Airgun Hunter: Tricky shots

One of the most misunderstood or over-looked situations concerning actively searching out quarry or ‘opportunist shooting’ as I term it is when rabbits or squirrels (in particular) suddenly present at close range. From the very outset I must also mention a bad habit many hunters tend to fall into (myself included) is to look too far ahead from their position while stalking. For instance, I’m sure many will have experienced slowly peering around the end of a hedge line or through a five bar gate to check out an adjacent field. Seeing nothing ahead and presuming nothing’s around and begin to move on when a rabbit barely 8yds away from where you’d stopped suddenly bolts for cover. At risk of stating the obvious, if you’d first checked the area for anything that looked out of the norm close to your position before looking further afield you might have spotted the critter. So now a few tips on how to get the jump on what are in truth surprise targets.

KEEP A HOLD

Obviously no two ‘permissions’ (pieces of ground) are the same, and in my experience rabbits in particular can behave very differently depending on the topography of the land. For instance, if the shoot you’re slowly meandering around has plenty of hedgelines with smaller fields separated by cut-throughs, gravel tracks, or gates then rabbits can turn up anywhere.

A situation that often catches many out is while walking up a track at the side of a field with a hedge or fencing to one side. Rabbits will come out of these at ‘crossing points’ to enter fields to feed. If caught out they’ll often freeze before deciding to run one way or the other. Many times they’ll do a full 180° turn but sit tight on the spot in an upright alert posture. How you react in this instance can make the difference between putting one in the bag and missing a sitter.

Let me explain. Many hunters shoulder their rifle on a sling as they move about a shoot but to be ready for this type of scenario you need to remove the sling and hold the rifle in a ready position. The optimum way is by cradling it quite high on the body rested in your arms with your shooting hand holding the pistol grip (finger off the trigger), while your leading hand holds the wrist of your shooting hand. This allows the rifle to rest in an ideal position to be brought up to the shoulder with the minimum amount of movement.

MAKE A STAND

As a rule of thumb, we’re continually told as you approach quarry on the deck such as rabbits you should lower yourself to the ground the closer you get to help ‘disguise’ the unmistakeable human form. However, that’s fine when they’re out feeding in the fields away from cover but not how you should deal with a situation at close quarters. In these situations as soon as you spot the target you need to immediately freeze! The shot will need to be taken freehand, a reason I prefer to use carbine-sized air rifles for virtually all of my hunting as they’re lighter and easier to handle.

Then bring the rifle very slowly up into your shoulder using your body as a backdrop to help ‘disguise’ the movement needed to eventually bring it on aim. While doing so you should also allow your leading hand to slide down the forend. This should all be done in a slow yet fluid movement. Don’t rush to immediately shoulder the rifle to sight in on the target because you need to watch how the quarry is reacting. If at any time the rabbit becomes agitated, stop moving and wait for it to settle or remain still.

When you feel the time is right and your quarry is confused or tolerating your presence you then slowly turn the upper part of your body side onto the target and with the rifle now on aim, allow the required holdunder for the range, and without much hesitation take the shot.

What you are wearing for this type of hunting should also be considered. Personally, I’ll most often now wear a loose-leaf suit – my ‘garb’ of choice being the LLCS Ghillie Suit from Jack Pyke of England. Experience has shown it does a remarkable job of breaking up your ‘hard’ outline and you can even use the ‘loose-leaf’ strips to disguise your rifle. In my opinion that isn’t always necessary but I’m sure I hardly need to say wearing a full faceveil and gloves are a must.

RIG IT RIGHT

Those are just a few tricks that might get you the chance of a shot but have you ever considered the set-up of your air rifle/scope combo if shots are more likely than not going to suddenly present themselves at close range? In a recent article I briefly mentioned what are known as ‘See-Thru’ Mounts. Obviously if you mount a scope in conventional mounts to any rifle with open sights you can’t use the ‘irons’ because they obstruct the sightline.

If however, you use ‘See Thru’ mounts you can then you have the best of both worlds. As the name clearly implies the lower sections of both bases have an elongated section machined out that allows you to look through the mount under the scope and clearly sight in on your quarry using the rifles open sights. The HST46C 2-Piece Mounts from Sportsmatch UK are a very high quality manufactured example of this type of mount but take note, they only cater for scopes with 40mm objectives – any larger and the objective lens housing obscures your view. That’s one option.

If you don’t have open sights which virtually all modern PCP’s don’t, then mount the scope as low to the bore of the barrel as possible so you’ll have a more manageable trajectory to contend with especially at closer ranges. There are quite a few optics suitable for this type of hunting scenario but in my opinion none better than the MTC Optics Viper Connect 3 – 12 X 32 due to its unrivalled field of view which allows you to quickly find the target in the sight picture.

AND FINALLY

There’s much, much more I could say on this subject of which I intend to return to at some point in the future. But for now, I think I’ve given enough sound advice for many airgun hunters to be getting on with.