot a coyote (with my .223 ) and got lots of Richardson’s ground squirrels, which look and act like small prairie dogs. I was shooting about 60-70 per day, and put the Verminator and the Brocock specialist to work. Both were effective and accurate, but the big .25 caliber pellets out of the Verminator were really impressive! Will write up more on this trip later. Currently selecting the site of my next hunt ……

Categories: bird hunting, Destinations, Safari, Small Game Hunting | Tags: Africa, airgun hunting, bird hunting, Guinea Fowl | Leave a comment

Shooting the Veminator Extreme!

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Jim Chapman

There are a lot of new airguns coming out these days, and I’m lucky because I get to shoot many of them. I like a lot of rifles, and try to keep an open mind when looking at new offerings. If we all liked the same thing, there would only need to be one gun, right? And while I like many guns, and can even understand what might be appealing to some shooter or situations even when not my cup of tea, there aren’t a lot of guns I couldn’t do without. The gun I will talk about this week is one I really would not want to do without; it’s become a constant companion on many hunts this year, and has performed brilliantly even when I haven’t.

I’ve been shooting the Verminator II for over a year now, and have carried it on jackrabbit hunts in Arizona, prairie dogs in South Dakota, tree squirrels in Michigan, crows in Indiana and raccoons in Texas …… so besides lots of shooting at targets, I’ve spent a lot of time doing what this gun was designed to do ….. hunting! I’ve also used it for things I’ve never tried with an air rifle; I arrowed carp in a stream, and missed (but still trying for) a coyote with another one of the carbon fiber bolts included in the kit! The Verminator Extreme package is a compartmentalized briefcase containing the dismounted airtank/buttstock, shrouded barrel, moderator extension, rifles scope, crossbow scope, arrow barrel, and four carbon fiber bolts (arrows). The only thing that is missing, and that a prospective owner might want to add, is the short shrouded barrel.

Though the Verminator Xtreme package has just about everything a hunter could want, I’m going to add one of the short barrels to make it just about the perfect all around hunting kit!

With the long barrel, this gun has been a really outstanding performer on my prairie dog hunts, letting me snip dogs out to the century mark with consistency, and the big .25 caliber pellets knocks the dogs flat!

My previous Verminator came with the shorty barrel and is an ultra-compact gun that will be a great backpacking gun this summer, not to mention the high shot count will keep me going for a weekend trip. In this configuration I use an AR style sling arrangement.

The gun itself is based on the proven sidelever FX Royale breech block and rotary magazine design. The take-down feature is provided by the removable 400 cc tank, which sometimes takes a couple attempts to get started, but otherwise is simple to mount and locks firmly and securely in place. The adjustable butt piece that slides over the air bottle makes this (in my opinion) the most comfortable and ergonomic “bottle in the back” rifle on the market. I’m able to get a good sight alignment even with the higher profile scope mounts needed to clear the magazine. With scope, sling, and various attachment the gun comes in at a manageable 7 or so pounds; which considering the high shot count makes it a great field gun.

The eleven shot magazine is solidly built and uses an internal spring mechanism to reliably index the pellets as the sidelever is cycled. In thousands of shots the only problem was of my own device… I loaded it backwards. It’s the typical FX loading system, the first pellet drops in skirt first, then flip the magazine over and feed the rest in head first. It’s probably not something I should admit to, but I’m usually so excited when a new gun comes the first thing I want to do is shoot it……. getting to the user guide and documentation later. This caused me some difficulty when I got my first magazine fed FX rifle a long time back, but as soon as I did the smart thing, looked into the instructions and saw the proper way to feed it, I never looked back. Well, except the one time I loaded it backwards….. But in terms of reliability, this is a rifle I trust in completely, from putting it together, cycling the action, to sending the pellet down range exactly on target: the Verminator II has proven itself to me.

The Verminator shares some attributes with its sibling FX guns, such as the Gladiator (above) and the Royale rifles …. a strong genealogy!

The arrow barrel is a small gage tube that screws in and is locked in with a large knurled knob that holds it very securely. The distal end of this barrel has a rim that both stabilized the bolt on the barrel, and also helps form a seal to ensure all the released air is channeled behind the bolt. I will sometimes leave the rifle scope on if switching back and forth between pellet and arrows, but this requires the shooter to use the bar below the mildots and guesstimate hold, so for serious (hunting) applications swapping over to the crossbow scope and check zero is the way to go. But the gun is very accurate in archery mode, I can put arrow after arrow into a two inch group at 25 yards, which is something I’ll never achieve with an actual bow. This is one of the guns we’ll be taking with us to Africa in a few months, and I think it’s going to be perfect for Guinea fowl!

It takes about two minutes to swap out the barrel, then slip on a crossbow bolt and your ready to go!

I’m using the rifle scope here which is alright for impromptu plinking, but the crossbow scope included in the kit lets you deliver arrows with excellent accuracy.

I shot this tag on a tree at 30 yards. I can’t wait to after Guinea fowl with this rig down on the Eastern cape!

Upcoming Plans

I’ve got a few thing on my radar; had an invite to do a prairie dog hunt in North Dakota hit my email inbox last night, and I’m looking at my schedule to see if next weekend or the following will work out. If you’re a Predator Xtreme reader, I will be doing a few pieces in the Passport to Adventure section that will tell you how to book trips to some of the places I’ve been hunting, which range from guided hunts on private land to DIY hunts on public lands and everything in between. I haven’t decided which guns and gear to take along yet. I’m just hoping my airtanks are back and ready for the trip, I went down to the paintball store to fill them this morning, and found that of my six carbon fiber tanks five need to be hydro’d! They said they would try to rush them, but I may end up Dakotas bound with one tank and a hand pump……

Another item on my plate is preparation for South Africa in September (6^th – 15^th). I’ve got everything lined up with my friends and PH’s Rob Dell and Andrew Myers, it’s going to be an exclusive airgunning safari in which we’ll be taking big game and small and predators in the mix. There will be many high quality airguns available. If you’ve ever wanted to hunt Africa, this is probably one of the most fun and most unique airgunning hunts ever. It’s not cheap, but in context it’s less than the cost of the average whitetail hunt in the Midwest. We’ve got a couple slots open, and if you want to come along you can contact either Kip at AoA or me.

Well, that’s it for me this week. I’m going to get out for some shooting in the morning, and also want to get in a long hike. Since I’m new to the area I’m taking every opportunity to get out and scout the surrounding land looking for areas to hunt. I’m also stopping by local farms looking for permissions to varmint and pest control on, and am building a pretty good list of places to go. Hope everyone is off to a good start on their summer, snd I’ll be posting again next weekend.

Categories: arrow gun, arrows, Destinations, Hunting Accessories, Pest Control, Predator hunting, Safari, summer time hunts | Tags: airgun hunting, FX rifles, FX Verminator Extreme | Leave a comment

On to the Rockchucks!

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Jim Chapman

In the blog this week, I’ll carry on with the airgunning adventure started last week. I am spending more time in Arizona for a couple reasons; first I have always loved this state; from the pine covered mountains up north to what I consider the most beautiful desert in the world, the unique Sonoran with its stands of saguaro cactus, holding a lot of the species (jack rabbit, squirrel, prairie dogs, and as of last year you can hunt quail) airgunner target. But the laws are expanding to allow larger game with airguns as well, and this may well be the first place to legally take a javalina with air power, which has been something I’ve been waiting on for years!

Up above the lowlands where we hunted jackrabbits and cottontails, we got into the rugged territory where these Northern Arizona ground squirrels called rockchucks live.

So the other part of my trip out to AZ last week, was to shoot rockchucks. The areas we hunt jackrabbit, cottontail, rockchuck and prairie dogs has some overlap, that is to say when out hunting cottontail in the hill areas there is always a chance that you might kick up a cottontail, or when chasing cottontail in the jumble of rock and blown down cedars you may find a small group of rockchucks, etc. However, there are very distinctive landscapes where the majority of game you’ll find is one or the other. Last week I spoke a bit about the rabbit hunting, and this week I’ll talk a bit about the rockchuck focused hunts.

First let me say, that when I talk about rockchucks the animal I’m talking about is a marmot like critter, a compact version of the eastern groundhog. I’ve shot these in Colorado and the western mountain regions, they are solitary animals that live at higher elevations in my experience. That is not what we’re hunting in Northern Arizona, what they call a rockchuck here is a larger ground squirrel that lives in the jagged rock outcroppings and in less rugged hilly regions makes it’s home in the boulders and flagstone heaps scattered through the country side. If there are some blown down cedars or junipers all the better. Besides being somewhat larger than the coastal and high desert California ground squirrels I grew up hunting, these have a more colorful coat. But the main behavioral difference I see, is that the coastal California ground squirrels (that we called gray diggers) were communal animals. Where you found one you’d find lots. However the AZ variety appear more solitary, we’d never find more than a few in an area. But now that I think about it, the gray diggers in the high desert area were usually in smaller clusters than those in the coastal regions (in towns like prairie dogs), maybe its more a response to the environmental stresses more than a behavior of the species.

Continuing my current love affair with the Brocock specialist, it’s not hard to guess what gun I took along. This gun is compact, light, accurate, and moderately powerful. Good news on a long trek through the desert.

At any rate, the gun I choose will not be a surprise if you read last weeks blog post, I took the Brocock Specialist again. The area I was going to hike over was rugged, the temperature high, and I wanted to be as unencumbered as possible. This little gun is about the lightest full power (20 fpe) rifle I’ve ever carried, and fitted with my emergency sling which requires not studs to use, this gun could almost be forgotten when I was climbing up the rocks. Some of the rockchucks we’d spot while driving down a road, which we’d pile out of the truck and try to creep up on. Others could be spotted up in the rocks and still others you’d walk up on while on a walk about, but for the most part if you scared them they kicked it into high gear and you didn’t see them again! The .22 caliber Specialist had been sighted in with a 50 yard zero using the 14.3 grain JSB Exacts, and man is this little gun accurate!

I found the gun very shootable as well; the cut-away buttstock and pistol grip made it easy to get a consistent and comfortable hold on the gun.

I won’t go into a blow by blow on the squirrels taken, but I will tell you that the gun was a hammer on those I shot out to 70 or 80 yards. I look forward to bringing this out for prairie dogs in the near future, so I can get in some high volume long range shooting with the gun. Small, powerful, accurate …. sounds awful . What’s the downside? The only one I can honestly point out is that at 20 full power shots it is a lower shot capacity than most guns in this range. That may be a nuisance in high volume shooting, and in this cases I’ll simply slip a buddy bottle into my pack or plan my hunts so I sweep back by the truck for an occasional top off. But for most of my hunts where I want a gun producing to the Specialists performance spec, 20 shoots is a days hunting even if I screw the pooch on a lot of shots (we have a 5 squirrel 5 rabbit limit where I live) and even if I miss every other shot, this should get me through. Also it’s a lot easier to fill if I’m on the road and using a handpump…… which is a consideration that came home hard on a recent trip where I had a bottle fed gun that need to be manually filled……

Got a fair amount of squirrel shooting in, the sun is going down and it’s starting to cool off a bit …… time to get read for rabbits again!

At the end of the day, we shot several of these rock jumping rodents, I got my exercise in climbing the rocks in the 90+ heat, and I really enjoyed using this rifle. It’s worth mentioning that because of my limited time, when I go on a hunt I hunt hard day and night, needing to get as much experience/photo/video material as possible. As a consequence I’m often out in the less productive times of the day, and one of the things I love about prairie dogs and ground squirrels is that they stay active during the heat of day. As a matter of fact this is often the most productive time to be out, so when the rabbits or predators start to slow down later in the morning or before dusk sets in, a hunter willing to deal with the heat and burning sun can get some incremental shooting opportunity in!

I’ve become a big cheerleader for Hawke, I’ve always like their scopes and innovative reticles…… but these binos are a great value!

I’d also mention that on a trip like this, a good quality binocular is a fantastic piece of gear to have along. You will be surprised at the number of squirrels you’ll find watching you from within a cluster rocks or blown over trees, that you will miss with the naked eye. The glass I’m using right now is Hawke Optics Frontier 10×42, which I am a huge fan of for a few reasons: first and foremost this quality of glass in a sub $800 binocular is mind blowing to me, I’ve used a lot of binoculars in this lower/mid tier price point over the years, but this is optical quality I expect out of a much more expensive product. But the other part is that they are ergonomic, lightweight and easy to hold for long glassing sessions, and easy to adjust. Binoculars are an item of kit a lot of airgunners don’t carry, but along with a range finder and a knife is one I never leave home with out.

So next hunts coming up, think I’m going to head up to North Dakota next weekend to see if the prairie dogs are popping up yet….. I’m working on the details right now…. camp or motel, what guns and gear, and the logistics for the trip? With my new base in MN and SD/ND right up the road, I’m like a kid in a candy shop trying to decide where to next…….

Categories: Destinations, Ground squirrels, Hunting Accessories, Pest Control, Predator hunting, Small Game Hunting, Squirrels | Tags: airgun hunting, pest control, Rockchucks, squirrel hunting | 2 Comments

Jackrabbits, Rockchucks, Great Guns, and Friends!

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Jim Chapman

I’ve had a great couple days out in Arizona, hunting jackrabbits and rockchucks (groundsquirrels) with the AoA gang: my usual hunting partner out this way Kip and this time we were joined by Robert and Gregg (who readers of this blog know as the AoA power hitters). We drove about three hours north of Phoenix to base out of Seligmen, staying once again in the Canyon Inn on the historic Route 66.

Taking aim with the Brocock Specialist, it was love at first sight when I was handed this handy little carbine, and the performance did not let me down! This gun was so handy to move around with, and when it came time to shoot it was a proverbial tackdriver

At 20 fpe with the JSB 14.3 grain roundnose, this gun let me reach out further than its diminutive size might lead you to think it capable of. It hammered these big desert hares as well or better than anything I shot on the weekend.

We wanted to do a prairie dog hunt as well, but while there were dogs everywhere we looked, they are a pest species with a season which doesn’t open until later in the summer. But that was OK, because there are spots in the area we’ve hunted before that are known to be loaded with the big desert jackrabbits. Most of our American readers knows this, but for those in other countries let me tell you about the jackrabbit; it is a very large hare, that lives in our western deserts and grasslands. It lives in the open, is very wary and very fast, and breeds like ….. well, like rabbits. the can get up to 11-12 lb, and they can consume a lot of grass which can be an issue in the more arid cattle ranching areas they thrive in. Over the years I’ve often said these are one of my favorite airgun quarry, because you spot and stalk them more like hunting deer than typical small game.

The other quarry we had our sights on were the northern AZ ground squirrels that the locals call rockchucks. these rodents are less gregarious than the California ground squirrels (commonly called gray diggers) that I grew up shooting out on the left coast. Mostly they are found in small family groups, more typically a couple or small cluster are encountered in isolated areas of rocks and cliff, and they don’t let you get too close unless the approach is done with a lot of care.

Kip and I with one of the many doubles we scored, I was using the Daystate Air Ranger .22 an he was using his FX Royale 400 this go around. I was like a kid in a candy store as we swapped rifles back and forth during the course of the shoot.

In terms of guns, we had some great ones: this is always a big plus when you got the main guys from one of the biggest airgun companies in the country going out with you, they have all the cool toys! We had the Daystate Ranger, Wolverine .303, the first Wolverine .22 (the first one in the USA anyways), The FX Royale, and the little gun I fell instantly in love with, the Brocrock specialist. Robert knows that I am a major fan of the compact hunting rifle/carbine, and always manages to get one gun into the mix that I’m going to fixate on, and this time it was the .22 caliber specialist. However, everyone of these guns is a winner, and we used them all on the 3 or so dozen jackrabbits, number of cottontails and several rockchucks we piled up. Kip and I did most of the shooting, and poor Greg got the duties of cameraman. It’s fair to say that we got some great footage that will be coming out in various video productions in the near future. Roberts another one of those airgun business owners that knows how to shoot, and he got some really nice long range shots in.

Day two and half awake, but already into my forth or fifth jack of the morning. This one fell to the Wolverine ……. .22! This is the first of this gun in this caliber on our shores, and a pleasure to shoot. We had both the .303 and the .22 along, but as I own the former, tried to stay focused on the .22.

I’ll be releasing a number of articles about the guns, the hunt, the gear and the quarry, in the next few blogs. and in this one want to tell you a bit about the Brocock Specialist. This is probably the smallest, most compact, best shooting, lightweight hunting carbines I’ve ever shot. Unlike the 12 fpe British configuration I’d read about in the British Airgun Shooter magazine. the gun AoA is importing is a little 20 fpe firecracker, giving three cycles of the 6 pellet rotary magazine before a fill is required. In those rare instances I’ll need more than 20 shots in a hunt, I’ll slip a buddy bottle into my pack. but man this gun is a pleasure to carry! I took off on a couple of long hikes with this gun, where I had to climb the jagged cliffs and jumbled rockpiles, and the lightweight synthetic technical style stock was easy to carry in the no-stud sling I’d brought along (my loaner guns almost never have swivel studs installed, but I’ll probably carry the Specialist I ordered in an AR type three point sling.

This gun comes right to the shoulder, can be maneuvered and pointed even in some of the heavier brush we encountered, and the cut-away buttstock and ergonomic pistol grip let me achieve a consistent and solid hold. The gun I was shooting was wearing a Hawke 3-9×40 MAP6 scope, which was the perfect size to complement this gun, and I’ve always felt their scopes provide very good optical quality in general, but if you look at the value for money they are exceptional. I was shooting JSB 14.3 domed pellets in the 800′s, producing an honest 20 fpe gun. I didn’t have a chrony on this trip, but found the shot to shot variation pretty mild until shot 20, then it stepped off the cliff…… no problem, just top off every third to forth magazine. Again, I wasn’t doing quantitative range work, but at 50 yards I could jump a ping-pong ball sized rock all over the place without a miss. And when out hunting the gun, put down everything I aimed it at, putting down several big jacks out to 80 yards. This gun was especially deadly at 50 yards, where between the intrinsic accuracy with a great hunting pellet, and the terminal ballistics being just right on the medium sized airgun quarry, it was an effective combination for me. I’ll be doing a full write up and a lot more hunts with this gun in coming weeks.

I also go a lot of shooting in with the .22 Wolverine, which was of particular interest for me as I’ve used it’s big brother (the .303) on predator and long range varminting since it was released to market. I know from personal experience that in .303 this gun does the job on bobcats inside of 75 yards, and is a hammer on raccoons and jackrabbits out to a 100 yards. However on jackrabbits at closer ranges, say 35 yards, the pellet from the .303 can ice pick the animal, allowing it to run 100 yards before it realizes it’s dead. I’d wondered if a smaller caliber with a less mass might provide a better dump of energy on these shots. And it certainly seems to! This gun was also strong medicine on jackrabbits, for the most part rolling them from the closer to the longer range shots. Of course this gun has the accuracy expected from a Daystate product, and Kip and I got some good doubles with him shooting the .303 and me the .22 version of the gun…….. both are superb hunting rifles.

We brought the FX Royale 400 along……. somebody had been using the Boss .303 on an earlier hunt and neglected to pack the rifle for our trip……….grrrr……… But it’s all good because that Royale .25 is one of my favorite bottle fed guns ever! As a matter of fact two of my most productive prairie dog trips ever were done on a two day trip using the Royale 500 on a hunt with my son, then I did a five day follow up on another ranch in the area with the Verminator, which is one of my most used hunting guns. On this outing, Robert, Kip, and I all shot the Royale to take some 80-100 yards jackrabbits.With the innovative smooth twist barrels pioneered and used by FX, every one of their guns I’ve shot over the least couple years have been absolute tack drivers. I will use the Boss .303 on a few hunts later this summer and will have a lot more to tell you about this gun then. I’ll be on my way out to North Dakota next week, and will hopefully be racking up my first Pdogs of the season with the Boss, no doubt my ever present verminator will be there!

The other bit of kit worth a mention are the Hawke Frontier ED Binoocular, I was using my 10X which were perfect for the long range spotting of hidding jacks back in the sometimes heavy brush. The quality of glass used on these mid priced optics is surprisingly good (because a quality set of glass can easily cost more than your gun), and was a great aid in the low light early dawn and end of the day “last rays of the sun” dusk shooting that are the most productive.

So Stay tuned …… more to come on our outing in upcoming posts.

Categories: Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Rambling on about airgun stuff

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Jim Chapman

Well, this week’s blog post is going to cover several topics; I had a hunt in Texas last week where I had the chance to shoot predators using the Wolverine, and next week I’m off to Arizona where I’ll get to meet up with my buddies from AoA, Kip and I are going to take some different (for me) guns out to shoot prairie dogs, rabbits, rockchuck, and then circle back to a big dairy farm for some good old fashion pest control work. I reckon we’ll get lots of shooting in. Which is a great aspect to airgunning right now, no problems getting ammo. I don’t know if you tried to by any .22 rimfire ammo lately, but it is dry! I’ve gone to 3 different Cabelas, Bass pro, several Walmarts, Fleets, Dicks, Gander Mountain…. And there is not a box of .22 LR to be found. I’ve been able to pick up some .17 HMR, but no .17 Mach II anywhere, but to make matters worse nobody has an idea when any will become available. I’ve also been told at several stores that if I do happen to catch it when it comes in, my purchase will be limited to 2 fifty round boxes!! Nice to know I have many thousands of .22 pellets, I’ll never be blocked from small game hunting or pest control.

I’ve been using a new call, the Primos Alpha Dogg, and being a confirmed FoxPro guy am really impressed by the quality and volume of sound coming out of this digital caller. There is a library of 75 sounds and that can be extended, but what I’m real interested in working more with are the “Expert Hunts” that mix multiple sounds into a set, that focuses on specific situations like denning, mating, territorial calls…… these sets let you leverage the experts to both call in predators and improve your calling technique. I also like the big easy to use controls and menu selections, as I have the tendency to fat finger the smaller keyboards and mess up my sets. I’ll be working up the crow calls when I get back, as I’m seeing a lot of corvid activity around the local farms I have permission to hunt.

I’ve been setting up my office/airgun room in the new house, and have a closet that’s being converted into a gun and equipment locker. I’ve got calls, scopes, guns, pellets, daypack, shooting sticks and all manner of gear crammed in and am trying to design a storage system that gives me room for 40-50 guns (the ones I use most out of my collection) and easy access to all the other stuff I need. A few posts back a reader asked to see my collection and I’ll include some pictures here. It’s all coming together, however I don’t have the wall space that was available in my old house ……. Two of my three kids are gone to college so we took the opportunity to downsize when we made this move, which works great except for my gun room! I’ve got a basement of my mounts which represent some of the first legal deer taken with airgun in the USA, and several trophies from several of my airgun hunts in Africa…… will have to find a new home for them!

Setting up the new writing room, I rotate my favorite to look at airguns, or those with a lot of memories attached, in the display case

All the trophies, horns, tusks etc air from airgun hunts. I have a whole collection of shoulder and European mounts with no wall space to hang them! The fun vcomes when the closet door opens and you take a look inside.

Some other gums from my collection, I’ve got more stashed in the basement, the garage, and out on loan to my buddies. I tried to explain to my wife; it’s like kayaks and fishing gear…. you can never have too much.

I don’t know if you read the British Airgun press, but one of the writers from Airgun Shooter, which is a magazine I do an “occasional series” for (which means a feature every other month), has just come out with an excellent little tome on the British airgun hunting experience. The hunter/writers name is Ian Barnett and the book is AIRGUN FIELDCRAFT A lifetime’s hunting advice. It’s a very good read, and though the quarry is limited and the environment does not offer a great deal of variety compared to what we have in North America, Mr. Barnett definitely knows his stuff and even a hunter with a lot of experience will take something away from the read. One thing I appreciate about the British airgunners is that very often airguns comprise their whole hunting world, and they approach it with the same seriousness and thoughtfulness as any whitetail or turkey addict on this side of the pond.

As long as I’m talking about the press, I have an article in Fur Fish and Game this month on predator hunting with .30 caliber airguns, which is a theme that keeps coming up if you follow my writing. I really like this caliber for a predator gun and have a lot more to come on the subject. Over in Predator Xtreme I have an interview with Dennis Quackenbush who I think it is fair to say is the father of the modern big bore airgun, and a feature article in the Passport to Adventure series on setting up a semi-guided prairie dog hunt in Kansas. I’ll be adding to this series with a number of hunting opportunities for airgunners at destinations around the country. Not to be too self-serving, but there are not many publications on our shores that have material on airguns, and when they do include an article it’s typically written by an author that is not very airgun savvy…… support those magazines that support our sport.

I’ve got boxes and boxes of .30 caliber projectiles from Benjamin, Hunter Supply, BHD, and Mr Hollowpoint, and pellets from JSB, Daystate and Eun Jin that I’ve been shooting out of several guns this year.

The blog post might be a bit late next week, as I won’t break from hunting to write!! Call me a slacker, but that’s the way I roll….. But when I come back on line I should have some good material, with some interesting guns. Talk to you then!

Categories: Hunting Accessories, Predator hunting, Small Game Hunting | Tags: accessories, airgun hunting, gear, rants and rambles | Leave a comment

Wolverine and Bobcat

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Jim Chapman

I’ve just spent the last several days hunting down in Texas, and we had to work around suboptimal conditions. I knew going in that April is not a good time, a lot of predators are already denned up, it was forecasted to be unseasonably warm, vegetation is heavy and even when animals come in to the call, they can be hard to see…… but hey, hunting in bad conditions is better than not hunting right? In the end what was toughest on us was the wind! We had gust over 30 mph up in west and central parts of the state, which caused us to pack up and quite literally, run for the border. We ended up hunting the second night at my friends son in laws ranch about a hundred miles south of San Antonio. In four days we drove almost 1000 miles, hunting day and night when not driving. I estimate we slept 12 hours in 4 days and 3 nights of hunting, calling most of the night and much of the day. My tally at the end was three cats, a fox, lots of raccoons, a missed coyote (shot was on the run, I couldn’t get him to stop). We had a lot more stuff come in, but they were skittish because of the wind, and wouldn’t come close or spooked easily.

The .303 caliber makes a lot of sense in a predator gun. The gun is accurate, high shot capacity, very nice trigger, and for a large gun fairly light…. I like this one a lot!

I’ll tell you about a hunt with the Wolverine as I’ve been promising, I have to use the other material for articles I’m committed to write. But before that I’ll tell you about the 9 hogs killed, that almost killed us. We started the first night out for pigs, the technique we use is to drive the ranch roads where the brush borders crops, and glass for pigs. Once spotted, we stalk into shooting range, and using night vision on an AR type .223 and try to drop as many as we can. This is pure pest control, these pigs are causing a lot of damage and impacting this ranchers financial well being, and he wants them gone. We saw nothing more than the backside of a couple fleeing porkers. Around 3am we decided to call it a night, the wind was howling and based on the weather forecasted we’d decided to drive south for predators in the morning. We took off to return to my friends property and get what might be the last good nights sleep for a few days.

We were screaming down a country highway doing about 70 mph, and was busy fiddling with some item of gear when I looked up just in time to see a herd of maybe 40-50 pigs coming flying out of a field and across the road directly in front of us! I said “oh gosh” ( or something to that effect) as my buddy barreled through the middle of them. Don is a native Texan and told me he learned long ago not to swerve, but rather break gradually and go straight on. It was piggy Armageddon, when we rolled back off the side of the road, we found nine dead, including a couple big ones. If we hadn’t been in a humvee with a bull bar up front it could have been as messy for us as it was for the hogs.

At any rate, the next day found us rolling into Don’s daughter and son in laws ranch in the late afternoon. We unloaded our gear and made room in the truck, the son in law Tony was going to join us, and quickly got everything sorted out. He manages this property, which is in the business of raising genetically superior whitetail deer, that are sold for breeding stock in areas where the native deer are at the shallow end of the gene pool. When you have deer on the property worth many thousands of dollars, tolerance for predators goes down quickly. They have had problems with both coyote and bobcats killing fawns and have been trapping and calling pretty aggressively trying (without success) to eradicate them.

We were using Don’s humvee with a 2 seat shooting bench and calling tower mounted atop, and making a stand every half mile. The call Don likes is the FoxPro series, which has always been my goto as well, though lately I’ve been using the Primos Alpha Dogg with good results. At this time of year we focus on distress calls, jackrabbit, cottontail, rodent, woodpecker being the more frequently used. You never know what’s going to show up, but the cats, raccoons, and gray fox like the bird and rodent sounds and the coyotes like the rabbits. We also mix it up with mouth calls like the min blaster, and we will “smootch” them in once they’ve moved in on a call.

I should camo the gun, but it’s so nice to look at! I’ll do a wrap with camo tape before my next hunt.

The gun I selected for this trip was the Daystate Wolverine .303 using the Emperor roundnose pellets. We were targeting bobcats, and I thought this would be a great gun for these medium sized predators. The first few calls were a bust, with nothing showing up. Then a pair of raccoons charged in on the fifth call, then a coyote on the next (but it didn’t hang around) then it went dead again. At about 3AM we were about to call it a night and decided to do one more set. About 30 seconds into the call we spotted a cat moving down the hillside towards, that hung up in the bush about 70 yards away. I was zeroed at 50 yards, so held a bit high and squeezed the trigger, and shot right over it’s head. A latter walk through showed that I’d judged the distance wrong and the cat was 50 yards away, not 70. We immediately started smootching (making a squeaking sound), but nothing. About 10 minutes later we caught the glow of eyes reflected from out red filtered lamps, the cat (if it was the same one) had moved about 150 yards to out right, and was about 60 yards from our position. He was walking and I couldn’t get him to stop, so I followed him through the scope and sent the pellet flying. It took the cat broadside and knocked him over, then after a minute of thrashing he got up and started moving, but we found him dead about 70 yards away (not easy at night in the thick bush).

So after a few jackrabbit and prairie dog hunts I finally had the chance to use the Wolverine on the game I thought it was made for! I will say that for bigger stuff like bobcats and coyote, I think I’ll take the headshot when possible, especially if it’s much further than 50 yards. The Wolverine sends a large diameter chunk of downrange, but it is at the lower end of the power spectrum for predator hunting (perfect for suburban applications). For the smaller predator like fox and raccoons, I have no problem with body shots. This rifle is very shootable, it has a great feel for a “thumbs up” shooting position, it has a very nice trigger, and it is accurate! The high shot count is a plus, however I wish it allowed the hunter to trade off shot count for power. I’d be willing to give up 4-5 shots to get another 30 fpe out of it when needed. While the rifle is a jewel as is, that extra power would allow the hunter to reach out a bit further with a body shot.

On another front, if you are a reader of my website “americanairgunhunter.com” you may have noticed a lack of new content over the last couple of months. I have been updating it and will release a new format at the end of April, with new video content as well. Stay tuned. I’ll be out in Phoenix in a couple weeks with my friends at AoA, Kip and I are going to do a prairie dog/rabbit hunt and a dairy farm pest control outing with some new guns, which is always fun!

Categories: Big Bore Airguns, Predator hunting | Tags: bobcat, predator | 4 Comments

What to Hunt as Summer Rolls Around?

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Jim Chapman

As I get used to my new home in the Far(ther) North, there have been several things surrounding my hobby that require attention; find out about airgun laws, find out about hunting laws, find out where to get my air tanks filled (I go through lots of air) and find places to shoot and hunt. I live in the burbs, and though our house is on a ¾ acre lot, there are no fences allowed and our yards all merge into a kind of centralized park …… great for the kids, not so much for a shooting range.

One of my first tasks was to go through the hunting regulations, to get an idea of what I could hunt, when I could use my airguns, and when it was allowed to hunt. Finding a place to hunt has been fairly painless, I’ve asked for permission to hunt varmint and predators at five farms and a hunt club to date, and only been turned down once. That’s great odds and bodes well for my varmint and predator outings. I’m also planning my first big game bow hunts up North (for bear and deer) I’ll probably use an outfitter this year.

Out in the Mojave Desert in summer the temperatures reach 110 degrees with some regularity, but it’s a dry heat … and not too bad if you get out early.

Jackrabbits in the Texas chapperal are a favorite hunt, you get lots of stalking, lots of shot opportunities, and it keeps you on your game.

But even more to the point, I’m only a short few hours from South and North Dakota, and one day prairie dog shoots are now feasible! To me, prairie dogs are THE summer airgunning quarry, going out with the expectation of 100 shots per day is a realistic objective. If you live in, or are close to the states that have huntable p-dog populations, this is an airgunning hunt I’d highly recommend…. It doesn’t get much better!

Out west jackrabbits keep me hunting through the hot months, either walking them up in daylight or sniping them at night. Spot and stalking a jackrabbit in the daylight hours can be a cat and mouse proposition, as the old smart ones will work around you rather than bolting outright. This is more like shooting a deer on the ground than hunting cottontails out east.

But the guys out east have their own sport, another summer hunt that I enjoy is groundhogs. Most guys shoot these with small bore centerfires from a long ways off (like prairie dogs), which is more about shooting than hunting. But go out with a high power pcp and the objective of a 50-75 yard kill, and it becomes a hunt! The animals are very hard to get up close to, and taking one with an air rifle on open farmlands is a real challenge.

Prairie dogs are worth traveling for; last year I went to Arizona, Utah, Texas, Kansas, and South Dakota. This year I am going to try some of the other states where they can be hunted that I’ve not yet tried.

And almost anywhere in North America, pigeons can be found in numbers; it’s legal to take them with airgunsin just about every State across the country. If you have a place to hunt around livestock feed yards, or industrial buildings the shooting can be intense.

The gear is about the same as that used during fall/winter hunts …. Obviously you have to match your camo to the surroundings which means a lot more green mixed in. I like the 3D leafy bug suits, as they are much cooler to wear when the weather starts to heat up. I wear a mesh face cover to keep the bugs away, and also use liberal applications of insect repellent. Speaking of bugs, at this time of year check yourself in the field and especially when you get home to make sure no tick have latched on along the way. Also, if your going to shoot summertime prairie dogs with an airgun it means getting up a lot closer than sniping with a centerfire; as you walk along getting close to the towns watch your step, the rattler like to come out hunting them also. Every year I come a rattle away from sitting or stepping on one.

There are a few states that offer spring squirrel hunts, always a good reason to visit Kentucky!

Make sure you have plenty of water along; I take a couple bottles which I freeze the night before and drink as they melt…. This is a much needed relief on the very hot days deeper into summer. Just remember the hot months might require a change in game plan, but you’ll always be able to find something that will provide the rush of the hunt and keep your skill sharpened!

Now that this piece is written, I’m running out the door for the airport …. I’m flying out to Texas for a predator hunt and hope to have some good material to share next week.

Categories: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Head Shot Or Chest Shots

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Jim Chapman

I’ve been airgun hunting for about four decades now, and over that time I’ve come across two topics that raise passions, divide hunting camps and lead to arguments between hunting buddies that go on ad infinatum – mainly what is the best hunting caliber and secondly what is the best shot placement, head or chest? The latter is the topic of my blog post this week.

A head shot from the .25 caliber Verminator anchored this prairie dog at approximate 75 yards.

But so did these chest shots.

I grew up hunting small game and big game with firearms, and even then I was always struck by a dichotomy; my hunting mentors, the gurus writing in the magazines, the conventional wisdom from the hunting community in general was that you never took a head shot on big game. They said your chances of wounding an animal was too great, that a fluffed shot could damage the animals jaw and sentence it to slow starvation, and that the only ethical shot was a heart lung placement. But then I’d read about elephant or buffalo taken with head shots, or hear about dangerous game taken with head shots when a quick kill was required. I accepted that these animals were bigger and the brain shot was a larger target than a deers brain, and the situation for the hunter was was more “do-or-die”. But I also knew from shooting a fair number of hogs in the head, a good brain shot dropped them dead …. and I’d never had a bad head shot on a pig (years later I did on a warthog, but that’s another story). I never shot a deer in the head because the guys I hunted with told me it was unethical…. real hunters never took a head shot on game….but pigs seemed to be alright as nobody really cared about them. So I kept head shooting the pork and asking myself; why should this be such a high percentage shot on hogs but not deer?

At the same time I was hunting small game, and here was the confusing thing; the same experts were telling me that for small game head shots were the mark of a true hunter. Dump a rabbit with a head shot and he didn’t run but drifted peacefully off to meet his ancestors, plus you wouldn’t damage any meat. but with my .22 rimfire they tended to go just as dead whether I hit them in the heart/lungs or right on the noggin.

The simple truth of my experience was that a well placed heart/lung shot killed game just as dead as a well placed head shot, and was equally effective (though the animal might make some ground before dropping). So I refrained from head shots on a deer and continued scalping the wild pigs with good results. Then I started hunting South Africa more, and kept using chest shots on plains game, I lost a couple animals but not many. Later I had a chance to go on a meat hunt with a family friend that wanted to thin out the springbok population on his property, and called in a few guys to shoot a great many buck for the meat truck that drove in to process the animals for market. The rule: only head shots, be fast, and no meat damage. in three hours fifty dead animals, none lost, and we walked away with not a wounded or suffering buck to be seen.

When I started airgun hunting and shooting with the Euro hunters, they made it clear the only clean way a rabbit, squirrel, magapie pigeon, dove,or crow could be killed is smacking them in the head. Sure a chest shot would work, but there would be lost animals and they would suffer needlessly. The same sentiment seemed to be building on this side of the pond as we started using airguns more for hunting. I saw a lot of guys posting they had a strong preference for head shots on small game and varmint, perhaps the bias was not so marked as in the UK, but it did seem to become the prevailing view. So the message coming across was; if you take a headshot on small game its a quick and humane kill, but you’ll loose animals with chest shots. But for big game a chest shot yields an effective and humane kill, but a headshot wounds and leads to needless suffering. That thinking just didn’t make sense to me. While I primarily use head shots more for rabbit, squirrels, prairie dogs and such smaller quarry, I don’t hesitate to use a heart/lung shot either. I have seen literally thousands of small game animals and varmints go down in flames with a pellet in the boiler room and have no doubt of the effectiveness.

Why do some argue that you should hunt small game with head shots, while the same guys will argue heart/lung only for big game? I think there are a few reasons for this; for guys that are more accustomed to firearms hunting than with airguns might consider that when you shoot big game with a centerfire (and to a lesser degree a muzzle loader) the hydrostatic shock imparted can drop an animal cleanly most of the time, and if not causes enough trauma and blood to be sprayed so that the spoor can be easily followed. Whereas a shot from even a very powerful big bore airgun is more like (though not analogues to) an arrow wound than a firearm, producing less of a blood trail. That’s why blood trails from an airgun shot deer are much more difficult to follow than those from a centerfire. On the other hand, when you shoot a rabbit or a squirrel with an airgun, a heart/lung shot more closely approximates the effect of a deer shot with a firearm; the ratio of projectile size to body mass and pass through of the pellet more closely resembles the deer/30-06 paradigm. But the amount of blood from chest shot small game is small and the distance which a wounded animal needs to travel to reach its burrow or tree is often short, which is why so many rabbit hunters in the UK (where rabbits live in warrens) prefer headshots for an immediate kill, fewer lost rabbits down the hole.

On small game I prefer a head shot because they’re more effective in anchoring the animal on the spot. But if I’m in an environment where I won’t loose my quarry if it runs a ways, like jackrabbits out in the desert, I don’t have any problems with a chest shot. The hunter has to look at the situation and choose the appropriate shot for themselves. When I’m shooting larger quarry with conventional caliber and power airguns,; raccoon, fox, groundhogs, I’ll usually stick with head shots. I’ve had these species carry lead a long distance, after what had looked like a picture perfect double lunger.

On coyote, I’ll take body shots with .30 calibers on up, but if using a .25 or .22 at close range have always been of the opinion that staying with head shots makes more sense. I am rethinking this though, because a good friend on mine (and one of the best coyote hunters around) called in a few dogs the other night and nailed two right between the eyes…..and they took of across a semi frozen swamp like they’d had a fire lit under them while. He was shooting his .25 caliber doing about 75 fpe, the third dog he hit from a little further away with a broadside and it dumped him. These types of experiences add gray to the black and white answers often given.

My hunting buddy Brian Beck took a nice bag of yotes using the Sam Yang .357 for longer range body shots and the .25 caliber Condor for head shots. Matching the gun, game and conditions is more important than which vital organ you shut down.

What about big game with an airgun? The conventional wisdom that you should never take a headshot on a deer or other big game, is in my opinion an outdated mode of thinking, or at least when it comes to airguns. Its like the other urban legend that a deer gun needs to produce 1000fpe to be effective, it may be an acceptable adage for firearms but doesn’t hold up in the context of airguns. Airguns are a closer range proposition than hunting with a centerfire and the accuracy tends to be very good; trying to hit a deer with a perfect brain using your favorite centerfire at 200 yards is a different matter than dropping one down the ear of a doe at 70 yards with a .308 air rifle. What about the idea that you’re likely to wound a deer, hitting it in the jaw so that it will slowly starved to death? Of course this is a worst case scenario for any hunter, but I’d say that your just as likely (or more so) to wound a deer with a bad chest shot….. there are more areas adjacent to the heart/lungs of an animal with a missed heart shot… that would be a clean miss with a head shot. No,, my reasons for still using a chest shot are different; headshots can be harder to get if the animal is not perfectly still, old habbits die hard and many years of firearms and the conventional wisdom around them have conditioned me, and if I want to mount the animal I don’t want to mangle the cape or the rack. When hunting with my centerfires and slug guns I stay with chest shots; taking an animal with a firearm is easier in almost every respect than with an airgun. There is such an excess of killing power available with most centerfires that you can get away with a less optimal chest shot than you can with an airgun.

So my opinion is …… it doesn’t really matter if you take a head shot or a chest shot as long as it’s a good shot with respect to the ability to kill your game, that means hitting the brain or hitting the heart.
But the decision as to which shot to take resides with the hunter, in the field, at that moment when the trigger is pulled. Think about your probability of making the shot, how far the animal might go if he doesn’t drop immediately, the environment and tracking conditions, and the likelihood of recovering your game. Your experience over time will lead you to your own guidelines on what works and what doesn’t …… my message is that whether you prefer head shots or chest shots…. you’re right. I think either is a valid shot on big game, small game, or anything in between, the more important factor is that you place the projectile exactly where it needs to be.

Categories: Big Bore Airguns, Big Game, Pest Control, Predator hunting, Rabbits, Small Game Hunting, Uncategorized | Tags: airgun hunting | 2 Comments

The Wolverine/Huggett: Stealth Predator Gun

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Jim Chapman

I got my new Daystate Wolverine earlier in the week, and with a busy schedule it had to sit for a day or two before I could get it sighted in. I’d had one of the first Wolverines that came into the country to use for a couple hunts, and some range work and plinking in between. I really liked the rifle and had a lot of success shooting long range jack rabbits with it. I liked almost everything about the gun, it has a beautiful and ergonomic stock, it was accurate, a nice trigger, and I liked the concept of the .303 caliber gun shooting a range limited projectile. My only two complaints is that it’s a fairly large package, but this is not a big deal on a larger caliber gun and it balances so well that it doesn’t feel it’s size/weight. A bigger issue for me was that the gun was loud, and as I was looking for a suburban hunting gun (which I the reason I like the reduced BC on the Diabolo pellets). I heard at the Extreme Bench Rest competition that the new guns would incorporate he Huggett suppression system, so based on that experience and faith in the Huggett enhancement, I placed my order.

I think the Wolverine is one of the most ergonomically designed big bores I’ve shot. The shelf and the pistol grip provides and excellent thumbs up hold on the rifle.

The bolt action cycles quickly, indexes the five shot magazine flawlessly, and has a sold and smooth lock up. I think it’s going to be an excellent predator gun.

When the Wolverine arrived, the gun was in the box unshrouded, with the shroud nestled into a padded slot next to it. I cleaned the gun, mounted the shroud, and filled it to 25o BAR, then let it sit for a couple days to make sure it was holding pressure….. which it did. I then mounted a Hawke 3-9X40 scope using BKL medium profile rings. This scope has excellent quality glass, and I think the perfect magnification options for this particular gun. Additionally it is compact and light, and fits the rifle well keeping the weight down.

One of the things I was interested in was how effective the Huggett suppressor was in quieting the gun down. I’d fired a couple shots out the back door when I’d first filled the gun, and was really impressed by just how quiet the rifle was. I thought is sounded quieter than some of my other shrouded standard bore pcps, and was obviously an order of magnitude quieter than the original gun. I have a sound meter application on my iPad, and set it on a table next to me, loaded and cocked my Benjamin Marauder .25, Daystate Huntsman Classic .22, and Wolverine then fired one shot with each gun. In the attached screen capture you see the waveform amplitude from all three guns followed by two handclaps as a point of reference. The sounds appeared to be about the same loudness, but were different. When I look at the waveforms, it appears that the Wolverine is a bit louder than either of the other moderated guns but peaks later and is sustained a little longer.

The Huggett sound suppression system is very effective and brings this guns sound signature down to where you can shoot in the basement or backyard with no problem.

One of the reasons that I’m hung up on the sound level produced by this gun is that I really want to use it to do some urban hunting and on some smaller properties. I think the performance characteristics of the .303 pellets are the perfect fit, but if the bark noted with the original unshrouded gun isn’t substantially reduced, it won’t fulfill my requirement. I was very pleased with the results, the gun was about as loud as many standard caliber/power pcp’s….. I love the fact that it’s a backyard friendly mid bore that I can get a lot of practice in with.

While I’m not sure of how accurate the measurements are with this app, I believe it gives a good idea of the relative intensity of the three guns measured, along with a couple claps of the hand as a reference point.

I had laser sighted the gun and when I got out in the field, set a target at 75 yards and shot a few groups off my gorilla sticks while sitting in the snow. I was getting groups slightly larger than a quarter, which suited my purpose just fine. I wasn’t bench testing the gun, just making sure that if I called a coyote into 75 yards I could drop him with a headshot. I bought ten tins of pellets with the gun, and am trying to get some hunting time in with the Wolverine before taking it with me to Texas in a couple weeks. Sometime before then I’ll get out for a serious range session and get chrony measurements and shoot some benchrested groups printed.

One of my 75 yard five shot groups, shot off my sturdy Gorilla sticks.

As I mentioned in the last couple blog entries, I’m just moving into Minnesota, and have been looking for new spots to hunt. I’ve driven out to two big farms and a big private bird hunting club to see if they’d let me hunt predators on their property …… all three said sure, just call and let us know when you’ll be on the property! If everybody is this cool about it, I could be looking at virtually unlimited coyote hunting close to home in my future!!

I went out tonight and started hiking one of the new areas, hiking a trail I’d marked using Google maps. Saw lots of deer, a scattering of pheasant, and coyote tracks were fairly thick. I realized on the drive out that I hadn’t bought my hunting license yet, and rather than returning to but one decided to make this a pure scouting trip, and for that reason choose not to call (no reason to educate the dogs just to satisfy my curiosity). But I’ll be back out this week with calls, lamps……. and of course, the Wolverine.

Categories: Big Bore Airguns, Pest Control, Predator hunting, Uncategorized | Tags: airgun hunting, bobcat, Coyote, predator, Urban hunting | 2 Comments