A_S_S_2015_04

28 | SPORTING SHOOTER _ APRIL 2015

Red Dog Blitz

Steve Spiekman enlists “Mr Seventeen”

again to do some dirty work on redcoats.

At around 180m away, I thought taking

a shot was too risky, so I waited to see

what would happen after my buddy John,

turned off the spotlight momentarily.

A short time later, we lit up the area

again with the Powabeam, and sure

enough the fox had moved a little to the

left and into plain view. “This will do,”

I thought to myself so I quickly positioned

the cross hairs on the fox’s forequarters

and touched off a shot. The sound of a

solid hit was unmistakeable and our first

fox for the night was well and truly out of

business. Now, at least, with runs on the

board I was feeling a little more confident

that we might have a good night,

especially after our early success, but

I suppose only time would tell.

We continued on around the

property following the same track

I had been along many times before.

I pretty much knew exactly where

a fox would be, as they always seem to

follow a familiar pattern and hang

around the same area year after year.

There were several dams up ahead and

we knew from previous experience that

if we were going to see anything, this is

VEN through the 12x Leupold, it

was hard to see the fox clearly as it

moved between the scattered

E patches of deadwood and long grass.

where it would be. John slowed the

Navara to a crawl and methodically

moved the spotlight beam side to side.

Moments later a flash of something up

ahead caught our attention. It was still

300m-400m away, so we continued

along ever so slowly. This is when

I usually start getting a little

apprehensive because whatever we saw

can often disappear never to be seen

again. Fortunately, this time, we were

in luck with a fox standing in plain

view 100m to our right, but this red dog

wasn’t stupid and started moving off as

we got closer. He didn’t look back either,

so we couldn’t see his eyes shining in

the darkness. Consequently, I just had

to settle on watching him through the

scope. By now, I was just watching and

waiting for it to stop, just for a moment.

And that’s exactly what happened

moments later. Although at around

200m away it was a challenging shot,

but with my Remington 700BDL in .17

Remington dead still on a solid rest and

with the Leupold cross hairs motionless

on the target, I touched off a shot, which

I instantly knew was on the money.