Category: Musings of a Hedgewalker

To be fair, when I spoke for the second time to the lady who answers the telephone at the local constabulary’s firearms department, I didn’t put it exactly like that, though I have a feeling she knew what I meant. To be fair to her, if she wasn’t genuinely appalled that my FEO still hadn’t conducted the promised interview and delivered the paperwork (having assured me two weeks ago that there were no problems and that my new shotgun certificate would be with me well before its expiry date), she did a very good job of pretending to be. Of course, she may have been well-practiced.

Nonetheless, a life lesson, learnt young – that one should never be impolite to people from whom you wish to obtain something, at least until after you have obtained that something – served me well and having negotiated the cloudy waters of social discourse, she promised to make every effort to see that the certificate would be delivered at the interview she intended to arrange for Monday. We shall see.

A Free Weekend

For the reasons described above, I am temporarily without my shotguns, having delivered them to the local RFD for safekeeping until the paperwork is sorted. This renders the patterning trip I had planned for tomorrow impossible and leaves me in the (not entirely unhappy) position of having a freer weekend than I had anticipated. I’ve therefore decided to spend the weekend migrating between the computer and the shed.

Here at the former location, beyond this post, I will endeavor to write up at least one of the longer articles I have planned for this website (most of the first part is now complete and in the process of being edited) and in the latter, I shall fix the pedal board from my organ which, after 10 years of hard use, now has so many broken keys as to render the instrument unplayable. The machine tools were out in force this morning and much progress has already been made.

Meanwhile

I have been able to make some small progress on the shooting front this week, even if things are not currently going to plan. I was grateful to my friend for the loan of the stock extension pad which was delivered via my wife at the local airport(!) on Friday afternoon. The irony of having to stow my guns within two hours of receiving it was not lost on me, put it that way.

I was also able to reserve for collection with my guns and certificate, two boxes of the old Hull Subsonic clay load (28g / #7½).  It pleases me to think that, although places like JustCartridges can supply (or obtain) almost any cartridge you could possibly want – provided you buy in quantity and pay their premium – only one’s local gun shop can sell you odd boxes of interesting cartridges that you’d never otherwise see or realize you wanted (and at a substantial discount).

In case any of my readers are wondering why on earth I’d buy a cartridge like that when I haven’t shot a clay target in over two years, the answer is simple: it’s about covering the edge cases in cartridge performance and demonstrating that the general principles upon which the analysis we do for this site relies are correct.

I will shoot patterns with a handful of the Hull cartridges and compare them with another “big brand” 28g / #7½ clay load and show – I hope – that substantially lower muzzle velocities tend to provide improved performance. (It’ll be an embarrassment if they don’t – Ed.) This feeds back into .410 cartridges like the Eley “Fourlong” and “Extralong” (Subsonic) and helps to confirm that the conclusions we’ve drawn about those cartridges, on the basis of lower-than-usual muzzle velocities, are correct.

(The experiment to compare paper- / plastic-cased loadings of Eley Grand Prix also remains outstanding and will be reported here when completed.)

Nature’s Finery

I was asked by my wife some years ago, after a service of thanksgiving held to celebrate the arrival of my son, what the flowers in the arrangements in the church at which the service was held were. The answer I first gave was that they were Dianthus but when pressed, told her their common name, which is of course, “sweet william”. This is a name which has significance to her and, thinking they were attractive, she asked me whether I could grow some for the garden.

After several years of trying unsuccessfully, last year, I managed to germinate some seeds and keep them going through the winter well enough that four of the plants survived and are now in one of our borders, flowering beautifully. I believe she’s appreciated them, though, to be entirely honest, I don’t really care for pretty pink flowers as much as some other more useful plants from the genus Capsicum and some of the other Solanaceae – no longer including Nicotiana, I’m happy to say.

Early this morning, however, my appreciation of the sweet williams was somewhat increased by the arrival of an hummingbird hawk moth doing the rounds of those plants and the nearby wallflowers. I’ve always liked the hawk moths: ever since I found a friendly privet hawk moth struggling to escape a busy pavement (it was the size of my palm, but climbed onto my face, where it was – apparently – comfortable enough to stay for some minutes) and rescued it from the feet of inattentive humans, I’ve looked out for members of that family and there, this morning was another of them which in over thirty years, I have never seen. I have always thought – perhaps mistakenly? – that hummingbird hawk moths were rather rare in this country, so I spent at least ten minutes watching it go about its business, proboscis flailing wildly! An excellent treat.

It’s always difficult shooting over standing crops at this time of year.

Yesterday afternoon’s wander resulted in three birds shot, three birds lost, for fewer than 10 cartridges fired (9, I think it was), suggesting that the adjustments I made to the stock of the semi-automatic 12 gauge I own represent an improvement. I should also have hit two easy, departing crows which popped out of a hedge just after I arrived at the second farm I visited, but even having missed those, my shooting still took a step in the right direction.

I was shooting a 12 gauge again. Much as I’d prefer something smaller, an ammunition shortage related to the renewal of my shotgun certificate prevails and three of my guns are out of action until I’ve sorted out the fitting issues affecting them. A friend has offered to lend me a leather slip-on stock extension that will hopefully mitigate the issues I’ve described previously: I should be able to pick it up this week, test it and order my own if it confirms my suspicion that the stocks of those guns would benefit from being a little longer.

The .410, meanwhile, will get another outing as soon as it’s possible to do some more patterning (yesterday’s conditions were, once again, unhelpfully windy, in spite of the sunshine) or as soon as I’m able to obtain some more cartridges for it with which I’m actually happy to hunt. Supplies of acceptably performant cartridges are running somewhat low after the previous pattern testing trip and what remains in the cupboard is probably better kept for future confirmatory testing.

Losing birds is frustrating, but sometimes unavoidable. Trampling down dry rapeseed ready for harvest or leaving tracks in standing barley does not make one popular with one’s landowner, so I had to leave two of yesterday’s birds for the foxes. A third folded overhead and fell – rather disobligingly – the other side of the boundary along which I was walking and would have necessitated committing the offense of trespass to retrieve it. Happily, all were cleanly shot before they went down.

It was not an entirely bad afternoon. At one point, I stalked to within 3-4 yards of a young hare, which took several confused attempts to discern that I might actually be a predator and that it was worth “disappearing” in haste. It eventually did, without my interference. Later, a roe doe leapt away over the crop in typical “pogo stick” fashion, appearing above the rape as though a dolphin breaking the surface and diving again, which was amusing to watch.

I also discovered, first by catching its scent, a large clump of Nepeta (I’m not sure which subspecies) growing wild at the edge of the treeline on one of the fields I circumnavigated, which was somewhat unexpected. I rather like that plant and have grown it in my garden in the past. I wonder now if I should perhaps have cut some of it down – it was undoubtedly a weed – and taken it home for the purpose of making tea. I was pleased to find more of it later on, close to where I set up a hide for an hour to see if anything would turn up.

In the end, not much did. I faffed with the decoys and the magnet several times in the hope of drawing some of the birds that were feeding in the middle of the field away from their flight lines, but other than a few interested looks from afar, not much turned up. My best chance was a bird from behind that surprised me – I mounted the gun poorly and missed over the top as it disappeared. A couple more shots punctuated an hour or so mostly sitting, enjoying the smells and the bumblebees on the many flowering weeds and nettles in which I was sitting.

Having left my telephone in my car, I had no idea what time it was and a nagging feeling that I was expected home soon prevailed. I packed up and returned to the vehicle to find that it was 16:07 and that I could have had longer if only I’d known. This was particularly irritating given that, having packed up and put put my gun into its slip, a small group of pigeons flew straight towards the trees in which I was standing, veering off only at such a short distance that even I couldn’t have missed them!

I departed with the strong impression that, if I’d arrived at roughly the time I was leaving and stayed for a few hours rather than going home then, that I’d probably have managed 10 or 20 birds. I’ll never know.

I’m supposed to be feeding one of my wife’s friends pigeon burgers next week. I’m hoping to have some better success between now and then…

It had puzzled me for a long time: when I bought a 16 gauge Baikal side by side a few years ago, I noticed an overnight improvement in my shooting.

I’d become frustrated with my 28 gauge over the preceding summer and in early October of that year – I can’t remember exactly which one – I decided I wanted something new to shoot over the winter. I’d been on the look out for something “unusual” – perhaps a .410 – for some time, but when I saw advertised on the website of a reasonably well-known gun dealer, a 16-gauge side-by-side for the grand total of £140 delivered to the local RFD, I telephoned them immediately and reserved it.

After receiving the gun, my impulsiveness appeared to have paid off. After a summer where the bag returns had been “ones” and “twos” with an awful lot of “zeros” in between, I suddenly started shooting double figures on a regular basis. This carried on through till March or April where – called to shoot corvids at a local cattle farm – I put in a bag return of 20 jackdaws and an assortment of wood pigeons, rooks and crows for a total exceeding 30, which remains my best bag in a day to date.

(I should emphasize that I’m particularly useless at decoying as I almost never get the chance to attempt it.)

After that, although I’d been using the 16 gauge somewhat religiously, in the hope of this “winning streak” continuing, the bags returns tailed off and despondency set in. The numbers have never really since recovered, although I have had some spectacular one-off birds with that gun as I’ve walked around the hedgerows.

A Borrowed Gun

It wasn’t until last summer when I borrowed a Zabala 12 gauge from a friend that the cogs started to tick in my head, so to speak, and the conclusions that I think I’ve reached this week started to form.

The reason for the loan was simply that, even after quite a lot of years shooting, I still didn’t have a 12 gauge double gun and this seemed to be an omission from my collection. In the event, the gun didn’t fit and I didn’t get on with it, but I remember very clearly that, having observed it seemed long in the stock, we laid out the Zabala next to my 16 gauge and found that the 16 gauge stock was really very short indeed.

At the time, that discovery did no more than confirm the feeling that I had when I mounted the gun- the stock was getting in the way – so we took the fitted extension off and I took it away to play with it for a month or two before returning it. What it should have prompted however, was the realization that the shortness of stock coupled with initial use in the wintertime (when my shooting clothes were considerably thicker) made for a gun that fitted in the cold, but which was much too short in spring and summer where I only wore a thin T-shirt.

Last Week

I wasn’t going to write about (i.e. admit to) last week’s outing, which was as bad a display of shooting as I think I have ever produced, but it has at least resulted in something positive in the days following.

As it happens, I was shooting at the same cattle farm I mentioned above, once again doing (or failing to do) my bit to keep the crows down. When I returned home, having downed two birds for what I guessed must have been 40 cartridges, I was angry at myself and disappointed that I hadn’t learnt the lesson of my final shot of the day rather earlier.

I’d found a good spot for a hide behind an old cattle cart and had had some good opportunities, even if it wouldn’t have been called “busy”. I’d taken the 28 gauge and my 12 gauge semi-automatic, the latter because I’m running low on “ordinary” 12 gauge shells at the moment and the only ones I have in stock were some steel #4s and a bag full of my 39g/#5 reloads which are probably a little on the hot side when it’s 30 degrees in the shade – the strongest chamber wins the day.

I’d intended to shoot the 28 gauge since the ranges were more likely to be short, but after hitting the first bird with my first shot – probably luck – I then missed another 14 shots in succession, most of them by firing both barrels at a single bird as I tried to adjust the amount of lead I was giving in the hope of working out what the hell was going on. By that point, I was so utterly confused that I packed away the 28 gauge gun and shells and switched over to the 12.

Unfortunately, the pattern continued. I had been operating under the impression that the 12 gauge, although I hardly use it now, was my first gun and had been chosen and adjusted with help from one of the instructors who taught me how to shoot in the first place. It should therefore fit, but over the last hour, I fired another 7 cartridges at passing crows and wood pigeons and missed every single one.

Realization

It was only this morning when I packed my shooting bag that I unpacked last week’s empties and found I hadn’t used quite as many as 40 cartridges for my two birds. It turned out to be only 25, but being positive about that discovery seems a little like rejoicing in the fact that one has a life jacket with which to escape the sinking ship, only to die of hypothermia in the water 3 hours later.

Perhaps I should include in my bag, the two clumps of weeds I shot at on my way to working out what was happening, although for the most part, they were un-hit. After missing 7 in a row with the 12 gauge, I used the weeds, with plenty of open soil around them, as a point of reference to determine where both the guns I had with me were shooting, compared to the point at which I was looking.

The answer to that question turned out to be that the shot was approximately 4′-6′ high of where I was looking at around 40 yards. I tend to prefer a flat-shooting gun, but what I was seeing didn’t just indicate a high pattern bias; rather, it was poor gun fit.

The last opportunity of the day was a big old bugger of a crow who came to have a look at what was going on after I cleared away the pigeon decoys I’d been using. I proved the theory by pointing the gun a good distance – about 6′ – underneath where he was flying and pulled the trigger. The bird flopped down on the deck with quite a thud.

Well that halved the ratio, at least.

Confirmation

When I got home, I looked at the semi-automatic. For reasons I have not been able to adequately explain, the gun was missing a stock spacer and had the wrong shim inserted into the stock which was making the comb rather too high. That immediately explained the problem of shooting high. I can only imagine that I changed the configuration for the sake of experimentation and forgot to put it back when I last put the gun away, many months ago.

I wrote my friend a message to describe all of this to him last Monday and he’s promised his assistance in sorting it all out, for which I’m grateful. After today’s trip out, a pattern is emerging however and the solution is starting to make itself clear.

Before I wasted all those cartridges, I’d already decided to extend the stock of the 16 gauge in the hope of improving the fit of the gun. I’d thought about leaving it alone as a “winter gun”, but frankly, I’ve missed using it. It hasn’t come out much since I bought the .410 which is the usual subject of this blog and I’ve wanted to change that for a while.

I’ve therefore been trying to decide whether to buy a grind-to-fit stock extension, or a slip-on recoil pad. I think I’ve now settled on the latter.

Four Guns; One Problem

I’ve said previously on this blog that I own two Baikals – a 12 gauge and the aforementioned 16. I had intended to pattern some cartridges in the 12 gauge this morning, to check their performance, but in the end I decided not to since it was blustery and looked like rain. After getting rather frustrated with the pattern plate falling over in the wind two weeks ago, I didn’t really want to repeat the experience.

Instead, I went for a wander. I fired about 10 cartridges in the end, for two birds. Still not really an acceptable shot-to-kill ratio, but if I recount that the both birds came from the last two shots of the day, again taken by shooting at points well underneath the bird, readers may begin to see the pattern which is emerging.

I checked the shape and length of the Baikals against each other when I got home and found them to be essentially identical. If the 16 gauge is too short – which I’m 99% certain it is – then so is the 12 gauge version.

Recalling that the sight picture of the semi-automatic was also improved by more drop and a longer stock, I got the 28 gauge out too. I’m inclined to think that that my shooting would probably benefit if that gun too had a slightly longer stock. As I said above, I prefer a flatter-shooting gun and in all cases (prior to modification) these guns have all shown rather a lot of slope up the rib when I mount them. The 28 gauge, particularly, was showing about £3.50 for the “pound coin” method of checking fit.

The Snowflake Generation

Most of the cartridges I fired this morning were 36g loads that I’m using up because I want the cases for reloading. I know that one can make do with much lesser quantities of shot, but could it be that the current trend for light loads in big tubes is explained not only by our addiction to “speed” but also because modern shooters are a bunch of proverbial pansies? 1¼oz through a medium-weight side-by-side? I barely noticed.