Jump to content

Uilleachan

Members
  • Posts

    339
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Uilleachan

  1. A few years back I went out to search for a set of bins with £1500 cash and my debit card, tried many sets in several shops over a month or two, when I eventually settled on a set it was a set of Minox 8x 43 HG bins I came home with, paid £550 not to long after that model came out. Great bins that suited my eyes and whilst the more expensive bins, £1700 swarovski etc were marginally better, they weren't £1000 better. Sure you can buy cheaper bins, and I've looked through lots of those, but for me by direct comparison the minox HG's were a good step above most and close enough to far more expensive models for me.
  2. Meindl are hard to beat, but they don't fit everyone.
  3. Mainly trap in the north, DTL being most popular, lots of local shoots that are worth going to, here's a useful page: https://www.scotshoot.com Not all shoots are listed there, there are quite a few that aren't. Just head along to one as thats the best way top get the heads up on what else is on. Quite a few of these DTL shoots have a sporting or similar reentry side shoot run as a separate competition.
  4. If you feel cold during winter ditch the cotton next to the skin and either go for merino wool or a synthetic (my preference). Still feeling cold? Add the long johns. If you're not in to heavy activities these and similar are hard to beat in terms of bang for buck: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Highlander-Thermal-Long-Sleeve-Baselayer/dp/B00BIBDTQW/ref=sr_1_103?crid=2Y68AA83VODFH&keywords=thermal%2Bunderwear%2Bmen&qid=1570104463&s=gateway&sprefix=thermal%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-103&th=1&psc=1 No need for self igniting human torch clobber, the body generates enough heat, it's just a case of holding onto it.
  5. Aye figgy, that was basically my thinking. Not exact, but close enough for folk.
  6. Yep, that indeed seems to be the case. Bought some 2nd hand Teague Invector + chokes off of here a while back and began to notice the difference of travel using the Teague choke key. So whilst not as scientific as the exampled quoted by figgy above, by simply noting how much of the key will go into the aperture of the browning chokes, that shipped with the gun, versus the Teague invector + equivalent it was quite obvious that one was tighter than the other, despite both being marked with the same degree of restriction.
  7. If you knock Invector + Browning Factory chokes, those supplied with your 525, down a degree of that stated you arrive at a more accurate figure for the constriction of that specific choke. Browning's 525 3/4 (Steel Full) is actually half choke by conventional measurement.
  8. My old boss on Skye brought in a famous terrier once to assist in the clearing of a difficult den site. Saw ears appearing and he shot the head off the fox with his trusty .243, turned out to be said famous terrier. Costly mistake in identity.
  9. I'm Italian #7.5, which is English #7 at 2.4mm, for everything. Fiocchi FBlu 28g. As they pattern very well out of both my browning and miroku. I'm mainly shooting trap at the moment but I'd settled on Fblus whilst mainly shooting sporting. Fblu 24g for OT.
  10. Plenty here in the cooler wetter drafty far flung north western edge of Britain. Unfortunately persecution is certainly part of the picture, we (metaphoric) stopped killing raptors here some thirty forty years back and the birds returned, eagles harriers et al....
  11. England has several thousand square miles of suitable harrier habitat, so where are the English hen harriers? In England and to a lesser extent parts of Scotland, harriers are notable by their absence.
  12. You just have to try a few. The shooting of the glasses in the picture above was in response to a comment by a contributor who didn't trust modern safety specs. The reason I like the set featured is that they can be had for £7 and, for me, work really well in low light or dull conditions and are optically correct right up to the top edge, which is where my eye is when I'm mounted. I had a look through an expensive set a few years ago, can't describe the colour very well as it was too long ago, except to say that if my memory is correct it was a reddish tint, made the orange clays glow like a lamp, which was impressive. Good for DTL but not for a black edge on sporting clay flying against dark background. I still prefer shooting without, but thats not tenable on many grounds that I like to shoot so I'm just sticking glasses on and getting on with it. .
  13. There are kids, and there are kids. Nothing wrong with a .410 when starting a young kid off, shooting static targets moving to easy moving targets etc. Most important thing is that it should be fun and flinch free. They can move onto something more meaningful when they're good and ready having been introduced to the mechanics and basics. Older kids, 28 20 or 12 gauge, depending on size.
  14. Thanks Buze. And I hear what you say regarding the steaming being partly due to the design and the optical advantage of the slightly more up market specs, polaroid filters et al. I'm not a fan of having to wear specs for shooting, although actual speckiness is creeping up on me and I wore safety glasses at work for years, so I know what they're about and can live with using them provided they suit me optically. All the shoots I attend have safety glasses signs up, but not tightly enforced. I was at a DTL shoot at a registered ground when the ref advised me the I'd forgotten to put my specs on, they were hanging off my shirt, so put them on and still shot well. Since then I've made a point of using them at every shoot regardless of status. If your specs have EN166:2001 F or FT, the norm for standard safety specs, marked on them they'll stop an 11+fpe projectile, and I reckon a good bit more, by contrast, a #7 shot projectile traveling at average velocities by 40 yards is delivering less than 1fpe. Point blank, or close, with #7 shot, blindness would be the least of your worries.
  15. Yeah, steaming up is worse in winter, trick is to keep them on. But when it's raining and cool, even the guys with the £600 anti misting super specs suffer the same issue. Intermediate drying with a clean cotton rag sorts this. As far as the suitability of EN166:2001 safety specs for shooting? Although the set featured in the link I posted bear the legend "FT", low impact high temp, the lenses themselves are manufactured to a higher standard, because the standard derivatives isn't just dealing with lens, rather they're also looking at what happens to the glasses when they're impacted. Does the lens come out of the frame, is the lens shattered or broken etc. Well, I've just been out to the garden to test my redundant pair, the point blank .20 11.4fpe test, and they failed the high energy projectile test, in that one of the arms came off during the impact (specs rested against a stump so the specs absorbed as much of the energy as was available), medium projectile standards are usually goggles and high, a visor, designed not to break or come off the head during the event. Here are the photos and as can be seen the lens is only dented, I rather fancy they'd do just fine in the 40y full choke test with say English #7 shot, you'd be picking a bit of shot out of your head and face, but your eyes would be just fine.
  16. Clay&Game and FE for me, but go into Bushwear and speak to them. I'd contacted Bushwear and got the "not in stock answer" myself. I was passing by their Perth shop so called in for a set of dippers. Got talking to the guy who made a few enquiries and lo and behold, if he didn't turn me up a tub of H110 for me to collect the following week.
  17. I'm using these 3M amber for low light or dull days, to great effect: https://www.amazon.co.uk/3M-Safety-Glasses-Anti-Scratch-Anti-Fog/dp/B00GDHZP6I?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_11 This particular set, clear or tinted, are optically very good, right up to the top of the lenses and they're cheap enough to buy for a try. Seen them a pound a pair cheaper than in that Amazon link. I prefer them to my £40 specs.
  18. There'll be some trick/technique and I'm sure few rounds of skeet won't hinder. I'm shooting a lot of DTL at the moment, as thats by far the majority game in my part of the world and thats helping with consistency and my mount. I mount to my hold point look at my distant marker call pull and that someone else living in my brain does the rest, I'm getting quite consistent mounts through this routine and when I come across angled edge on rapid goers on a sporting layout I'm hitting them more reliably. Thing DTL is teaching me, is that easy birds are easy missed if I don't focus....
  19. I buy my carts from Auchterhouse Country Sports, a fiocchi stockist. Here's a link to Just Cartridges fiocchi page, buying locally one can improve on the quoted prices a bit: https://www.justcartridges.com/fiocchi/ TT1 & Fblu are both worth a look but for my guns I favour the latter. Finding a cartridge that patterns well out of your gun and sticking to it will remove the mechanical variables, equipment, from the mental equation. That's helped me a lot, it's freed me up to focus on the actual shooting. Try and remember how you felt whilst shooting the 41 score and try to replicate it when you're shooting in future, I'm willing to bet that it was your mood that day that made the difference. When I shoot with that "feeling" my scores leap up. I know my equipment is good, I have a plan and I tell myself what I'm going to do, I get on the line and zone out. My give a toss o' meter is on tick over I'm not thinking of anything other than seeing the bird, I'm looking for the bird, I see it I shoot it, or if I miss it I move on with the rest of the plan, keeping that give a toss o' meter just on tick over. For me, if I'm in the right place mentally, there's a slightly aggressive determined feeling, that comes into play, a slight spike in give a toss o' meter revs, on seeing the bird and putting my patten where I think it should be to kill it. But it's a feeling rather than a conscious mental process. I'm finding the head game the hardest bit to master but when I get it right I shoot better and it is just a feeling or mood. It's hard to achieve at a practice, but at a comp we're not practicing so getting in that mood (speculation here as I'm no sports phycologist) allows my conscious mind to do the target acquisition leaving my sub conscious to handle all the rest, catching the ball where you can't see your hands. Weird as that may sound. I know from playing music in semi improvised sessions, to play well you have to get yourself into the right mood, the conscious mind is listening, the mechanics of playing, the seemingly seamless on the fly on the nail key changes etc. are happening on auto pilot, my subconscious is bringing the sum of my experience and ability to the fore, if I have to think about it too much I can't do it or I don't do it as well, I'm finding shooting to be the same or similar. That being the case, the biggest obstacle to improvement is ourselves. Tell yourself what you want to do, clear the mind and let the subconscious do the business.
  20. I'm still in love with Fblu 28g, they pattern in both my sporter and trap guns, continental 7.5 so english 7. Yesterday I was using the 24g version as I'm out of the 28g. I was smashing the targets on the fur n' feather side shoot, both targets taken sub 10y, skeet and quarter, made the shoot off but blew it, and convincingly broke the mother of all distant 2nd barrel efforts on the ATB stand. Even so, it'll be another 1000 fblu 28g I'll be collecting next week. But there's nothing amiss with the 24g, the remainder of which I'll be saving for OT.
  21. Fish mainly round here, and anything slow enough top catch, plus carrion when available. Locally when the tide is on the make forcing its way through the narrows, the seals flock to catch the concentrated incoming fish, the gulls steal their share from the seals, the big gulls rob the smaller gulls, the sea eagle robs in turn. When the sea eagle is full, he heads back to the nest and the female takes over.
  22. I'm no aficionado but I have messed around a bit looking at different .410 loads using a variety of shot weights and wad types. Using plastic wads, nickel plated 7 shot, both SP3 & H110 roll crimp, in both my 3' Lincoln fixed 1/4 & full and 2.5" single shot converted rook gun fixed 3/4 patterned at 30y, I can see where the claims of 35+y come from, IMO, with the right load, 35+y is doable with full choke out of the lincoln, full but not overly so and 30+y out of the rookies 3/4, I say that because I've had patterns I considered on the tight side for the tested 30y. So with those loads (I'd need to find my note book, but all those loads came from C&G SP3 & .410 data) in mind I'd be happy out to 35y and 30y respectively if I felt I was up to the job. The long shot then, the 35y to 40y clean kill? with the right load in the right circumstances in the right hands, I can see it. Factory loads by comparison, haven't tried fiocchi or hull HP as I can't get them locally, tend to perform poorly past 25y & 20y respectively. I've since had good results on informal croft clay bashing, 20 to 25y with the kids using FE data and fibre components, although patterning is yet to happen that load seems and feels a good round. Using eley factory 3" fibre (18g?) on the same day we weren't hitting much. It's a fickle caliber that needs much more attention to detail, in every respect. .
  23. .... and the western isles has the highest density of eagles in the UK. Eagles have a bad reputation, attitudes are changing though and at least some people I know who'd once have shot them given the chance, now directly profit from them, or their kids do. Pal of mine, if he shoots a runty hind or poor stag lays it out under his B&B website linked webcam, posting the edited highlights to his B&B Facebook page. I'll post a link when it's back up and running later this year. There's no doubt some lamb snatching goes on, but they're not the main culprit when it comes to livestock losses. The other side of me thinks, you take the subsidy, you take your chance. That said, a sea eagle would need to be pretty desperate to take a lamb, as they don't have much meat to them. Here's a photo of a sea eagle next to a stag for scale: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-43307984 If sea eagles dined on lamb a pair would need 10 or 12 a day during the nesting season and if that was happening we'd know all about it. Then again if I lived on the isle of wight I'd start keeping the kids and pets in
  24. https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2019/04/02/natural-england-issues-licence-to-release-white-tailed-eagles/ NE are not considering licence applications, it's already done. They've issued a licence. Wouldn't say there's much to worry about in the south as they'll have no competition. Pressure comes when there's a high population density and competition from other large apex raptors, eg golden eagles. Sea eagles prefer others to do the killing/catching, they specialise in robbing. So if there's fish and sea birds locally, that's where the sea eagles will be. If not there won't be any sea eagles, they won't hang around. Different story in places like Mull, high sea bird densities existing cheek by jowl with hill farming, yet where I am we have them and golden eagles but without the livestock issues reported from elsewhere.
×
×
  • Create New...