40 AIRGUN WORLD http://www.airgunshooting.co.uk
my rifle, watching as each one veered low and
right. That was no good, we needed to be at
least 20 yards closer.
“They’re not spooky here, lads. You can just
lie down in the path and as long as you’re still,
they’ll come out.” Alan said.
That statement was later to be proven true,
but for the time being I wanted to find a place
where Roger and I could get some sort of
cover, leaving us with a sub-40-yard shot max,
so we walked along the path a bit further, but
simply couldn’t find anywhere without digging
into the overhanging bushes.
By now it was getting late, so we just laid in
the middle of the path with the target set at 40
yards and started zeroing our rifles. It didn’t
take long, just a few clicks up and one left for
me and similar for Roger.
The rifles were zeroed and it was time to
head home with an aim to returning the
following evening at 6pm to get some quality
shooting time in on the rabbits.
All I can say is ‘what an experience!’, and I
promise it’s worth waiting until next month to
find out what happened! HUNTING
which Alan drew our boundaries with thick
black marker pen. That was it, the permission
was ours!
“See how you get on here lads, I’ve got
another couple of farms like this down the road
I could probably get you on, too,” said Alan.
You see, they’re just like buses, these
permissions!
THE RECCE
Of course, Roger and I wanted to get going and
have a good look around the place, and Alan
told us to go off and explore.
The gravel road that runs right down the
middle of the farm is long, really long, easily a
mile or more. At the end of the road there is a
large open-fronted barn to the right, in which
we had a good look around. There are bags of
grain in there, and it didn’t take very long to
see signs of rats. There were rat droppings
everywhere, and when I walked around the
back of the grain bags I could see piles of red
grain on the floor, which were obviously poison.
Upon leaving the open barn we headed left
to an area with half a dozen large modern
buildings – these are state-of-the-art,
temperature-regulated, grain-drying rooms with
huge computerised fans inside.
“I can operate these from my phone, “Alan
said.
“I can be lying on a beach somewhere and if
that temperature goes up by one degree I’ll get
a text on my phone and I can turn on and
operate the fans from an app,” he continued.
To the left of the drying rooms there is
another pathway, obviously used for vehicular
access to the fields, and as we approached
that I saw six rabbits hopping around, right
there on the road. It’s the perfect place to
shoot them, with plenty of overhanging cover to
the right that you can dig yourself into.
I just wanted to go home and get my gun,
but I knew we needed to do this properly, and
Alan said that he’d like to be present on our
first shoot, which is more than fair enough, so
we planned to meet the following evening.
SETTING UP
I had no intention of shooting anything on our
first visit. If the opportunity arose then so be it,
but I wanted to get our shooting positions
nailed down and consider all the safety
aspects, mainly because there are a lot of
electricity pylons in the area, and secondly
because there is a main road about 300 yards
from the barns. I wanted to make sure that we
never shot towards it, and that all our potential
shooting positions were out into the open fields.
The path by the barns is just perfect, from
each end depending on the wind. I checked
the weather forecast to see which way the wind
was likely to be blowing the following evening,
and as luck would have it, the forecast was for
a fairly consistent south-westerly all week.
As I walked along the path I could see
numerous piles of what looked like rabbit
droppings, and each time I found them I
stopped and looked back toward Roger who
was standing at chosen shooting position
number one.
I walked back to the car, grabbed my trusty
pellet catcher and a few targets, then set it out
roughly where I’d seen the rabbits the previous
evening.
“That’s further than you think, mate,” I said
to Roger. “That’s got to be 60 yards.”
I paced it out and discovered that it was
indeed 58 yards! For the hell of it, I dropped to
the prone position and put five shots throughIdeally, we d have liked to
shoot from the end of the
path, but it’s just too far.My trusty pellet catcher
lives in my car and travels
everywhere with me.We found lots of clumps of
droppings along the path. Were
they from rabbits, though?