Vince Green

There is a huge difference from one police area to the next. When you send your FAC in for renewal of amendmend you should ALWAYS photocopy it first. This gives you something to produce if you have to but also you should check every detail on the new certificate against the old one because errors are common. You cannot buy ammo on a photocopy certificate obviously. On the subject of buying ammunition for a friend the Met would not allow it. They said your certificate is for personal use only. Different police different answer.

All these 28g cartridges are just cheaper because they have less shot in them. Now ask yourself is that really a saving?

If they bring down the pigeons OK then everything else is unimportant. Are the pigeons so fussy? The insult confetti cartridges was always thrown at the old Sellier and Bellot cartridges but I still think they were the best pigeon cartridges ever made. I would much rather use a 32g than a 28g.

Best place to start looking is Claygame, they do MEC.

Gary Which local shops do you go to? Joe at Gunshop Cat Hill is brilliant and if he doesn't stock it he will order it in and you can go and pick it up. Roding Armory is not that far and he stocks everything. The thing is purchases have to be made face to face but if the bullets are to be ordered they can post them to you when they come in. Just so long as you went in initially to order them.

The trouble with the old tracers was that the tracer pellet did not follow the same trajectory as the shot so was misleading.

Peter Lawman is usually about the best price and he will post it.

reload?

I have to say, shooting at targets with inferior ammunition is just a waste of time and money. You know you are going to get rubbish results before you start so it defeats itself.

The only real option if you want to go cheap is to get the PP, S&B or similar military grade bullets but you are going to experience a loss of accuracy compared to matchkings. You can reduce this a bit by batch weighing the bullets and then sorting them into groups of very similar weight. Zone them into tenth of a grain batches, but thats very time consuming and tedious. Also you have to buy a lot of bullets in one go to get reasonable number in each zone. Buy them from Peter Lawman or somebody similar but tell him you want them all from one batch and preferably all out of one case. I am a bit dubious about some of the so called making numbers stamped on these bullets. I bought my last lot about two years ago but only got round to batching them this winter. Although they were all stamped wth the same batch number the bullets were visibly different in colour from different bags. At that stage you might try just buying factory PPs and seeing how you get on with them because the savings from reloading become marginal. Espescially if you can sell the empty cases. My reloads are actually a lot dearer than PP or S&B ammo but I reload for accuracy not cost Really though 60 rounds a week is a bit too much for a rifle like yours unless you are happy to replace the barrel fairly regularly. Sixty rounds PW equates to 3000 a year and thats about as much as you can expect out of a .223 barrel.

The Imperial Meeting runs from Sat 11th July till Sat 25th of July but there are lots of other competitions through the year and the ranges are open for general shooting as well every day.

They almost certainly do exist, In Hertfordshire around Ashridge they are accepted as a fact by gamekeepers and farmers and not treated as particularly remarkable. So many of these exotic cats were imported in the 50s and 60s and sold to idiots as trendy pets that its almost inevetable that some would escape or be released into the wild. I don't know about panthers, thats a hard one to be sure of because panthers are big and rare but there are non native species of cats living wild in Britain of that I have no doubt at all. You have to look at all the other animals that have been "introduced" into Britain. Even the common rabbit was brought over by the Romans along with the pheasant. Mink and grey squirrels are two more.

Highlander, its very much like the old hop pickers holiday. I've had a couple of messages about this so I am going to post a few details on here because I seem to be having trouble replying to the personal messages. You need to conact the NRA on 01483 797777 and ask for the range office. Tell them you are interested in becoming a marker. They will send you a form and arrange for you to do a little course on how to operate the targets and safety etc. Once you are registered you are in basically, the rest is up to you.

High velocity doesn't come from necking down a big case. The real experimental ultra HV stuff has small very dumpy cases because the ideal combustion needs a case as close to spherical as they can reasonably make it. You can only get so much gas down a barrel before the bullet leaves it. The idea that big case equals more power is a throw back to the black powder days and is the origin of the word magnum as applied to ammunition. A magnum is a double sized champagne bottle. Modern powders don't like a long case because it interferes with the burning of the charge.

Most current cartridges are only necked down or necked up versions of something else, I would imagine that what you suggest has already been tried by someone somewhere. Probably that guy over there with one eye and half his fingers missing.

Bisley pays the markers who operate the targets £45 a day. During the summer when the big competitions are on they need hundreds. The Imperial meeting alone runs for several weeks and has over 1000 competitors each shooting across a number of distances. You can stay on the camp, there are good camping facilities costing £6 a night per tent,( irrespective of size or number of people in it). toilets washrooms, hot showers etc. Theres a really good shop just outside the camp on the road up to Purbright Army camp that sells everything you could ever need. All the club houses are open in the evenings and each one has a bar and most do food as well. Those of you who have stayed at Bisley before will know theres a great atmosphere in the evenings. People come from all over the world to compete. The work is not hard but they do expect a good standard. You need to be reliable. If you are interested let me know and I'll tell you more.

Every rifle is different, what is good in your rifle may be rubbish in your mate's, even if they are the same make. Chasing the mythical one hole group can be a lifetime's work by the time you have tested all the brands of ammo and reloaded all the different makes of powder with all the combinations of bullet etc.

You can't tell me that all those cars rolling off the ferries at Dover has had every passenger computer checked? Besides which someone may be smuggling guns for the Taliban and was chosen simply because he was clean. No, when we came off at Portsmouth the Customs Shed was all locked up. Not just we didn't get pulled over, there was nobody there.

Top guns! Our club had one as its club gun. It must have fired over 100,000 cartridges over the years and was still tight.

When we came back from France last year on the car ferry into Portsmouth we drove off the ferry then all through the dock yard past about a million road cones before emerging out onto the main road and home. No customs, no immigration nothing. This country is wide open.

Andy is correct. Any smoothbore muzzle loader held on a SGC can only be used for shot not a solid ball. The fact that its a muzzle loader makes no difference, the law treats it exactly the same way as a cartridge shotgun. This club that Reddan went to sounds a bit dodgy in more ways than one. He says the father was shooting at tin cans. If anyone shot at a tin can on our club range they would be history.

Its really down to who your local firearms team are prepared to accept to be honest. Best advice is to talk to them, they are usually quite helpful.

Its going to be a question of buy some and try it. More to the point, whats on the shelf at your local dealers. Its going to be trial and error but don't put too much ammo through it just for the sake of it. .22-250s can have a notoriously short barrel life.

Commercial slugs are made to go through any choke because the ammunition makers don't want to get sued. However, firing through a full choke may have a small adverse effect on accuracy. 1/4 Choke will be fine.

I have said this before, why did they stop importing S & B shotgun cartridges? In my opinion they were the best pigeon cartridges ever made.