Rob85

If he plays his cards right he can avoid all night feeds and most nappy changing for the first month or so on the premise that he can't move as he needs to with the broken leg. Just ensure he doesn't Play it too much lest the wife breaks the other one to match. Hope his recovery goes well 👍

If they banned all lead for hunting but let it be used for target shooting I think we could all agree the level of non compliance would be so great it would be hard to find anyone who did comply with the rules. People will simply take FMJ target ammo and rub off the jacket to give some more expansion. It's a hell of a laugh complaining about lead in the environment from hunting when they still graze animals and grow crops over WW1 and WW2 battlefields and I haven't heard of much health detriment from that, apart from the odd death accidentally ploughing up unexploded ordnance of course.

I've seen an apparently well trained lab snatching up unshot birds at a shoot. Was also talking to a guy who was bleating on about how good his dog was after retrieving a pheasant that had it's head shot off.... in fact I had watched his dog snatch it from the game cart...ripping it's head off and running off like it was a prize. Don't worry about it, even well trained dogs make mistakes. At least you know the dog has instincts you can work with

Used to have a rattle with my friends beretta silver pigeon 20bore at the clay range when we were both starting out and I just couldn't for the life of me get on with it, actually much preferred my own gun at the time.....an old Baikal. That being said it is likely down to gun fit than anything else, then as scully says you have to factor in cartridge costs and the weight of the gun. To me a light 20bore with a heavy cartridge is going to punish you more than a heavier 12bore with an equivalent cartridge

I would love to have been a fly in the fellas wall to see his reaction...I'm sure his face was a treat 🤣 Aside from the obvious barking annoyance my grievance with the person I was referring to in my post was that she seems to think having a dog outside of the house even in a proper kennel when it's cold is cruelty, (no doubt likewise if it's a warm day) even if said dog has a perfectly good kennel to go into for shelter and access to an outside run. I noticed on the facebook post she put up that she seemed to be getting A LOT of negative feedback from people for her attitude. She also edited her post to say she wanted to know who it was so she could inform the "cruelty officers" I was really dismayed when I found the post has now been deleted by the group admin before i had the chance to ask her what a "cruelty officer" is

Where did I say that i think it was alright for a dog to be barking at 5:30am?

So on a local community group this morning I saw a post that just boiled my pee. "It's 5:30am and I can hear a dog barking that's been left outside to freeze" Queue the usual "That's disgusting" and "do you know whose it is?" Where do these nosey people get off? How about maybe they heard a dog being let out to stretch it's legs before the owner goes to work and it was barking round the garden? Or maybe it's a dog that has a sheltered outside kennel with access to an outside run that was just barking after it woke up as so many dogs do? My dog is outside, her kennel is part of an old outside toilet type brick building with a run attatched to it, she has cosy blanket bedding and any morning I get her out she's always toastie. Now having said that if the mercury went well into the minus numbers I would bring her in. How do these people think cows survive being out in barns over the winter?

100%. When it comes to the rifle shooting I can see a lot of the hunting fraternity in the EU coming out in force to oppose banning lead.

I still use the carrier bags in leaky boots or wellies if they haven't dried out fully and used to put them between my first and 2nd layer of socks before I put on my rugby boots. I'm just too damn cheap to throw boots out until they fall apart

It just came to me as a couple of years ago I was looking at one on guntrader and a friend of mine said something about great handling guns but a bit soft with the extractors, or possibly the extractor spring, cycling some cartridges fast by hand might show if the extractor is at fault

Steel...or soft iron to be precise is going to be the only alternative for the masses to be able to afford. I think for shotgunning this is going to be ok as most people can make it work. The problem is there is already a creep towards rifle shooting now and aside from larger calibres that can belt out a copper bullet hard enough there essentially is no viable alternative in smaller calibres

Is it cycling but not actually pulling the spent cartridge out? Extractor completely shafted?

The Macallan single malt or if you do like something a bit different try Cock o' the North single malt

For all the airgunners out there, check this out.... yes the camerawork is a bit kack but it does illustrate how poor these pellets are. Never mind killing energy, check out the lack of accuracy and the fact these pellets cannot even fit in the magazine of the rifle.

There's a guy on YouTube, .22plinkster I think his channel is where he tested non toxic .22lr ammunition, for accuracy and power you pretty much get cut down to shooting at ranges not much more than 40-50yards, if that's the case then when it comes to airguns your may as well not bother and just try to sneak up and beat your rabbits over the head with a priest, or use a catapult.

As this is an EU thing which we are not part of, can we not tell then to bundle it up their back passage along with the rest of the EU?

Pretty sure europe has seen something like that before 🤔

Weird seeing this now and I'm only after trapping a finger in work, got off lightly though, there's nothing like that feeling to near trigger a heart attack or soiled undercrackers. Think my oddest finger injury was in high school, using the belt linisher my hand slipped and I linished a big flat spot on the tip of my finger, surprisingly there was no blood as the heat melted the skin over the fingernail and kept it sealed... result👍

If you want to go down the road of the loud noise then I would get one of them tripwire activated cartridge alarms, blackpowder does make an awful din.... going off a few feet away from would be thieves at 2am would leave enough excrement behind to get a DNA sample

If you want to go down the route of steel shot....even just for ducks or shooting near wetland then stick with standard steel and don't shove high performance steel cartridges in there, something like a 32g 4 in steel will cover you shooting birds out to 40yards. You will struggle to find any steel for your .410 though. What is the bettinsoli choked at?

Well the ground is grass, I've never thought of trying to decoy them on the grass, was thinking more of lofting a couple and having a few set up on some blown down branches on the ground to see how it goes. Depends who you speak to on the matter of the chokes really, with standard steel I was under the impression that any choke was fair game, have to say the barrel walls on the sarasketa that I'm shooting are pretty hefty. Here's to better days ahead!

What I'm really taking from this poor experience is that now the ducks/game season is over...for northern ireland anyway... I've figured out the main pigeon flightlines over the permission, it's a small piece of ground but right across the road from the roosting wood(national trust owned ground) of a substantial amount of pigeons, so maybe I'll look into getting some lofting poles sorted and some new hide poles organised

Likely too much lead, the birds at times seemed like they were hovering in the wind, slightest tip of the wing and they were gone. I think I was maybe guilty of being too slow in my shots and poorly judging the range of shootable birds but I wanted them closer....for what reason I don't know as I was shooting steel shot from a half and very full choked gun. When I got home I was wishing I had brought out the side by side rather than the over under

What are your guns that cannot take steel shot?

So I decided I would try to get out early yesterday for the last day of the season and try for a duck as I had seen then coming into the bottom of my closest permission last time I was out. So not a duck to be seen but there is a nicely established flightline and there were plenty of pigeons flighting over and crows galore so I moved position closer to the flightline and was hoping for at least a handful of pigeons considering the strength of the wind and how the bird were flying into it. Wasn't to be sadly, what seemed like simple crossers... I missed every single one, my shooting was so abysmal I was nearly for breaking the damn gun over my knee, but it wasn't the guns fault, was the goof pulling the triggers. I'll be chalking this one down to just having a bad day. It's amazing how your shooting goes from bad to downright kack when you get flustered and frustrated. Time for some reading up on flightlines tactics!