Evilv

Excellent answer. Never shot an HMR, but had lots of experience with 22lr and WMR. WMR was a revelation after the LR, pretty flat and 'most devastating' as Mr Burns might have said, but the HMR is very much flatter and has plenty of violence in it at a good range. Look at these figures I just got out of the free ballistics programme Point Blank: Ballistic Coeff: 0.123 Bullet Weight: 17 Velocity: 2550 Target Distance: 110 Scope Height: 1.500 Temperature: 70 Altitude: 500 Ballistic Data ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Range Elevation Velocity Energy ETA Drop Max Y 10mph Wind Deflect 0 yds -1.50 in 2550 fps 245 fpe 0.000 sec 0.00 in -1.50 in 0.00 in 25 yds -0.42 in 2381 fps 214 fpe 0.030 sec 0.17 in -0.56 in 0.16 in 50 yds 0.26 in 2220 fps 186 fpe 0.063 sec 0.73 in -0.41 in 0.75 in 75 yds 0.51 in 2064 fps 161 fpe 0.098 sec 1.73 in -0.13 in 1.74 in 100 yds 0.26 in 1914 fps 138 fpe 0.136 sec 3.23 in 0.29 in 3.15 in 125 yds -0.60 in 1772 fps 119 fpe 0.176 sec 5.34 in 0.91 in 5.17 in 150 yds -2.18 in 1639 fps 101 fpe 0.221 sec 8.17 in 1.77 in 7.80 in 175 yds -4.52 in 1513 fps 86 fpe 0.268 sec 11.75 in 2.89 in 10.95 in 200 yds -7.84 in 1398 fps 74 fpe 0.320 sec 16.33 in 4.37 in 14.85 in Being able to just put the cross on the target area and know that between 25 and 125 yards it is within half an inch up or down from your cross hairs is a great asset in my opinion. I can't wait to pick up my HMR in the next few days and get 'cracking' with it. By the way, I think the ammo is similarly expensive for HMR and WMR too, so no advantage much either way on that one. I still expect to do a lot of donkey work with my CZ 22LR because of cost when there are a lot of rabbits about like now, but the HMR will really come into its own in the autumn and winter when they get a bit more grown up and shy. I'll probably stop buying the stingers now for longer ranges - HMR will do for them. I've had a lot of fun trying out the stingers though - they really pack a wallop out to 80 yards or so. After that, they aren't accurate enough, at least in my hands, to be sure I get them in the right spot for an instant kill. The main reason for this might be that they're blown about quite badly and it is rarely still on my best shoots.

That's quite consoling about the HMR. I just tracked down a brand new Winchester 9417 in Leicestershire and bought it. I was expecting to have to clean out the copper fouling more often than that, so thanks.

Well - thanks. You're free to come up with some persuasive and sensible arguments if you want. And so are you. In the absence of either, I'll support the line presented by several other people here who have pointed out that the stupidity of an all out cull as happened in Ireland where they now have virtually no badgers and a record high level of bovine TB, and the idea that licensed culling may be necessary in SOME areas where badgers have become very numerous. Facts and sensible deductions make a person right and their absence makes them wrong - nothing else.

Thanks m8. I do like the CZ based on the price, really good value considering. The eley ammo is ok for me as I have a friend who works for eley so can get a good discount, I already get a lot of eley misprints at silly low prices. Thanks My cz 425 zkm standard, delivers half inch groups with eley subs at 50 - 60 yards in practical, windy conditions where I am often far from ideally comfortable, lying in long grass without a bipod and propping up the rifle on a rolled up gun slip and such like non-ideal circumstances. The rifle and ammo are far better than I am and they really do deliver ragged centimeter and a half holes and all the shots touching one another in dirty rotten conditions. By the way - I almost never clean the barrel either. Maybe once in five hundred rounds I might drag a patch through the old tube.

I use an IKEA bag and put the rabbits into black bin bags and dump them in the IKEA blue bag. Strong, big capacity and cheap. Chuck it in the washer or the bin when it gets mucked up. It has short and long webbing strap handles so you can carry it in the hand or over the shoulder. It may lack style if that is important to anyone. It isn't to me. Why pay money for a bag to carry stinking rabbits in? It will hold more rabbits than you will want to carry home for sure.

He is a total criminal menace and I'm ashamed that the city I was born in and grew up in, is associated with and is standing behind this piece of scum. If football clubs took seriously their responsibilities as regards the aspirations of the tens of thousands of young lads who idolise their players, they would throw this chav, Barton off the nearest pier and tell him to get lost. Keegan has dressed up the decision to keep him, by claiming a desire to reform him. There is no hope of that, and they know it. This is a cynical financial decision and nothing less. Barton is a nutcase, and a thoroughly disgraceful example to the lads of Newcastle, many of whom have no male role models but men like him. This is a tragedy for society and decency. The message to young lads and society in general should be simple - 'Behave like a wild animal and you will pay dearly. Barton has got off far too lightly and is still likely to be earning £40k a week.

Is he representing their official policy? Do they know he is using their name in advocating this line of action? I thought BASC was a shooting and conservation organisation. His use of their name in this campaign seems contradictory to the aims of the organisation as I understand them. Is BASC a pressure group for the dairy industry now? EDIT - Ah, on reading further, I see others have said pretty much the same.

If the fleas that carry myxy are in the warrens, how is that any different in the summer to the winter? They will still infect the ones in the warren, who will spread it, as in summer, yes? I have a sneaky suspicion, agreed also by some farmers, that the disease is re-released every year, it will be interesting to track it's progress on the forum, could this be made a sticky, so that we can follow the spread? I shot two with what I think was myxi last week; one up in the Pennines and one down the Tyne Valley. Most of the others were unaffected so far. Neither were the classic hugely swollen eyes and hopelessly blind though. One was an adult, but very thin with baldness around the eyes and the other was a young one with baldy eyes and a rather trusting nature, which sat out until I got within 50 yards while the rest had gone running as I got out of the car. I think this might be the early stages of the disease. The full blown version I can recognise for sure like everyone else. EDIT: Just found this on the web. The last bit in bold is probably the most interesting bit. ->

Sounds like you've had a few cans there mate. Don't worry about my permissions, I have more acres than I can get around and I got another 300 last week. I actually shot over 60 rabbits last week alone. That's why they take me on and insist that I come as often as possible. Salisbury keeper has a sensible suggestion. Wildlife needs to be kept in balance, or things get too one-sided. The same goes for the occupiers of land. It can never be right that we allow a small interest group like farmers* to decide to eradicate a native animal, which is what would happen if it were allowed in this case. As we have seen here, they would act on emotion rather than fact. Some of the arguments evinced here are completely blind to the facts that in Ireland where badgers are virtually extinct, TB is rising to record levels. What does that mean? It should be clear - if badgers were a major cause of TB spread, in Ireland where there are virtually none left, TB would be falling. This conclusion seems to escape some and that is why government has to be involved to stop what would happen. Control of excessive numbers, and re-establishing a balance where a species has become far too numerous, is a sane, sensible, and proper response. In order to keep it out of the hands of idiots, Salisburykeeper's solution of a kind of license is a good one. I shoot hundreds of rabbits every summer because they are out of balance with the rest of nature. If badgers are out of balance in some areas they may need some control. A policy if general eradication as happened in Ireland is an ecological disaster. It happened because the demands of farmers based on inadequate thinking was placed above scientific evidence and the actual facts. *Why are farmers described above as 'a small interest group'? Because the entire full time farming workforce is only 184,000 out of a population in the UK of approaching 61 million. That means that a third of one percent of the population are in full time farming. Even when we take into account all the hobby farmers, and those that keep the odd horse or goat in a field somewhere we find that the number is 534,000. That's still less that one percent of the entire British population. We can never let such a small proportion of our people dictate the fate of a native wild animal. That should be obvious to anybody that isn't drunk. Figures on farming workforce derived from this source -> UK AGRICULTURE

That's a different matter entirely. I too have had genuine complaints ignored by idle policemen, more interested in fulfilling targets than in solving what they refer too as 'minor crime'. They should do their job properly and pursue the offenders who cause respectable people problems. This sad fact of modern British life does not detract from the the fact that lumping all people of a particular ethnic or social 'type' together as if they were one individual, all collectively guilty of the same vices as the worst of their number is a damned wrong and unjust way to think and act. A man is guilty of his own crimes and not those of people who happen to look like him, sound like him, or belong to the same class. That's how I want to be treated, and if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for anyone else, be he a prince or a *****.

Deer also carry TB, whether they gave it to badgers or vice-versa is unknown, they also travel far greater distances, what do you want to do about deer? Wipe 'em out! I feel for the farmers - I feel they are just about the one business sector that get full compensation for spreading diseases. Take Bernard Mathews for an example. Millionaire turkey magnate runs an import business that brings turkey meat to Britain from Hungarian turkey operation, also owned by Mathews. Bird Flu in Hungary, followed rapidly by bird flu in Norfolk where the imported meat was received. Same strain of disease, no other vector. What happens? Bernard Mathews gets massive tax payer pay out. I bet the other business men of Britain wish they got tax payer compensation for their disappointments and crises.

try telling that to a farmer who has lost everything ROFLMAO Yeah - like lost everything at the casino? Last I heard, all these outfits get full market rate compensation at tax[payer expense. My farmer friends laugh about how much they made out of FMD. It was the guys who didn't get FMD that lost out, and everybody knows it who knows anything. As for the ludicrous comment by another poster above who said something about badgers increasing and Bovine TB increasing - lol - there's a fault in the logic there, but somebody else pointed it out. What is increasing is animal movement for trade. The disease is called BOVINE TB, not badger TB. People keep large herds of TB susceptible, unvaccinated animals at high density, they truck them around the country, buying and selling to make some dosh, and when a few of them turn out to have BOVINE TB (that means COW TB) they want to wipe out the poor bluddy badgers who probably caught TB off the cows in the first place. How stupid is that? Especially when the virtually extinct Irish badger population seems to be responsible for a vast increase in Irish Bovine TB.... Maybe it is being spread there by that elusive species, the Lesser Irish Ghost Badger. That's the evidence people should say 'What more evidence do they want?' about. People are susceptible to TB. We vaccinate them. I bet there isn't a guy on this forum who wasn't vaccinated against TB when he was at school. We should vaccinate our herds and be done with it. Of course it won't happen, because it will affect the profits of the international meat and animal traders who are the ones who really dictate such policy matters. Those who signed that petition should read these words from the Independent Scientific Group that carried out a ten year investigation into the problem. After making clear that experience shows that the culing of badgers spreads badgers far and wide taking the infection with them to uninfected areas, they made the following conclusion clear:

Presumably, you are speaking of the father here. If so, do you know him and have chapter and verse on his approach to others, or are you simply lumping him in with others that you don't know either and assume are one hundred per cent criminal? I'd like to see severe punishment meted out to criminals, but in this country, condemnation isn't given out on the basis of your race, or social category, but after a careful examination of the evidence of your guilt in a particular matter. That's what distinguishes us from the savages where mob rule runs.

My shotgunning efforts over several decades have always been hampered by thinking it will kill rabbits at a much greater range than it will. A lot of people I've shot with, especially those new to the game, shoot at rabbits that are far too far away. When you show them the limit on the ground they can't believe it. Pace out 40 yards and look hard at the distance. You are chancing your arm at anything further than that. Thirty five yards is a better limit. If you want to get them from further afield, get a rifle.

Err - hold on a minute there - Telegraph article showing that culling has little or no effect. Wiping out a native animal should be based on good evidence. The evidence shows that it doesn't work. Badgers have been virtually made extinct in Ireland and they have seen a rise in TB, not only that, they have far more TB than we have in England. Cattle diseases of all kinds as well as bird flu are much more spread by animal trade than by wildlife. FMD went country wide because of the huge volume of trade in beasts same with Bernard Mafeew and his Bird Flue outbreak. The trade claimed it was spread by wild birds - ******** - Mafews was trucking in infected birds from near an outbreak in Hungary to a processing plant right next door to a massive turkey growing operation. The genetic footprint of the virus was identical to the Hungarian one, thrity miles away from where he was shipping in about four truckloads of turkey carcases a week. One of the farms I shoot on, the guy was a big dealer in sheep at the time of the FMD plague. He was buying hundreds, keeping them a few days and selling them on. There are other solutions we could try - like vaccination. I'm a shooter to my bones, but part of that has to be preserving the wild species we have.

Yeah - I know Rodger won't like it. Just got in from a hot shooting day up the Tyne Valley. I only saw four rabbits all afternoon. Three of them are out the back now. I feed them to our urban foxes. They come to my garden every night and get a take away, unless I tie it down for filming like on here - > This was last week. Fox Cam That stopped hsi take away games the little devil....

Not wanting to be pedantic or anything Harnser (liar - I'm a pedant to my bones) but Man has only been around at tops for about 100,000 years. The planet and the solar system itself is only 4.5 billion years old and the whole observable universe is less than 16 billion years old, so I'm a bit dubious about your suggestion that man has been clawing his way up the food chain for 10 billion years. That would mean he was doing it 5.5 billion years before the earth began to collect out of a dust cloud. Just being a pain in the butt here, and having a laugh. Vegans though truly are an evolutionary blind alley. I never saw a healthy vegan yet. They always look like they have cancer to me. (bad taste remark - I know. Switch bad taste filter back on). The development of human intelligence above that of apes is often attributed to the fact that our ancestors moved towards a greater proportion of meat in their diets and the early modern humans ate mostly meat with roots, leaves and fruit that they could add to it as they wandered around with sharp sticks for hunting. The consumption of meat allows better brain development and greater leisure time which means that people can develop technologies like firearms rather than crunching away at straw and grass and wearing out their teeth. Hence, man is nothing if nit a meat eater by his very nature. Even our relatives the apes eat meat whenever they can get it. They become extremely excited at the prospect if they can catch a small animal and eat it. They also kill members of neigbouring troops and eat them. Interesting link on apes, humans and meat eating. All vegetarian freaks should read this: Meat Eating and Hunting are core human activities

The little CZ 425 is a truly gorgeous rifle in my opinion. The trigger has a bit of creep, and that may take a bit of getting used to, but it can be fixed for about £12 with the Brooks kit. I haven't bothered to do it to mine, and to be honest, I doubt it would improve my shooting much. The subsonic round from eley juts go off with a 'ping' - quieter than an air rifle in many cases and certainly quieter than my old silenced TX200 and the Webley and the rabbit drops dead with a 'Thwok' sound just about every time unless I pull the shot. Cost? About 7p a shot for the Eleys and no cleaning needed from one thousand rounds to the next. I squirt a bit of wd40 on it if it's been raining, but in dry weather, the oil tends to collect grit and **** from dust in the wind. Just lately, I have ben lubing the action with powdered graphite which I bought from a locksmith in a sort of puffer dispenser pack with a spout on it. Result? Smooth action and no more collecting of grit and dust. Works really well I think. I'm kind of keen to get my variation back so I can order the 17hmr. I'm strongly tempted to buy a Henry Varminter Express. I like the lever action style with a tube magazine under the barrel. Had a .22 Magnum once from Winchester in that style a long time ago and that was an awesome bunny exploder. I sold it around 1987 to my immense regret ever since but I needed some cash. Didn't get a great price for it either even though it went with about 250 rounds of RWS top quality jacketed hollow points that cost a fortune as I recall. It wasn't cheap to shoot mind, but it didn't half make the right noise and it had a very convincing effect on the vermin. I know this is a very long outfit, but I like the slightly archaic style. Sometimes I shoot it with the open sights. I kind of like the traditional style of rifle and with the scope and the silencer off, this one is nothing if not traditional in style - less effective mind you, but it makes you feel good, squinting down that 24 inch barrel and putting the bead on a brown smudge 55 yards off. For some reason (age) the target always looks like a smudge these days when viewed with open sights. Drat - I could have shot a mouse with open sights at that distance thirty years ago.

Well on the first point you have about right. If I'm not shooting into the hillside, I'm not happy unless there is a stone wall (the usual field boundary around here) right behind the rabbit. I've had a few long ricochet's when shooting down the hill onto rabbits on ground that I thought would absorb the bullet. Angles less than about 25 degrees to the ground can cause bouncers. Don't take that number as gospel, but what I'm saying is that the shape at the point of impact can make what I thought would be safe, not so safe. If it's wet, these problems are a lot less. Also, the up and down nature of hilly land can shorten your view and make it hard to know what is over the horizon which can easily be less than a hundred yards so that I'm wondering if there is any stock just out of sight. On your rolling land - I have just got some roilling land in the Tyne Valley. I've only been around it once so far. There are all kinds of places on it where I wouldn't want a ricochet. As for the variation: you have to fill in another application minus the part about referees and say what you want and why. I understand it can take a week and maybe two if there are any ussues they want to look into. How far would a ricochet go in this landscape? Pretty far I think.

Just stick a CCI Stinger in the chamber next time and at 40 yards you could drop me in my tracks let alone old Charlie. I'm not recommending the old .22 for this work, but doing it that way would be a hell of a lot better than taking a hack saw or a pen knife to the business end of a bullet.

I completely agree on the ricochet thing. I am at this very moment awaiting a variation so that I can get a 17hmr. There are tons of shots I just can't take for fear that the damned bullet will pass right through, skip off the ground and howl away in an unsafe direction. We will ALWAYS have to stop and think before lining up and firing a shot, whatever caliber, but there is a tonne of energy left in those bullets after they have done the job on Roger Rabbit, and as you well know, it often enough ends up whizzing off into the wild blue yonder after hitting the deck hard and skipping up again. Fortunately much of my shooting is hill land and empty. I doubt the population density is even 1 person per square kilometer - actually, it is bound to be far less than that, and there is nothing better at stopping a bouncer than an empty fell rising five hundred feet above your line of fire. Shooting down the hill is a no no though, because it often bounces when I do and then it can go as far as it likes. Fortunately for me, when I have done that, the place is empty.

I know you're joking about the suit, but just in case of doubt, I just mean look clean and tidy and presentable. It really helps if you've done your homework and you turn up and say something like, 'Hello, is it possible to speak to Mr Macdonald?' rather than, 'Can I speak to the farmer?' or 'Is the farmer in?' Even if you do everything right, don't be discouraged over knock backs. When I was starting out in shooting thirty odd years ago, I had to drive half way around the county and call at what seemed like dozens of farms before I found anything half way decent to shoot over, before long though I had more shooting than I could reaslistically get around.

I have no problem with people deciding how they want to live their lives and doing it. I want people to be as free as possible from interference by the state and others. Obviously, this implies that we act responsibly and don't do things that remove the freedom of others - even veggies. However I have a BIG PROBLEM with militant eco-fascists or any other group that seeks to impose its will on others, ESPECIALLY IF IT TRIES TO IMPOSE ITS WILL ON ME. Militant Veggies and such like freaks are not only an evolutionary sideline (human beings have never been vegetarians since their ancestors climbed down from the trees and stood up on their hind legs) but they are a dangerous group of ideologues who seek in alliance with militant lefty gun control freaks, to tie up the honest countryman and sporting shooter, with laws that are predicated on the idea that because some dangerous people exist, all people should be treated as if they are dangerous, and must be deprived of the freedom to own and use guns, or if not that, be so tied up with red tape that they hardly dare take out an air gun onto the farm, in case by some freak of nature, it's spring has got a hard on, and it might put out a trifle more than an arbitrarily arrived at power limit of 12 ft pounds, which equates to peanut power in terms of firearms, in any case. Militant eco fascists are dangerous to your freedom and should be dealt with by derision, scorn, and ultimately by law. I think we should never dignify their stupidity by treating them as serious debating partners. Neither should we shrug and ignore them. We need good, effective campaigning organisations to oppose their fascism and ensure that firearms laws, far from being tightened are liberalised so that we can act responsibly and enjoy the right to be treated as adults unless and until we show ourselves as unfit through misbehaving with them. I say to the government, don't judge the rest of us by the standards of lunatics like Thomas Hamilton. British Law on firearms, knives and many things seems to be entirely the wrong way around - it assumes that you are bad until proven otherwise. Therein lies a recipe to put us all in chains on the grounds that we might do something bad. Some men rape, so all might be required to have a permit for their private parts.... Where will it end?

In my humble opinion that is the ONLY place likely to stop them in their tracks with a standard type air rifle. Elsewhere, is likely to turn out to give thema slow death or a big problem and a recovery. Inhumane either way.

They look heavy Bob. Must be about 60 grains at least. Not much room for powder either, but I suspect that most of the case in an Eley sub is empty anyway. Just a sniff of powder - but I'm just guessing here, although I have shaken them and you can hear that there isn't much inside them if you shake them near your lug hole and then do the same with an HV round the powder difference is obvious in a rough and ready kind of way. Also Bob, which of my points were you referring to, the one about slaughtermen and crazed bulls or the special forces one?