Innehållsförteckning för December 2024 från Sporting Shooter

SSAA ran a good SHOT Expo in Melbourne late in October. It’d been five years coming after COVID put the kibosh on everything, and the event’s return was welcomed by much of the industry and thousands of hunters and shooters. Nothing was going to stop me seeing it, and about 14,500 other people felt the same way. This SHOT Expo was run with a degree of trepidation; it was a bit of a toe in the water. The venue was smaller than the one they used to use in Victoria, and even then there was a little unused space available. In terms of space, exhibitor numbers and attendees, it wasn’t that much smaller than pre-COVID and I’d call it a success. My feeling is that future ones will get bigger,…

MICK AND Jo Barrett, Mark Ballard and I went through a relatively quick Border Force check and our rifles were on their way to New Zealand with us. I brought my Kimber .300 Win Mag, Mick his Kimber .270 WSM and Ballard his Sauer .300 Win Mag. Optimistically, I brought 30 rounds of 180gn Barnes handloads. SEATED on the plane I realised this international hunt was a reality. Three months of planning had got us to this point. It started with a phone call from Mick, my good mate. He asked how keen I’d be to head to NZ and hunt tahr in the Karangarua Valley. I had my initial hesitation about the timeline etc, but a few hours later I decided to drop it all for this trip of…

IT’S a bit of an eye-opener to realise you can buy German Precision Optics rifle scopes for under $1000, like this 2.5-10x44i Spectra 4x with an illuminated reticle — it shows how affordably you now buy excellent, well-engineered optics with a host of features. But there’s a trick to it: German Precision Optics (GPO) are not necessarily German. Well, not entirely. The company is German, and it does all final assembly and quality control in its German headquarters before packing up the products for distribution around the world, but a large part of the optics are made in Japan, the Phillipines or China. GPO’s aim is to make optics to German levels of quality without having to price them like most German products. The business model was hatched by former…

Tipton Best Gun Vice and Wheeler tool combinations Tipton’s Best Gun Vice is one of the best tools you can own for working on your firearms. Designed to accommodate almost any firearm including pistols, shotguns and rifles, its central aluminium channel allows you to move and adjust individual components to suit any size or length. A customised clamping mechanism ensures a tight, secure grip to the firearm’s buttstock. The Tipton vice is made of high-quality polymer that is solvent resistant and will last you for many years of use. This vice also features flat and round compartments to accommodate tools, oils, screws and parts. The Wheeler FAT Wrench is another great product for the home gunsmith. This tool is designed to bring perfectly consistent tension to every screw on your…

.30 magnum comparison Q I’m tossing up whether to buy a .30 magnum and trying to choose between a .300 WSM, a .300 Win Mag or a .300 Ultra Mag. I would prefer a cartridge that drives a 180gn bullet pretty fast, but doesn’t burn whopping great charges of slow powder and kick my head off. I’d also like barrel life to be reasonable, because I want to use it a lot. Which one would you choose and why? Andrew Mayberry A To fulfil your requirements, I’d recommend choosing the .300 WSM. It burns 67gn of powder to drive a 180gn bullet at 923m/s (3030fps); the .300 Win Mag burns 14 grains more powder to boost the velocity a mere 15m/s (50fps), which is not noticeable in the field; and…

THIS stumpy lever-action Chiappa is a rare blend of vintage class and scrub-gun practicality with some extra touches thrown in. It’s one of those rifles that plants an ear-to-ear grin on your face. It’s the epitome of a fun close-range rifle for hunting and for blasting targets, especially as it’s chambered in .357 Magnum, which gives you ammo options from full-power .357 hunting loads to low-recoil, cheap .38 Special plinking loads. It’s the kind of tough, quick-handling firearm you can slip into a scabbard on a bike, quad or buggy and have ready for targets of opportunity. The fact that it’s a fairly faithful replica of a design dating back to 1892 is something to celebrate. Rather than becoming obsolete about a century ago, what was originally the Winchester Model…

ONE of my favourite things about hunting regularly is having plenty of opportunities to try out different gear. I’m a gear head and unapologetically so. I like to keep things simple and try to do more hunting than gear fussing, but I’m also a big fan of trying as many options as possible before I decide what I like the most. A trend we’ve seen since YouTube and other social media arrived is that anyone with an internet connection has the ability to put forward their opinions in reviews and product overviews. They inundate this space, but with limited experience and field use. It’s common to see ‘unboxing’ videos and people talking about the product in their hands being the latest and greatest, but their experience and use doesn’t necessarily…

AFTER the fallow rut and red roar were over, we started concentrating on the big mountain boars that also live in the mountains I hunt. They loiter in the many gullies that are choked by blackberries. We focussed our attention mainly on a certain gully. We had seen a lot of amazing pig sign there in the past and we also knew this particular area held some great boars. One morning we were slowing walking in the gully when all of a sudden we saw a massive boar come out of its cover on the other side. It headed down the gully, across the bottom and began climbing straight up towards us. It was huffing and grunting. We just waited. It was almost on top of us — within 10…

THERE I was on my sister’s old sheep property two decades ago, my young nephew by my side while I balanced my Brno Model 2’s fore-end on a horizontal fence-wire strand. The half-grown bunny was across a small gorge on an opposing hill face, sleeping prone and partly obscured by a small bush some 100 metres away. Laying the crosswire of the old Japanese Nikko Stirling 4x32 a few inches above his back, I steadied and let fly. At the impact, the bunny never kicked, but rolled down the hill like a baddie dispatched in a cowboy movie. My nephew Andrew had played with my .22 before and knew the difficulty of the shot. He was agape at the kill. With a 70m zero to give a longer effective point…

COMPETITION BROUGHT TO YOU BY WIN a GARMIN eTrex 22x EVERY MONTH! ENTRIES: Please email your high resolution. jpg or. png pig hunting image as an attachment to the email addressed to mickmatheson@yaffa.com.au – all images must be at least 1MB in size. For entry to be valid the following contact details must be included: First name, surname, full mail address, contact phone number and email address. A short explanatory sentence with the email is also needed. Garmin’s outdoor range features unparalleled innovation in hiking, camping and hunting tech in handheld or wearable configurations. Options span from navigation, communication, safety and tracking devices. Garmin also produces a range of bow sights with built-in rangefinder enabling better shot placement. A Garmin eTrex 22x GPS Navigator will be sent to the best entry every…

 Q I’m in the market for a new varmint rifle and like the look of the Howa with blued metalwork and sporter walnut stock. But I am unsure about which calibre to get it in — .223 or .22-250. Most of my shooting is at rabbits and foxes in open country where ranges are often very long. Can you offer advice on which calibre to choose and give me a couple of good loads for it and any info that might be useful? Len Lawson A The .22-250 is probably the epitome of the varmint cartridge from a general viewpoint. The .223 is a bit quieter but the .22-250 has very mild recoil, a manageable noise level and flatter trajectory. Often an out-of-the-box rifle with heavy barrel like the Howa…

“What matters is they are shooting, they are enjoying themselves” WE all know shooting and hunting can get very expensive, but it doesn’t have to be — and playing up the affordable side of things is an important way to get new people into the sport and help them get established in a rewarding, life-long activity. Many shooters of an older generation grew up with an iron-sighted single-shot air rifle or .22, which taught them the fundamentals of safe firearms handling and marksmanship while also making sure the only holes being caused were in the target and not their wallet. I’m not saying we should be telling anyone who gets a gun licence that they have to start with a Lithgow 1A and work their way up, but rather that…

PRIZES Every published entry wins a Vanguard Scout B62 bipod worth $95! At the end of the year, the best three entries will be chosen by the editor to win first, second and third prizes of: 1 Vanguard Endeavor HD 82A spotting scope with case worth $750 2 Vanguard VEO HD 10x42 binoculars worth $699 3 Vanguard Endeavor RL 303CGM Carbon tripod with gun vice head worth $649 Find out more about the competition and the prizes at sportingshooter.com.au/win…

WITH HUNTING in the family and the family into hunting, it’s something to remember when the kids take their first rabbits. It’s even more memorable when they take their first wild pig! MY son Max got his first rifle for his 18th birthday, a .303 Lee Enfield in full wood which he’d always wanted. A couple of years later, the stars aligned, allowing us to go pig hunting together. He had been with me on pig hunts when he was a lot younger but now it was his turn as the hunter. Max’s rifle was now very well sorted by our local gunsmith after a less than stellar re-barrelling job by someone else. We loaded our shooting buggy, an old converted V8 Range Rover, onto a trailer behind the F250…

“Max mentioned how beautiful and quiet it was in the bush” I have been hunting with my two boys, Max (6) and William (4) from the time they could both walk. On most occasions Max would get frustrated that things got in his way or that his legs were hurting from walking. We have been doing a bit of hound hunting which has been good and generally they haven’t had to walk too far to see the action. Last month, on a cool Sunday morning, I took Max out to the private property I had just been given access to. We arrived on daybreak to walk up the ridge and drop into a wallow I had a trail camera on. I knew there was some walking involved and I was…