Scotland 2021 pt4. A Roebuck, A Mob Of Goats, And A Catalog Of Errors

The road south 

If you want to make Artemis laugh tell her about your plans for the hunt.

At last the bit I’ve been looking forward to. 

During that perfect summer of the early pandemic South Side D and I had ventured north of the wall to hunt goats with our guides Alan and his son, the eagle eyed Bryce. It was a great trip READ ABOUT IT HERE I had high hopes of doing it again. Yeah. Right. 

The drive down the west  coast was as stunning as ever, the Irish sea as flat as that northern light that washes over it. The roads are refreshingly clear, unburdened by the library and blacksmith’s shop the van really picks its skirts up. The road is lined with speed cameras  The van lowers its skirts 

Truth be told I’m really starting to feel proper battered I stop for a sarnie and take an involuntary nap  in the van. Stranraer is the closest point between Ireland and Scotland so its also the ferry terminal between the two. The roads are winding county roads, the trucks are international road haulage  

Allan’s joint is usually self catering but his mrs has taken pity on me and included me in family dinner time.  After a substantial feed I slope off to my bed pausing only to marvel that not many london hotels have water pressure like that. 

Goatland, a bit different to our hedgerow stalking in the south. My happy place  

Dawn, goatland

I’ll not make excuses, this is what really happened  

Allan’s thermal binoculars were in the shop being serviced, we scan and scan, there are no goats. 

Allan hops into the truck and drives off up the coast. Bryce and I follow the unbrowsed grass fringe along the cliff tops. By crawling and hiding, crawling and hiding we manage to put the hustle on a handsome Roebuck  Did I mention I’ve lost my annoying Harris bipod? Well I have. 

Bit more crawling and I’ve got the Money Pit balanced on top of a fence post. Chip shot.. 50 yards. Max  High and right clean miss.Round sails over the Roe’s back.  Bryce gives me a look that says ‘I don’t remember you being this shite last time” Obviously the Roebuck and his two pals have now skedaddled and are jeering from a safe distance.  Probably 51 yards.

Bryce is growing up fast, from mumbling teenager to Highland Profesional. His dour Ghillie quips are coming on too “Its not awful, I prefer my Tika, scopes not too bad. I suppose “

It gets worse

We make some headway along the cliff tops and elect to go under a fence, even though the Heym SR30 is a german de cocking safety design I elect to pass it to Bryce without anything in the chamber like a good safe sport.  Bolt won’t extract the round. 

Here’s for why. while I’ve always intended to shoot 108gr lead free bullets from the Money Pit I've not finished developing the load, so I tested with everything I had, and found the 140gr SST load from my old barrel on my Tiktac gave excellent performance and being SST’s are guaranteed to mash up anything they hit. Where I was remiss is, I’d put a couple into the vbull, but I’d never cycled one through the action. 

The SST load has a COAL of 2900 up from the factory 2800, Heym’s chamber is much closer to the lands than the Tiktac , I beat on the bolt and extracted an unfired case and mess of powder, its clear I’m at literal jam, and the bullet is still in the lands. Interestingly after checking the fired cases, I later fired the last three rounds from that batch, all accurate AF and no pressure signs. My policy of loading hunting ammo to the lower node is a good one.  

We shan’t dwell on how I cleared the obstruction with a piece of fencing wire, but I was glad to have a VFG pull through with me just for a little reassurance afterwards. Allan’s mockery ringing in my ears we move goatward  

We’re now on to the goats, up on a bluff overlooking the shoreline where they are feeding. We’re at 300ish yards, and trying not to silhouette. They can clearly see something is afoot, they eventually settle, we’re not getting any closer without moving back into sight.  I take a hail mary off a rolled up jacket, the goats vamoose and that’s s all she wrote  Bah!

Hunting not Shopping, Proper preparation prevents piss poor performance, yah de feckin’ yah  

Sadly thats not all folks

See you next time 

Your pal

SBW

Gun Jesus of Forgotten Weapons has done a review of the SR30 

 

Scotland 2021 pt3 Hoarding A Spectator Sport.

  

East Kilbride late one night . light rain  

A few roundabouts off the ring road we find our way to a street of post war housing, Not built with the expectation of car ownership proving as popular as it’s become , I know this as a certain fact, as I've inched a panel van down it. Despite WCC’s characterisation of the area lots of tradesmen seem to live there. Their bastard vans are double parked the length of the street.  

We finally find somewhere to park and start ferrying the shooters to the flat.

TheViking rented the flat sight unseen over the internet, its ex public housing, somehow it never occurred to him to ask which floor it was on. Third floor. No lift.  

I didn’t mention this before but its worth mentioning now. There was a club in central london, where one night a very famous ballet dancer, so famous that shes the only ballet dancer I could name, sat on his lap and played with his beard. He is both proud and nostalgic of this high water mark in the history of his adorableness, as he should be, shes as fit as a butcher’s dog   The covid pandemic has done for the club, and they auctioned off loads of furniture  Hes bought a bed, its massive.  Possibly too massive to make it up the stairwell. There is another problem 

Somehow when I’d left him and his pal  packing the panel van it never occurred to me to enquire as to the order of disembarkation. Its certainly not a conversation they had in my absence. Theres now the content of a blacksmiths forge, a significant collection of swords, pikes, and a restorers library, between his bed, his household chattels, and the vans only door.    

We let ourselves into the flat, its newly done up. By chumps. We put our rifles and the great menagerie of shotguns into the cupboards and head back to the van for our travel kit and sleeping bags.

On our return to the flat, what’d ya know  the front door handle is so cheap that it gives up the ghost on second use.  We’re locked out. It goes without saying that the letting agents have cashed the deposit are now out on the town spending it buying gin and tonics for inappropriate milfs. straight to voicemail  

Back at the pannel van I’m pissing myself laughing as the poor Viking blunders about by the light of his phone looking for a tool chests he last saw 400 miles ago before the seismic collapse that’s  taken place during our last near miss with a Karen in an Audi. Howls of rage and invocations of dark dark ancient gods punctuate the wait  The rain has slowed to a drizzle  

Suddenly he reappears, jaunty and seemingly unconcerned “lets get the door fixed shall we?”

Time an motion being what they are I’ve inflated my Thermorest while he was fighting the door, so once back inside its a very short trip to collapse . Its been a long day  

The dawn comes, bringing with it a charming light drizzle which lends an air of bleak northern shite hole to the area  you can see roundabouts from the window  lots of them  

A quick tour of the property reveals some spectacularly substandard renovations, piss-poor water pressure, inarticulate setting out of the tiling and its never occurred to the renovator that securing the floor boards usually takes place before carpeting the hall. Its warm, dry, and by london standards, massive  

We find the van, despite what people say about East Kilbride, exactly where we left it.  With all its wheels  

After another breakfast of indigestible shite, under the Golden Arches, we’re off to meet The MAA.

Enter the dragon.  

Every saga needs a dragon, sitting on his horde, in an impregnable fortress.  the Master At Arms, the Viking’s friend and  boss. A sniper rifle aficionado, and field artillery enthusiast  

MAA has an industrial unit where he runs several businesses and fights against a tide of collections. he has the kind of floor space Londoners can only dream of. 

We stand in the rain drink espresso while the Viking tries to re organise the van’s contence onto pallets to be forklifted to the far reaches of the warehouse .  Part of deal seems to be ‘You store, I torment’  

Having made my contribution, i stood in the drizzle drinking espresso, missing cigarettes and taking notes  

MAA:

Did it not cross your mind that this wasn’t the ideal opportunity to get rid of loads of this shite?

Do you imagine you’ll ever read those books again?

I’m getting the district impression that there may have been some consideration given to the london end of the trip but feck all for what might happen at this end  

Hold on, I recognise those  [cast iron plates weighing about 40lbs a piece. Twelve of]  they're yer girlfriends, did she not want them at her own hoose?

Once the goods, books, swords, a stuffed boar’s head and assorted chattels are off loaded we head out to a clay ground  

Its a pleasant drive through the rolling hills where wind farms line every ridge sadly there were no picturesque highland cattle.   

 

The clay ground is an everyman sort of affair, no walks through forrest glades but plenty of launchers so each stand has several lines of flight from doddle to fiendish  the last stand is fantastic, two of you stand in the bay and the other has eight buttons to hammer at launching flurry after flurry  

The relentless tick tick of my schedule means we don’t have the option of a proper lunch so I bid the boys luck and head goatward.  

See you next time 

Your pal SBW