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

General Musings and News

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Jim Chapman

This week I have a hodgepodge of topics to talk about. Hunting season is around the bend, with small game opening in many states, it’s time to get the small game guns down and prep your skills for the woods and grasslands! I’m going to make a concerted effort to spend more time with springers this year, it’s what got me started in the sport and it was my method for taking thousands of small game, varmint, and pest over the years before the love affair with PCP’s started. Don’t get me wrong, still love the PCP’s …. but there’s room for both, and as a response to many readers of the blogs, magazines, and emails asking for more on springers along with my natural proclivity towards these guns, I’m signing up for it. If there’s a specific gun or game you’d like me to focus on, please let me know and I’ll see what we can do.

My son is visiting before his semester starts, and we’re throwing some guns in the boot and heading out to S. Dakota to camp and shoot for a few days. We’ve been doing airgun hunts for years, he’s more into shooting powder burners, but is always willing to hit the field with me. I find it interesting to see how a guy with a firearms bias reacts to some of the different airguns I get to shoot, and this will be his first go around with the Wolverine, Huntsman, Verminator, and several other guns that will be taken along! I remember a few years ago we headed out on a similar excursion and he got to shoot the Dragonslayer .50 caliber, which was his first big bore airgun, and took a mountain of jackrabbits in Nevada….. I almost won him back from the loud and smokey world of powderburners……..lets see how it goes when he has a go with the Wolverine… The other great aspect of this trip, besides the company, is we don’t know exactly where we’re going. It’s a bit of a scouting road trip, I’m going to knock on a few ranch house doors and see if I can find some new hunting terrain within 4-5 hours of home. I’ve been pretty lucky getting outright permission or working out reasonable trespass fees.

As long as I’m on a general ramble, I’ll tell you about another goal I have for this year; I’m going to do a “North American Squirrel Superslam”! OK, this is something I made up, but what I intend to do is shoot a) fox squirrel, b)gray squirrel, c) black phase fox/gray, Aberts squirrel, d) California ground squirrel, e) Richardson’s ground squirrel, f) Franklins ground squirrel, and g) prairie dog. I’m not going after every subspecies or member of the squirrel family, but rather those that are most frequently shot by hunters. It will be my first time to take them all in a single year, and will take me to several states. There’s no motivation to do this other than I think it will be a lot of fun and, I had ‘t heard of anyone else doing it yet (though I’m sure somebody somewhere has). Last year I did an airgunners predator grandslam: coyote, bobcat, fox, raccoon, ringtail cat.

I’m trying to line up deer hunts everywhere legal; so far I have Missouri, Michigan, Virginia and axis or fallow in Texas (can’t shoot whitetail there) lined up. Just waiting for a place to take a mulie. I have several guns in .357, .451, .457, .50 caliber I want to work with. Haven’t seen if the regs in Arizona have changed yet…. keeping my fingers crossed there! I have wanted to take a javalina my entire airgunning life (have done so with rifle and handgun, but not air). We’ve also lined up a hunt for free range blackbuck in Texas, I have a friend with a huge property and this is the only exotic, besides an aoudad I’ve wanted to add to my trophy room.

Also have a new GoPro HD video camera ordered and waiting for it to reach me any day now. I’ve been very impressed by the quality of footage coming off these cameras, and will definitely have it on my gun while in South Africa, will try for the footage on my squirrel slam as well, thinking this will make a cool little video production.

You’ve probably heard about the updated version of the Huntsman Classic, called the Regal which has been released to market in the UK. We’re waiting for the first shipments stateside, and I can’t wait to see it. The gun is said to have a higher capacity air reservoir made of titanium, which keeps the weight down at the same time providing a larger air volume. I’m keeping an open mind, but it will have to be a super gun to displace the Huntsman, which is one of my all time favorites.

I am continuing to shoot the little Brocock Specialist, and think this little tack driver is a fantastic field gun. Probably the lightest and most compact 20 fpe hunting gun I’ve ever used! The rotary magazines, I’m using 3 different one, have never failed me after several hundred shots. This is my new truck gun, and is almost always somewhere in the vehicle!

And when it’s not the Specialist, the other gun I’ve been using A LOTis the FX Verminator. This is another of those guns that is perhaps not my aesthetic ideal (I’m old school and like the wood), but from the perspective of functionality it is just about perfect; accurate, powerful, high shot count, versatile, takedown design, ergonomic…….. If I could only take one gun on a prairie dog shoot, this would be the one. Have a couple recent hunts with this gun that I’ll be writing up soon, it’s been particularly effective for the long range shooting, the .25 caliber pellet with the power dialed up does a better job of bucking the wind than most of the guns in my collection, while still giving a reasonably high shot count.

Well, I’ve been writing this while in the air and my plane is about to land so I’ll sign off for this week. Next posting I’ll let you know how my son and I got along on our airgunning roadtrip.

Categories: Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Spring Piston Airguns: the .25 Caliber….

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Jim Chapman

The Benjamin Nitro .25 is an entry level .25 caliber using a gas piston power plant that is an effective platform for this caliber.

For many years, the only spring piston Airguns I ever shot were .177’s, though slowly the .22 caliber started taking up more room on my gun rack. And I stuck there for several years, until one day about 18 years ago I got the opportunity to buy an R1 in .25. This was a big gun, a monster to carry and a monster to cock, but it was very powerful. After months of using this gun and seeing how effective it was on raccoons, jackrabbits, and a single coyote (not pretty but it worked) I was convinced it was a viable caliber for a springer. However this gun was only moderately accurate with a variety of pellets I tried, so I categorized it as a short range hammer when a lot of power was needed. I shot a few other .25 caliber guns over the years, and while I liked them was never greatly impressed by their accuracy. There were not a lot of guns to choose from, or a lot of different pellets. But eventually this started to change, and with the introduction of .25 caliber pcp’s in particular, the availability of a wider range of pellets came to market.

Then a few years ago I came across a Webley Patriot that I had the chance to buy at a great price. What made this big, powerful spring piston airgun especially interesting was the fact that it was chambered for the .25 caliber pellet. The most common calibers for spring piston airguns today are still the .177 and .22. These two calibers give the airgun hunter a choice; either a flat shooting high velocity projectile, or a harder hitting one with a more arced trajectory. In my opinion, neither of these is optimal for taking larger animals at longer ranges. The .25 is the largest of the standard production calibers and has been around since the early 1900s. However, most of the earlier guns chambered for this caliber were under powered and their performance limited the .25s utility to close range plinking. But with more guns being built that generated higher power levels, and more pellets available which allowed the shooter to find the optimal one for any given gun. So you can find an accurate gun in the caliber generating a high enough velocity so that the trajectory no longer looks like a brick being tossed downrange underhand, the .25 springer started to come into its own!

Even shooting small game like squirrels with a .25 makes sense, it doesn’t blow them apart but it anchors them solidly.

As mentioned this caliber has gained popularity in the high powered precharged pneumatic airgun world, there are still not as many springers available, however many of the higher power models have the option for a .25 caliber. For a springer to effectively propel a 24 grain pellet at high enough velocities to be useful for hunting, the gun requires a large compression tube and a very strong spring. The best known and most successful of the guns that have been produced in .25 are the Theoben Eliminator, BSA Supersport, and the Patriot, which are all fairly hefty guns. Gamo had a very big and powerful gun, the Hunter Extreme, in .25 but decided to pull that caliber and only offer it in .177. For the life of me I don’t understand this, a gun this big and heavy shooting a .177 seems made for the major caliber, and I would never hump a gun this big around if it only spat out a light weight .177 pellet.

The Patriot is a handful of gun and does take some muscle to cock (48 lb cocking effort), but the end result is a fully self-contained powerplant that can generate close to 30 fpe! To put this in context, most magnum springers in .177 or .22 are doing very well if they put out 18 fpe. This gun propels a 24 grain Field Trophy pellet at over 800 fps, which is just about the velocity one expects out of the typical .22 caliber magnum springer. Therefore the trajectory obtained is pretty close to that of a standard .22, but, what a difference in terminal performance! A jackrabbit hit at fifty yards will be knocked clean of its feet. A .25 pellet moving at this velocity is more than adequate for a chest shot on raccoon sized game out to forty yards, which I would not recommend a .22 (and definitely not a .177). As a matter of fact this is my preferred springer/pellet combo when shooting raccoons or woodchucks. Because the larger .25 pellets have a better ballistic coefficient they will retain more energy at greater distances resulting in superior knockdown power, and if the hunter needs to reach out a bit further they can still get a clean kill. While there is no doubt that a perfectly placed pellet, even a .177, can kill a medium sized animal the .25 is much more forgiving and allows some latitude in shot placement. Besides hitting harder, the .25 obviously opens a larger wound channel than the small calibers.

Three of the biggest calibers in Diabolo pellets; the .357, .303, and the venerable .25.

There are a number of .25 caliber pellets available from the online airgun stores, though you’re not likely to find them at your local gun shop. Pellets manufactured by JSB, H&N, Beeman, and many others, can be found in a variety of styles; round nose, hollow point, wadcutters, and field points. The lighter of these pellets, such as the Beeman Laser, weigh in at about 17 grains, and heavier ones such as the Eu Jins go up to almost 35 grains. While I will usually shoot heavier pellets out of my .25 PCPs, when using a spring piston gun I’ll opt for a lighter pellet (Note: if they hold accuracy). The reason for this is that the PCP working off of a high pressure charge can usually get a higher velocity with a given pellet than can be achieved with the springer.

The .25 is a hammer that puts these big jackrabbits down at 60 yards like they’d been hit with a sledge hammer!

In summary, if you want to stick with a springer and need to get a hard hitting airgun for hunting larger quarry the .25 may be a good option, so long as you use a gun engineered to handle it. Remember that unlike firearms, with airguns it is the gun and not the ammunition that provides the power. On the upside, when coupled with the right gun the .25 pellet will provide more power, it will retain velocity better, and it will open a larger wound channel. On the downside; the guns are heavier, harder to cock, have a bit more recoil, availability has been more limited) and there haven’t been as many models of gun to choose from, both of these factors are changing. With the advent of the online airgun shop availability of guns and pellets is not really an issue. But when all is said and done, if I’m going to use a springer to shoot raccoons at 50 yards, it’s going to be a .25 caliber gun I reach for!

Other news; We’re getting ready for our trip to South Africa in September, with Kip, David and I are getting our paperwork for the SAP and customs offices so we can get our guns into the country. My buddies and PH’s Rob Dell and Andrew Myers of Hounslow Safaris are getting everything lined up……. it’s going to happen soon!!

Next week I’ll get back on the squirrel posts and wrap it up.

Categories: Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Lamping: Turn on the nightlight

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Jim Chapman

I know that installment two of the squirrel hunting piece is owed, but I’m going to take a little side trip before wrapping that topic up. I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking about lights and lighting systems used for night hunting, which isn’t as common in the States, but is used by airgun hunters in many locales.

For most Americans hunting is typically a daytime activity, and as a matter of fact, with respect to game animals it is the only legal time to hunt. However, when it comes to nongame pest species and predators, night time is back on the table and is most often the most productive time to be out with your airgun. Where allowed, rabbits, raccoons, fox, ringtail, bobcats, coyotes, and hogs make great night time quarry. This is when these animals are out, actively feeding and moving about, which also means it’s the most likely time to get a shot at them.

Spot light mounted on a rotating turret used for predator hunting at night in Texas

I coyote down with this rig, using a .357 doing about 150 fpe.

In the UK, hunters have long worked the fields and pastures with their air rifles, lamping for rabbits. When they are out for true pest control duties, this is the preferred method as the bags can be very large. I don’t hunt rabbits at night so often here, because if I’m going to give up a night’s sleep I want to spend the time after predators. As in the UK, there are two basic approaches employed for night hunting; you either drive and shoot from a vehicle or you can get out on foot and hike. When taking off on foot you can either work as a team with one person on the lights and the other on the trigger (which is the most effective), or if out by yourself you can get a gun mounted light.

Lights for the hunter on foot come in a wide variety of styles: some are large with a high power beam that require a separate battery pack to power. These lights can either be hand held, though some have a clip that allows them to be mounted atop the scope. Others are smaller self contained units, which as LED lights get more powerful and battery life longer, becomes an attractive alternative. The lights we use for night hunting out of a truck are often very large, very bright, and run off of the trucks electrical system. In the trucks we use for calling predators down in Texas, which uses a seat mounted on a turret the rotates in a complete 360 degree arc. On these rigs the lights are mounted and rotate with the seat as the hunters sweep the area.

Heading off on foot with a scope mounted spotlight is a good way to take pest species. On a trip a couple years back, Terry Tate (seen in picture) and I shot several raccoons, possum, beavers that were causing damage on his East Texas property.

A possum on the move and lite up by the spotlight. The best way to encounter nocturnal pray is to be out when the are!

Whether you are calling or randomly sweeping an area, when you spot an animal the eyes will light up. Some animals, and those that have a lot of night time hunting pressure will often be spooked by white light, and one trick is to halo the area; that is to say hold the light over the area being searched and let the lower intensity light from the diffused beam intercept the quarry. Another option is to use a red or yellow filter, as even pressured animals seem less bothered by the colored lights. I have friends that absolutely swear by the necessity of filtered lights, and others that say it doesn’t matter. My opinion is that bright lights will spook many animals, less intense light (white or colored) not so much. I do find it easier to pick up animals under white light, and if animals are not spooking and are giving me time to shoot, I prefer white light and haloing.

As I stated earlier, some of the new generation of flashlights are extremely bright, small and compact, and have a long battery life. I use and LED that has a 1″ tube that fits right into a scope mount affixes to an extra Picatinny rail on some of my guns. Some lights are equipped with a pressure switch which makes it much easier to switch on the beam only when needed. You can get a piece of red transparent plastic to make a filter pretty easily. I find that when using a light while out on foot for rabbits, this is my favorite set up because I shoot at closer ranges and the beam intensity from the smaller lights is just about perfect.

I’ve also been using a collimated laser light from BSA called the Laser genetics, which gives a very sharp beam with little attenuation that allows the beam to light up quarry hundreds of yards out. A side benefit of this light is that it doesn’t seem to spook most animals. I have both the scope mounted and hand held models and have success with both of them.

Shooting from a vehicle is probably the most effective method and if your out to stack them up, either for pest control or to get fur in the truck, this is the way to go. You cover a lot more territory, and the more miles you put in the more shots you’ll get. Hunting in Texas for coyote, fox, bobcats, and raccoons we’ll drive a mile, call while sweeping the area for 15-20 minutes, then drive a mile further and repeat. Big, powerful, spotlights that run off the trucks power system are used almost exclusively on these hunts. It’s good to have a back up, as it’s not unheard of for the lights to burn out in the middle of a run.

I like to use lower power scopes with a large aperture for night hunting, as most shots are inside of 60 yards, and the light transmission characteristics at higher magnifications usually isn’t so great. I find an illuminated reticle a nice feature that allows you to line up your shots faster and with a higher degree of confidence.

Going out at night is a different type of hunting, and sometimes when I’m out by myself on a pitch black night it’s a bit freaky. You could argue that it’s not true hunting when your lighting up an area and have your quarries eyes glowing back at you. And it’s probably a fair argument, which is the reason it’s not legal for game. However it is a highly effective means of reducing pest species or putting fur in the truck ….. and any way you look at it, it’s a lot of fun!

Categories: Pest Control, Predator hunting, Uncategorized | Tags: airgun hunting, Coyote, pest control, predator, raccoon | 1 Comment

Why Hunt With Airguns?

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Jim Chapman

There are many reasons that people choose to hunt with Airguns, in Europe, Asia and much of the world airguns are the only option available for people (outside of the very rich and politically connected) wishing to hunt. In many country civilians are prohibited from possessing or using guns, or the population densities are so high that there is not enough open land to hunt over. But why would anyone in the relatively gun friendly and wide open USA want to use an airgun when they could go buy a .22 rimfire, and achieve more power at a lower cost? Well, there are several reasons; airguns are quiet and have a limited carrying range, so therefore can be used to perform pest control duties and hunt in fairly populated areas. And the more you shoot the more effective you’ll be as a hunter so the limited range and power means that these gun can even be shot safely in the backyard, so most shooters will get in a lot more practice. When using an Airgun, the challenge of the hunt is increased, because to ethically take game the hunter must close the distance which requires honed hunting skills. Airgun hunting offers many parallels to bow hunting in this respect, but also incorporates traditional marksmanship.

In the basement, backyard, or on the range, practice with your gun a lot before going into the field to hunt.

Most of today’s spring piston Airguns deliver the accuracy and power needed for hunting small game out to 40 yards (once you practice and get your consistency up, and most PCP Airguns are capable of tack driving accuracy out to 60 or80 yards. Pracatice a lot with your hunting guns at whatever ranges and whatever shooting positions you’ll use in the field. I will often go down to my basement range and put a couple hundred rounds through a gun I’m getting ready to take with me into the field from standing, sitting prone positions, the go out on the range to figure the trajectory, I’ve got a secluded field within 10 minutes my house where I can stretch out to 100 yards. You’re not going to be able to do this with a firearm unless you happen to live on a ranch in Montana.

Sometimes the choice to use Airguns is solely based on practicality; there is no other tool that suits the situation due to noise, safety, or the need for precision. This is one of the most widely used applications of airguns outside of plinking. But there is a growing trend to use them for small game hunting, predator hunting, and even big game because they enhance the experience and improve the hunter’s field skills. Regardless of whether you are clearing starlings from an industrial building, bagging rabbit or squirrels for the table, removing a pest raccoon that is raiding the feeders or heading out for a deer, there is an Airgun that can do the job efficiently and effectively.

I can use this Marauder .25 for squirrel hunting…

Then breaking out the predator calls, knowing I can take any raccoon or fox that comes in. My permission was a forty acre woods with a farmhouse on two sides, so I want to be quiet and limit range to be safe.

A question I often get from other hunters that use more conventional weapons is “is it ethical to hunt with an airgun”? I like this question because I think it is one that any hunter should ask about any method of take, before letting a projectile fly at any living target. I’m not an over the top apologist that would leave you to believe that killing an animal is anything other than what it is, but it is also my respect for nature that drives me to assure that when I shoot an animal it is a very high probability the animal is going down fast. The answer to this question is yes. If you pick the right gun and know what it is capable of both in terms of power and accuracy, it is indeed an ethical method of take. Moreover, the Airgun hunter needs to know what they are capable of with respect marksmanship, and know the animal being hunted, and then they can ethically harvest game. This is of course the same set of criteria any hunter using any weapon must exercise.

For me personally, it is within my skill and the capability of my Daystate Huntsman to take a jack rabbit with a head shot at 60 yards. I can put pellets into a 3/4 inch group all day long, and the pellet retains enough power at that range to drop a rabbit in its tracks. If I was out with my Ruger 10/22 (providing I could find ammo for it these days, which is real limitation I hate to say), I might reach out to a hundred yards to shoot a rabbit, as this is within the capabilities of that gun and me as a marksman. When I’m out with my FX Verminator in .25, I’ll reach out to 125 yards if there’s no wind, dialing back the range as winds pick up. You do need to hunt smarter and hunt better with air power than you do with a firearm, and that is a large part of the appeal.

Are they effective? Brian Beck lines up witnesses to testify!

What I think is clearly unethical is when individuals attempt to stretch the use of their airguns to take quarry that is obviously too large. For instance, using a .22 PCP rifle that generates 20 fpe to take a jackrabbit fifty yards out is fine, but taking a pot shot at a coyote that crosses your path at the same distance is not. There is no doubt that if you place the pellet right and get a perfect brainshot, a .22 at 45 fpe will kill a coyote at 50 yards, but many variables come into play that can interfere with that perfect placement. Even a head shot is not a guaranteed clean kill on this tough quarry at that (or any) distance, if it’s even slightly off. Trying to take any animal, even a varmint, with an inadequate caliber or too little power simply to test the boundaries of what can be done is pretty shoddy in my view..

Ethics are not simply a question of the tools used to harvest game, but how those tools are applied. I will say that after a lot of field experience on my own, and hunting with others and especially guiding newbies, that airguns are a viable option for making humane kills on small game and for pest control when you take the time to learn your gear.

If you are interested in giving Airgun hunting a try, I’ll be setting up some varmint hunts in Arizona, Texas, and South Dakotas in late summer and fall this year. We’ll keep the cost down and group size small, and get you into target rick environments. There will be a variety of guns, projectiles, and an air supply so you can also get a chance to use a variety of high-end airguns… drop me an email.

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Hunting Tree Squirrels: Part 1

Posted on June 21, 2013 by Jim Chapman

Hunting squirrels is one of my favorite small game species, and while some states have a spring or summer season, in most it ended last January and starts up mid September. I was thinking about my airgunning adventures for the upcoming year, and decided I’m going for the tree squirrel grandslam; fox squirrel in Indiana, Gray squirrel in Virginia, Black color phase (fox, grey, hybrid) in Michigan, and Abert’s in Northern Arizona. I’ve taken all of these, but this year I want to take them in the same season. I’ll carry along my airguns as I head out on various big game and predator trips, heck I might even have them mounted for my man cave!

It’s not often you get a wide open shot like this. Of course I was sitting in the woods and not my rifle, so it figures!

The gray squirrel, Abert’s, red and fox squirrels are very cautious and elusive animals. To go out in the open woods with the intention of bagging squirrels requires the ability to stalk quietly, shoot at elevated targets, and have knowledge of the squirrel’s behavior. I use my airgun hunting time in the woods pre-deer season to scout and get back into a hunting mindset. As we go through the summer, many guys shift to target shooting, fishing, or other activities. And unless you are in a place that has prairie dogs, ground squirrels, or ground hogs, your first hunting opportunity of the season may well be these tree dwelling rodents.

Early fall is a great time to hunt squirrel, you can often hear them cutting and shaking branches, but it can be a challenge to get a clear shot.

But winter time with snow on the ground is my favorite time to be in the woods. They see you coming, and sometimes longer shots are required. I’ll often go 75 yards when the leaves are off the tree.

Squirrels are designed for life in the trees, sometimes appearing to defy gravity and moving with a fluidity and speed that is impressive. Gray, Aberts and red squirrels spend more time in the trees and less time on the ground, and fox squirrels spend more time on the ground scavenging than the others. But any of these species can be found high in the branches or on the ground. Squirrels have the ability to disappear into the brush, so when I get a shot, I take it. They are very adept at putting a tree between themselves and a hunter and making it difficult to line up a shot, though you can use this trait to advantage when stalking in to set up a shot. This is the basis for the old tree squirrel hunting trick; when you see a bushytail dash around a tree trunk, rather than trying to work your way around for a shot hold your position, toss a stick behind the tree and the squirrel may run over to your side and present a shot.

Both gray and fox squirrel’s habitat is woodland with oak and hickory trees, yards, stands of trees bordering crop fields, actually just about anywhere there are trees and food, find the food and you’ll find the squirrels. As a general rule of thumb, grays like the denser wood area and foxes prefer some open ground area with the trees more spaced out. Squirrels nest in holes in trees or build leaf nests in tree branches. In inhabited areas, squirrels have the bad habit of building their homes in attics and gnawing wiring, instantly transforming from a game animal to a pest species. They are found in almost every wooded area in the United States. Grey squirrels are active year-round and arboreal; they do not hibernate even in the very cold regions of their range. You can see squirrels throughout the day and it’s worth being in the field anytime of the day, but the magic hours are at the couple hours around duck and dawn. Squirrels populations fluctuate and peak every five years or so. Squirrel tracks look a lot like a rabbit’s except the tracks of a squirrel are more bunched, and tend to end at the base of a tree. When there’s snow down you can often see the tracks running along fallen tree trunks.

I’ll carry a call and use it occasionally, but my binoculars and range finder get used just about every trip.

Squirrels eat a variety of foods; almost any nut, vegetable, bud or crop suits them well. Squirrels can be voracious carnivores and devour quantities of bird eggs and the chicks of many birds. Every year I shoot a few as the raid the nest of songbirds, and in fact it’s the screaming parents dive bombing the intruder, that gives away the squirrels location. I have to keep vigilance on my property as the large squirrel population will play havoc with the nesting songbirds. In fall as leaves are coming off the trees, I shoot a number of them as they scurry around the ground burying acorns and other nuts. Squirrels must have a source of water and are seldom found far from it, I often hunt along the edges of streams and creeks. In some states, and Kentucky and Indiana come to mind, it is legal to hunt from boats if certain guidelines on the type of water craft used are adhered to.

As mentioned, squirrels can be found in almost any wooded area within their range and have adjusted well to man. Often squirrels thrive within the city, making their homes wherever a suitable den can be found. We sometimes shoot squirrels within the city limits when they are pest, and for legal reasons this is one of the times I hunt with an airgun because I must rather than because I choose to. In the rural and wilderness areas one can usually find squirrels by finding a food source.

In a springer, I’ll use a .177 or a .22 and have had good results with both. Even though I do most hunting with PCP’s, I still get out with my favorite springers every year. Because I go out for a couple hours per hunt, and have plenty of property near home, many different guns get used every year.

Once you have located the food source and know where the squirrel feeds eat, figure out where they are denning. The favorite home of a squirrel is a hollowed out tree with a small opening of a couple of inches. The tree must be large enough to house a pair and their offspring, about 6 young, and they tend to like larger trees. Squirrels also make temporary housing by bunch leaves and twigs in the upper parts of trees, and these often are seen as the leave start to fall, looking like large bird nest. Do not be tempted to shoot into these nests to scare out squirrels as this is illegal in most if not all states. Squirrels will often make a temporary nest in the same trees they have their permanent dens in, perhaps to get better airflow in the hot and humid summer nights, or perhaps where the male is chased off to when there are very young in the nest. These shelters are made near a food source so that food doesn’t have to be carried over a long distance

When looking for a place to hunt, I search out large mature trees like oak or walnut. I keep a notebook which lists the areas where I’ve seen squirrels, as they continue to be productive if not over harvested. Once two or three areas that show squirrel sign or have a good food source have been located, I’ll focus on them rotating between them. I can keep busy all morning in 10 acres of woods. I like to move into position before first light and set up, that way I am able to sit back undetected, as the squirrels start moving about. You can set up a blind, wear camo, or as a compromise between the two, I’ve been using a 3D camo poncho with great success. My normal outfit consists of pants, jacket, mesh gloves and face cover, and hat. The advantage of this over the blind is that I can move around and still hunt. But if nothing else camo your face and hands!

I primarily use stalking and still hunting techniques after daybreak, the squirrels are out but not moving as much so more area covered provides more shot opportunities. Take a few slow steps and stop for at least a minute. The squirrels may think you are a deer moving through the woods, and go back to eating. When you see a squirrel in the distance, move slowly and only when he has his attention dedicated to something else. A good set of 8X or 10x binoculars will help you spot a squirrel from a long ways off, even if he’s sitting partially hidden. Often you can get close enough for a shot, which is the objective when hunting with an airgun. Depending on the gun I am using, I will either take a head shot or a chest shot. These kill zones are about the same size, so it’s really a matter of what target the squirrel presents me with. Squirrels are fairly tenacious little animals, so I prefer to use a heavy round nose pellet.

Whenever and wherever you hunt, the right camo is important.

Gloves and face mask will hide those body parts that move or most are obvious. I sat at the base of a tree with my Crosman Nitro watching this gray squirrel poke his head out of the whole and scan the area for a good thirty minutes before he risked coming out.

In Next week’s blog entry I’ll focus on the guns and pellets I’ve used over the last 13 years since I started seriously hunting tree squirrels. I have taken squirrels using just about every model of airgun to hit the market over the last couple decades, with every powerplant, energy level, and in every condition.

Categories: Pest Control, Small Game Hunting, Spring Piston Airguns, Squirrels, summer time hunts, Uncategorized | Tags: airgun hunting, brake barrel, pest control, Spring Piston, squirrel hunting | 7 Comments

Pest Control and Airguns

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Jim Chapman

It is probably safe to say that most of the Airguns that are purchased domestically would be for plinking and target shooting. But the guns purchased expressly for harvesting animals, are most frequently used to shoot vermin and pest species. This can range from shooting the squirrel or starling raiding the backyard bird feeder to professional pest control removal of roosting pigeons or rats in an agricultural setting. Most states permit the culling of pest species with an airgun, and many will allow some game animals to be taken out of season under a depredation permit when they are causing damage to property.

There can be a thin line between pest and game animals which is often situational. Some species by their very nature are considered pest animals across the board, ones that are vectors for diseases or cause damage to property such as brown rats. Other animals are usually not considered a pest species, but due to population explosions caused by an abundance of food or lack of predators, become pest. The most common pest species shot with airguns are rats, ground squirrels, sparrows, starlings, black birds, pigeons and other animals causing a nuisance or depredation on private property. Under certain conditions, a small game animal such as cottontail rabbits on a golf course or tree squirrels in the attic become a pest animal …. Once again you need to check your local ordinances, driving across a state line can be enough to turn a game animal into a pest.

A muskrat is a furbearer in many places, until it starts undermining the banks of a dam wall, then it crosses the line and becomes a pest. A mid powered spinger at 35 yards was all it took to win this battle.

Shooting pest animals can be an effective solution to pest control that may offer some advantage over other options, such as setting traps or laying poison, both of which have many negative attributes. Traps and poisons are often indiscriminate, you don’t want to poison the barn cat along with the rats, and you don’t want your dog sticking his nose in a rat trap. Shooting can also be more effective allowing several individuals to be culled in a single session and a whole population eradicated over a short period of time. To be successful the shooter needs to keep the pressure up, as these animals tend to breed very rapidly and can quickly build the population back up if allowed to.

For the most part, the objective of pest control is to kill as many animals as possible, effectively removing the population from a specific area. It is not hunting in the purse sense of the word, you are not interested in sport or giving the animal an advantage, only in removing them (or significantly reducing their numbers) from the ecosystem. In this context, the pest control shooter should not hesitate to cull young animals or females, and unless there are local regulations there should not be a concern over season. Unless there is a conscious decision to leave a managed population, a few rabbits hopping around and squirrels sharing the bird feeder, but not so many as to have a negative impact, the purpose of true pest control is to remove every member of the pest specie that you can. As a matter of fact, if a farmer or facilities manager gives you permission to shoot his property, it is generally your responsibility to clear every varmint you can.

I’ve tried just about every type of gun when I thought it would serve the purpose. In As a favor I’d been asked to clear out some starlings that were nesting in the industrial buildings adjacent to a property where the owner let me predator hunt. I wanted to keep him happy, but he warned me not to punch any holes in the walls. I used a spring power scatter gun that I’d considered a gimmicky toy, to nail these as they popped out of a hole in the wall.

I shot starlings and black birds at long range with a .177 springer, to augment the birds I was shooting with the scatter gun. In two days I’d cleared all the pest birds from the building, and even though I missed a few shots caused no damage.

When I talk about pest control, I mean real pest control; a pasture that has become dangerous to livestock because there are so many burrows the farmers horses are at risk of breaking a leg. Or pigeons that are nesting in a factory building and spreading a layer of filth over feed and equipment, or blackbirds and crows causing crop damage, are real pest. There is another type of pest control, which is justifiable but not for the same reasons. Let’s face it, the odd starling raiding your bird feeder is not causing that much damage. The justification for removing this type of pest animal is simply that, they don’t belong in North America. Every English sparrow, starling, or pigeon that lives here is displacing a native species and should be eradicated for that reason.

Using airguns to shoot pests makes a lot of sense, as they are uniquely suited to the task. They are powerful enough to effectively dispatch a pest animal at the appropriate ranges, and many are capable of surgical precision. When hunting in or around buildings, equipment, or livestock you can use a lower power gun or one with adjustable power dialed down, so If you do happen to miss, the projectiles will not travel on to cause excessive damage to surrounding equipment or buildings. And lastly, the guns are quiet, and with a shrouded barrel can be almost silent. This means that you will not become pest yourself as you move around the yard clearing out the starling populations, remember your pest might be your neighbor’s cute little bushy tailed squirrel … so stealth has its place.

The little Marauder pistol (or PROD) in carbine configuration, is a great little takedown for urban pest control, compact, quiet, accurate, and powerful enough for 35 yards on most small quarry.

The guns appropriate for pest control are at least as diverse as the species themselves; a sub 12 fpe spring piston gun (or even less depending on the situation) might be perfect for shooting pigeons inside a warehouse. A 30 fpe tackdriver used to clear ground squirrels or prairie dogs from a pasture at 75 yards addresses a whole different set of issues. There are time when stealth is a key requirement, and having a shrouded barrel and/or a takedown design for transporting the gun onsite is mission critical. I’ve talked a lot about many of the guns I’ve used in pas blog posts, especially for shooting prairie dogs, jackrabbits, ground squirrels, crows and the like, but in future posts I’ll take a look at some specific pests such as starlings, pigeons, and I’ll get out to do some ratting. I’ve gotten several request from readers asking that I take a closer look at some of the lower power guns that fit the bill for this common application.

Just a reminder, if there are any topics you’d like me to cover regarding guns, gear, quarry, techniques or anything touching the airgun hunting topic, please let me know!

Categories: bird hunting, Ground squirrels, Pest Control, Prairie dogs, Rabbits, Squirrels, summer time hunts, Uncategorized | Tags: airgun hunting, pest control, Rabbit, squirrel hunting, Urban hunting | 9 Comments

My Favorite Stocks

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Jim Chapman

When evaluating a rifle for the field, the stock is one of the main features to consider. It doesn’t matter how powerful or the inherently accurate the gun, if the stock is not right the full potential of the gun cannot be realized. I’ll shoulder the rifle and look at it while getting the feel, place my cheek against the comb to get an idea of the sight alignment when I have a scope mounted, I’ll grip the pistol grip to see if it fits comfortably and cradle it in my arms to see how it will carry. There are a few differences between firearm and airgun stocks that reflect the neet to house cocking levers, air reservoirs etc, but overall there exist commonality; their shapes are similar, their compositions are almost the same and they serve the same purpose which is to provide a platform for the action to function on. The basic elements of stock design relate to what material(s) the stock is fabricated from and how the individual components are formed. Traditionally most airgun stocks were made from wood, but over recent years there has been an explosion in the use of synthetic polymer materials, though some designs do incorporate portions of the action metal work or reservoir tank into the stock. Unless a stock is custom built for an individual shooter, the primary objective is to use a basic design with enough flexibility that it can be shaped or modified to fit a range of shooters. It can be argued that today’s synthetics are a more versatile option, as the design possibilities with it are unlimited, the stocks are very strong, and the materials are often much lighter than wood. Wood remains a great option however; it is relatively simple for a skilled craftsman or a machine to shape or reshape, it is very durable, the grain and patterns are often works of art unto themselves, it¹s warm and easy to grip, and the expense can range from minimal to very expensive depending on the shooters requirements.

Many air rifle stocks today are made from beech. It is a common, inexpensive hardwood that is straight-grained and stands up well to heavy field use. It is light in color and can be stained in a multitude of finishes. Though many different varieties of hardwoods are used, walnut is probably the nicest all around wood for production stocks. There are different grades and qualities to choose from, however make sure that the wood selected to build your stock from has a dense grain and uniform dark coloring. I personally like highly figured stocks, and these are fine so long as the blank is free of knots or other defects.

I’ll give some examples of guns that have stocks which stand out in my opinion;

Daystate Wolverine: the walnut I’ve seen on Daystate rifles is always very nice to truly beautiful. When I look at any of my rifles from this manufacturer it’s hard to believe they were originally thought to be producers of very mundane and plain guns. The Wolverine is a big gun and the sporter stock does fill the hand, but what I really like about this Gary Cane designed furniture are the recessed scallops beneath the breech that form a thumb shelf and facilitates a “thumbs up hold”. For some reason I feel like I’m holding a English double rifle when shooting this gun. There are other nice touches, like the forearm stipling and the well formed cheekpiece, but it’s a little thing like those scallops that grab me!

The Wolverine is a large gun, but the stock is so well designed you don’t realize the size until looking at a picture.

The Huntsman is in my view, the most stylish hunting PCP ever built. I love to shoot it, carry it, and look at it!

The Daystate Huntsman Classic is in my view, the prettiest hunting PCP ever built, both the styling and the wood used. The traditional sporting design is crafted from a beautifully figured Italian walnut; with finely cut checkering that fits my hand perfectly. The forstock has a Schnabel tip and has only the minimum amount of wood to securely house the low profile action, and combined with a well shaped pistol grip gives the gun more of the look of a conventional centerfire than any other production PCP I can think of. This is a rifle that I really enjoy carrying while hunting; it has the look, the feel and the performance of the ultimate field gun.

The Verminator Extreme is one of the finest hunting rifles around, very ergonomic and a takedown to boot! I’ve been using this gun extensively for over a year now and it’s a mainstay my field guns.

The FX takes the bottle forward design to an ergonomic level I use as a benchmark for this style of gun.

FX Verminator Extreme: Now this gun represents some real challenges for designers, the air bottle forming the basis of the butt stock, which along with the barrel can be disassembled for storage. I’ve shot a few guns with an air-bottle buttstock, and even the guns I like a lot take some adjustment in hold and shooting posture, but the Vermonator stock is comfortable and I can get a good sight alignment and consistent hold with the well thought-out stock cover that houses the removable bottle. The forestock swells out to fill the hand providing an ergonomic grip; it’s a best in breed representation of this style of stock.

The FX Royale is available as with a very nicely figured walnut stock or as a synthetic stocked gun, which has a similar design challenge to the Verminator, only shifted 180 degree shift in perspective. The 500 has a 500 cc air bottle incorporated into the forestock. A shelf extends about a third of the length under the bottle to provide a solid and comfortable grip of the shooters forward hand, and the thumbhole stock has a bilateral shelf that cradles the thumb and trigger finger, the trigger guard is incorporated into the stock design.

The Brocock specialist is a minimalist dream, everything you need for a fast handling carbine, it is very light and ultra compact.

The Brocock Specialist is a no-frills compact carbine, with a painted (black) wood stock that really stands out because the minimalist approach has material only where it’s needed and contributes to the lightest and most compact design I’ve used. The stock is has a high profile cheekpiece and is ambidextrous, and the pistol grip completes a design that I shoot better offhand than almost any rifle in my extensive collection.

So while I have many other guns I like a lot, these examples represent my idea of best in breed for the various categories. I have stocks made by craftsman such as Michael Chavka that have turned my plane Jane Marauder into a work of art, and the no-nonsense walnut sporter that Dennis Quackenbush built on my little .451 carbine is the perfect big bore brush gun in my opinion. However, I’ve met very few shooters that haven’t appreciated the furniture on the five fine guns mentioned above.

I know I’ve shown this pic before, but I do love the no-nonsense design of the Quackenbush big bores. This is my LA .437

Other News

Been doing lots of shooting this summer, and am lining up a couple more hunts. Heading out to South Dakota next week, going to wreck havoc on the prairie dogs. I’ve been out scanning my new home base in Minnesota scouting for area to hunt when small game season starts up, been seeing lots of rabbit and squirrel. Wish I could hunt turkey with an airgun here; I’m just about tripping over them when I hike the woods.

Talking about hiking the woods, I’ve never run into the populations of ticks I’ve found here, every time I go out I have to spend several minutes inspecting and de-ticking…. Watch out!

Categories: Big Bore Airguns, stocks, Uncategorized | Tags: airgun hunting, daystate huntsman classic, FX Verminator Extreme | Leave a comment

Calls for Airgunners: A quick primer

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Jim Chapman

A lot of the techniques used for firearms hunting are directly applicable to airguns as well, and one of my favorite crossover techniques is the use of calls to bring my quarry into range. Several years ago I started carrying mouth blown predator (typically distress) calls in my pack, regardless of what I was after. When a rabbit or squirrel hunt was slow or I had early success, these would come in handy for filling out my trip with an impromptu predator calling session. I like the nuanced sounds you can get out of a mouth call, but there is some motion around using them and I’ve blown a couple shots because of this. But these calls, especially the closed reed types, are very easy to use, they are cheap, and they are compact.

The Alpha Dogg is the Transformer of the e-call world. with fold down legs and fold out speakers.

I’ll often grab my lanyards that has a jack rabbit, cottontail, rodent squeaker, and crow call hanging off it on leaders; and I’ve brought in fox, coyote, bobcats, raccoons, ringtails, and crows in large numbers.

But in the open spaces out west I like the volume out of the e calls, but even when hunting the smaller properties in the Midwest and out east, the electronic callers offer some advantages: namely getting the call ( and predators attention) away from the gun. This is especially the case for Airgun hunting in that you want the quarry to get in as close as possible. A decoy can help with this as well.

Brian Beck pulls in the dogs with his FoxPro Prairie Blaster!

But as I started hunting more seriously for coyote, fox, bobcat, and raccoons in Texas, Nevada, California where I needed a lot more volume, I quickly learned the advantage of using electronic calls. And in places like Texas where we hunt at night making a stand every 20-30 minutes, a mouth blown call will wear you out by 4:00! It can also be very useful to have the large library of sounds that come with most e calls, animals such as coyotes, can become educated quickly when they come in to a call and live to get away from the hunter. And with the low cost and ease of use with the mouth blown rabbit distress being used by just about anyone that thinks it would be cool to shoot a coyote, theres a good chance the dogs in pressured areas have heard it all before. That’s when a change up can be effective, dial up something they haven’t heard before.

An e-call is the most effective means to call in crows.

It’s possible to get open and closed reed mouth blown calls that you can get predator vocalizations out of, to be honest I have to say I’ve never been able to make a coyote believe I was a lonely female or a scared pup, though some can. But with my e calls I’ve had a lot of success with vocalizations, though you still have to know when and what call to use. Even with an e call vocalizations take a lot more skill to use effectively.

Does this mean I’ve tossed the collection of mouth calls accumulated over the years? No way, I’ll often start with a low volume call before switching on the caller. The mouth call can suplement the ecall as well, adding a bit more depth to the set. Also when an animal is spotted coming in, it often works better to mute the caller and “squeak” the animal in closer for the shot.

I’ve got several electronic calls that I use, and have hunted with guides and other hunters across the country that use just about everything on the market. The three that I am using the most these days are the Foxpro Firestorm, the Primos Alpha Dogg and the Predator Quest with Les Johnson sound libraries. These calls share some common features, they allow remote selection of sounds, volume, and the ability to mute. The Predator Quest uses preprogramed sound cards that can be swapped out, and the Firestorm has 50 sounds stored in onboard memory and can upload a variety of new sounds (my own or from the Foxpro website). The Alpha Dogg has legs that fold out to elevate it and swing out speakers that get the sounds out there!

All three of these calls seems equally effective in getting predators in very close with distress calls, I believe the Firestorm does a bit better with the coyote vocalizations ….. though this is hard to say definitively. I do believe that the Foxpro has the best library of crow sounds available both in quality and quantity. I think a variety of calls is important for calling crows when Airgun hunting, because while it’s fairly easy to get them to fly in with a mob call and shoot them on the wing with a shotgun, getting them to land for an Airgun shot takes some finesse.

Using an ecall has increased my success on crow by an order of magnitude, and is about the only way I hunt them these days. Crows seem to have a finer “ear” for the reality of the sound, and while I’ve had a lot of success on predators with mouth calls, not so much with the mouth blown crow calls. These wary birds seem to be able to suss if the sound is natural or not. With an e call you can get the sound of many birds at once, and I’ll often start with a mob call to bring them in, then switch to a dying crow or a fight to get them to land in a tree so that I can get a shot. This is one of my favorite airgun hunting activities, and though you’ll never get the number that a shotgun will produce with birds on the wing, 5-6 sniped out of staging trees with a quiet pcp is very satisfying!

If you want to try an ecall and dont have a couple hundred bucks to spend are you locked out?The short answer is no, I’ve also used the inexpensive Cass Mountain calls which have never given me great results, though they have worked. They just don’t have much volume, but the bigger problem is that the remote speaker is wired to the call which makes it less convenient to deploy and new sounds can’t be added. A step up from this is the Predator Quest entry level model, the Mini Phantom. It has many of the features of the more expensive callers such as remote control, replaceable sound cards, and directional speaker. The sounds are not quite as rich, they don’t generation the same amplitude, and not as upgradable, but still a good entry into the game.

It’s true that you can be very successful with mouth blown calls, especially if you practice to get the vocalizations down, but I’d say that 80% of the predators I shoot these days come in to ecalls, and 90% of crows. I go out and call without a gun, just to see what happens, and it allows me to work for a while just about every day. I feel comfortable saying that combining an electronic caller with a low volume mouth blown call will get more animals in to Airgun ranges than any other method, but no matter which technique you use, calls will improve the success for airgun hunters after predators and crows!

Categories: crow hunting, distress call, electronic calls, mouth calls, Predator hunting | Tags: airgun hunting, bobcat, Coyote, electronic calls, raccoon | Leave a comment

North Dakota Ground Squirrels!

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Jim Chapman

I had the chance to do a varmint hunt in North Dakota the weekend before Memorial Day. The seven hour drive from Minneapolis took me through miles of farms and grasslands. North Dakota is one of the least populated regions of the continental USA and I’d been forewarned to stock up on supplies in Jamestown, 60 miles east of the ranch, as it was the last grocery stop on the way. I turned off the interstate and drove 10 miles down a paved country road, before turning off on a dirt ranch road for another few miles to the ranch.

The Rolling Plains Adventures lodge is based on a ranch property that has two smaller and well-appointed cabins, with a large lodge containing a bar and all the amenities, a wall sized flat screen TV and game room, along with rooms and bunks for another twenty guest. Corrals, outbuildings, and fenced pastures covering a couple hundred acres surrounded by grasslands as far as the eye could see sat across the gravel road

This is a working cattle ranch, and there was a lot of great pest shooting to be had.

These ground squirrels look like mini prairie dogs

I brought the Fx Verminator in .25 caliber, and as I’ve written before in this blog it is a tack driver and one of my top picks for any small to medium game; it is powerful on the high power setting, it is accurate, and the 500cc air bottle provides a high shot capacity. In most hunting situations I’ll opt for accuracy first, power, compactness and handling characteristics third, and shot count barely registers on my radar screen. But when shooting target rich pest environments for prairie dogs or ground squirrels where you are probably going to have a couple hundred shot opportunities per day, the higher shot count moves up my requirements list. I also love the trigger on this rifle, believing it to be one of the best to be found on an out of the box hunting gun. And the 12 shot Royale style breech and magazine are perfect for this fast action style of hunting.

This gun cycles quickly and is dead accurate. The four squirrels dropped 1,2,3,4 in a couple minutes.

Prairie dogs are in the squirrel family, but are much larger, have short tails, and spend all of their lives on the ground, grazing the short prairie grasses and sitting on their burrows. The California ground squirrels I grew up shooting on the West Coast looked more like conventional tree squirrels, being about the same size and body shape with a long bushy tail and a gray color. Like the prairie dog they live in burrows, but they also like rock piles, blown down wood piles, and they will climb the lower branches of trees or fence post to keep a look out. The Richardson’s ground squirrels I was shooting on this trip were much more aligned to my picture of a ground squirrel, both in appearance and behavior. They had the small egg shaped bodies, short tails, and don’t leave the ground, but they are less than half the size. One area they diverge from prairie dogs is that the little ground squirrels feed voraciously on crops when available, and do considerable financial damage in the three or so months of the year when not hibernating.

I shot about 50 in my first session, but they kept flowing in from the field across the road.

This was a 100 yard shot that rolled this guy to a dead stop.

The harvested fields and the fenced in pastures were covered in the burrows of these little rodents, and they were running all over the place. I parked the SUV and hopped out with the rifle and my shooting sticks, a tin of JSB Exacts tucked into my pocket. Sitting in the dirt road with my back leaning against the rear tire and the rifle on the sticks, I was locked in solid. The wind was blowing about 5 mph, as I dropped the crosshairs a mil dot down on the head of my first squirrel. I squeezed the trigger and watched the pellet fly by a half inch to the left of his head. I cocked the rifle without coming off the sticks and watched the second pellet I sent down range smack him hard. The rodent rolled a couple times before landing legs up, and he didn’t so much as twitch. Throughout the morning I shot about 50 of the critters at ranges of 50 to 125 yards, and the guns accuracy and shootability were really outstanding. At one point I knocked one down at 125 yards, swung to another at 75 yards dropping him, then dusted two more 50 yards out and 50 to the right of number two….. all in about two minutes! The Verminator is a fast cycling gun, and the Royal Breech and side lever action are really smooth.

I walked through a small grove of trees planted in rows between the road and a field of grain stubble, and sat down to glass the area. I pulled the Hawke ED binoculars out of my day pack and started to glass the field, and found a number of beady little eyes looking back at me from behind the dirt clods and clumps of knocked down grain. As I looked closer I say that there were some of the little stripped ground squirrels mixed in with the Richardson’s. I sat there for a couple hours shooting both kinds of squirrels, and knocked over the starlings that trickled in to land in the trees.

These thirteen lined ground squirrels were mixed in, they’re pretty but also a pest to be cleared.

The Verminator was a blast to shoot, it’s the right name because this gun is an ultimate varmint gun.

I spent a great few days hunting rodents during my downtime from predator hunting, before taking off for the drive home. This was a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to get back out here with my over/under when the bird season starts up, the number of pheasant and grouse was mind blowing! The accuracy that the FX guys are getting out of the smoothtwist barrels is something to experience…. I do love this gun.

On another topic, I’m going out tonight with the Wolverine. There have been several coyote sighting in the neighborhood in the last couple weeks, they seem to be coming in from the surrounding farms and are getting people nervous because they have been getting close to kids and pets and don’t seem too shy. Let’s see if that holds up when I get out with a gun in hand! Let you know how it goes.

Categories: Ground squirrels, Long Range shooting, Pest Control, Prairie dogs, summer time hunts, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

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