Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i Sporting Shooter

THE feral goat population around here is now ridiculous. Essentially, it’s because the market for goats collapsed and now no one is managing them by mustering and selling. As a result, the population has boomed. I am looking out my office window now at two mobs of goats on the hillsides and there are others within earshot. As I was writing that last sentence, a message came over the neighbourhood’s group chat: “OK, we’ve had enough! Would any of you be interested in doing a cull on our land of the bloody goats?!” Yep, I would! The request came from a neighbour who’s not in the least bloodthirsty and loves the wildlife generally but now their yard has no vegetation left and the back fence can’t keep the goats out.…

IN 2020 the Remington firearms business was sold to the Roundhill group for $US13 million. This sale ended the uphill battle of America’s oldest gunmaker since its acquisition by Cerberus Capital Management, later called the Freedom Group. The previous year, company sales had dropped to $US438 million, just half the total of 2016, when Remington had last shown a profit. “The Model 783 may be an economy-class rifle but it is capable of extreme accuracy” The breakup of Remington included a $US81 million sale of Remington Ammunition to Vista Outdoor Group (Federal, Speer, CCI). This put at risk the jobs of roughly 700 employees at Remington’s Ilion, New York plant and the Dakota shop in Sturgis, South Dakota. Fortunately, Jeff Edwards, head honcho of Roundhill, had had a long association…

I’M colourblind. Mostly red/green, but I get a few other colours mixed up as well. In some ways, it’s a pain in the butt when out bush, but I’ve never known any different and I’ve managed to cope just fine. What it does mean is that I like specific pieces of my kit to be highly visible, and I run the gauntlet on just how much that may impact my bowhunting when getting in close. So far, it seems to be OK, but I still stick to the fundamentals of breaking up my outline and staying still during the critical moments before coming to full draw. The more time I spend getting really close to animals, the more I appreciate good camouflage. We all have our preferences and opinions on…

LATELY, public interest in the dingo has been revived by unprovoked attacks on tourists on Fraser Island, now called K’gari, in Queensland. The only reason that a pure-bred dingo would attack a human would be because it had lived in close contact with them and been fed by them, losing all fear and respect for humans as a consequence. I have never seen or heard of an unprovoked attack by a dingo in the bush; they’ll always try to avoid humans. Only seldom have I deliberately set out to hunt a dingo. Usually I’ve come across them by happenstance. More often this has occurred when a mate and I were hunting apart; one of us starts it running and the other gets the shot. Sometimes curiosity will be their downfall and…

There wasn’t much shooting light left as we drove into the paddock. Four kilometres long and one kilometre wide, it was ploughed and lying fallow, waiting for planting. Immediately, we noticed, out where the light turned to dusk about 1½km away, a darker shape against the dull grey of the earth. WE watched, trying to distinguish movement and identity. Yes, it was moving, going deeper into the cleared paddock. Terry put his 12x scope on it and confirmed it was a big pig. My turn for the shot. The soft, freshly turned loam would surely bog us if we took a direct run to intercept. Best I try to run him down along his back trail. I told Malcom, who was driving, to just casually cruise along the edge of…

BRASS and its excellence is crucial for all reloading operations. Everything depends upon it — safety and foolproof functioning together with the best accuracy and most power we can squeeze out of our rifles by reloading. The cartridge case holds all the ‘working’ components in proper relationship to each other prior to firing. A handloader aims to reuse the case. The number of times it can be reloaded and the level of performance obtainable from it depends to a certain degree upon its structural design. It is pretty well recognised that there is no fundamental difference in the strengths of modern rimless and belted cases. Due to differences in hardness and web thickness, it is not unusual to find a lot of rimless brass which will stand higher pressure than a…

THE Golding boys recently nipped out to their favourite hunting property to check their trail cameras and have a late afternoon hunt. The increasingly dry conditions were having an effect on animal movement and it wasn’t uncommon for the cameras to capture midday and early-afternoon deer movement. This daytime deer movement has brought a re-emergence of drive-by poachers. At least one dead rusa spiker has been found in a creek bed. As this hunt was really only an outing to check their trail cameras, the boys were travelling light with just one rifle, a knife and binoculars. They found nothing of interest on the trail cams and saw no fresh deer sign. The afternoon shadows were getting longer so Old Pop and Nathan headed back to the ute. “The boys were…

Letters containing questions for answering by Nick Harvey must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope. Mail your letters to: The Technical Editor, 3 Reef Street, Hill End, NSW 2850. LETTER OF THE MONTH Mourning the Brno ZKK Series Q I am not impressed by the new CZ 600 rifle series. In my opinion they don’t begin to compare with the old Brno ZKK series of modified Mausers. Recently, I was offered a ZKK-602 in .375 H&H Magnum. It was overpriced but I bought it anyway. I don’t think I’m alone in mourning the passing of the ZKK series as every shooter I know feels the same way. Let’s hope the CZ factory doesn’t suffer the same disastrous drop in sales that Winchester did with the post-64 Model 70 fiasco. Roger…

KARL Steiner started his one-man shop in 1947 and, despite Germany’s poor post-war economy, within six years his company had 50 workers. From this modest beginning, Steiner-Optik flourished and expanded so much that in 2008 it was acquired by Beretta’s US-based Burris division, which resulted in a considerable expansion in the Steiner product line. Steiner’s accomplishments were many, starting in 1967 with the use of binocular bodies made of Makrolon, a polycarbonate which was lighter and tougher than aluminium alloys. In 1973, Steiner introduced the first nitrogen-filled military binoculars to prevent interior fogging, which were adopted by the German military. In 1988 the US Army placed an order for 72,000 Steiner military binoculars, of which only four were rejected. In 2006, Steiner was the first to develop a water and dust…

IT feels like shooters in Australia are under more pressure, from more fronts, than at pretty much any time since the 1996 law changes. The issues in Western Australia are the most obvious, of course, with its hateful and fear-based rewrite of the firearms laws to include everything from a hard cap on how many guns someone can own to deciding that someone’s views, opinions and attitudes can render them not a fit and proper person to have a gun at all. That’s not the only issue facing Australian shooters at the moment, either. If you reload, then you’re well aware of how painfully unobtainable a lot of reloading components have been, in some cases for years. Pistol shooters in particular are especially hard hit by this. There haven’t been…

ACCESS, access, access. Earlier this year I had the good fortune to gain access to a red deer block that was quite close to home. The owner ran cattle and had a fairly active presence of wild dogs. Having pursued wild dogs locally over the past few years I had gradually increased my reputation as being effective and trustworthy, which played a vital role in gaining access to country to hunt. AS my interest in deer has steadily developed, I had always hoped that I would be put in touch with a landowner who had a dog problem and a deer population. This block appeared over the new year’s break, and I moved into e-scouting mode. Once I had assessed points for entry to the property, I began to study typical…

TWO HOURS into my first High Country sambar hunt in years, a stag lies dead at my feet. It had a head worth taking — it must have been because it wasn’t there any more. Nor were his backstraps or hind legs. I was gutted. Someone else had shot him less than two days ago. MATE, I’d put in such a good stalk, too! I’d followed his game trail, noting all the fresh rub trees along the way. The wind was in my favour and it was early enough that he wouldn’t have bedded yet. All the signs indicated there was a stag active in the area and I felt confident I’d find him. In the cold, damp conditions, his droppings still looked pretty fresh. I’d seen the low-flying wedge-tailed…

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SOME OF US buy a rifle purely as a tool of hunting or agriculture. Others buy them with a reverence, intending to pass them down as an heirloom with wooden stocks polished, aesthetic value maintained and rough treatment avoided. But irrespective of reasons, when a firearm has served someone well for many years, it’s very easy to develop a strong attachment to it. TWELVE years ago, in my early 20s, hunting became a serious pursuit for me and I set about buying a solid. all-purpose bolt-action that would cover my deer and medium game hunting needs well into the future. I was a student and my budget was tight, requiring me to trade in my Marlin .30-30 to fund the new purchase, a decision that still hurts to this day but…

THE SUN was setting on yet another enchanting day in Limpopo, the heart of South Africa. My hunting safari had been a mix of excitement and wonder, but there was one elusive creature that had caught my attention — the waterbuck. I had never seen one before, but a waterbuck trophy in the dining room of our lodge had captivated my imagination. MY professional hunter (PH), Kobus, had mentioned the possibility of an even bigger one hiding somewhere in the depths of the property, and my desire to find this majestic creature was ignited. We set off on a Friday, the fifth day of my eight-day safari, in search of ‘my’ waterbuck. Despite our efforts, we were unable to locate the elusive animal that day. On Saturday we had the…

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