The Shrewsbury Reds Pt1

 

The Shrewsbury Red, all 11 points of him. 

My friend Captain Ahab invites me to go stalking with him in Shrewsbury, where a herd of parkland escapee Reds are eating a local farmer out of house and home. He's been sending me pictures of some crazy big deer, one so big it couldn’t be lifted into the chiller. I've seen pictures and the slots left by monster Reds in Norfolk where they live by crop raiding rather than fighting for every calorie in the highlands. These boys get the same (or better) nutrients without the wind chill the fens are rightfully famous for so I'm pretty stoked to be invited  

Shrewsbury is almost exactly in the middle of the country and mainly famous for a tiny herd of long-coat Fallow which are miles from a huntable population, plenty of Muntjac, Roe and Ahab's feral herd of turnip raiding Reds  

The pre-dawn drill is familiar to stalkers everywhere. Stumble across a field just before first light, gap in the hedgerow, turn back on yourself and there’s a highseat. Pop the magazine, try to climb the ladder without mishap, mag back in, work the bolt, make safe and adjust clothing to exclude drafts  

Once comfortable the despondency sets in. kvetch kvetch kvetch

Are 120gr big enough? 

Has Ahab already shot em all? 

When have you ever seen deer on a dry ploughed field? 

Turns out that: yes, no, and in the clear light of day the field abounds with rape, that's Canola not sexual assault .  

Ive been scanning the more promising looking field behind me for a while, when i turn back to find a smallish horse has rocked up, a smallish horse with ANTLERS! Seen Reds with antlers, never seen one, in season and through a scope! This young gobshite has eaten his last turnip, I gave him a round and he drops to the shot within three steps. Antlers are nothing to write home about, but as we've already seen, I’m no trophy hunter and on this trip we’re here to generate meat for Ahab’s game butchery and to keep the farmer who wants his fields deer free happy. No sooner than I've put the phone back in my pocket and huddle of Reds make their way into view, including this mighty brute, all 105kg of him, if his pal looked like a pony he's a shire horse. He gets a round, his pal gets one too, and loading loading through ejection port the forth deer of the day goes down. 120gr S&B Blue Energy are suitably destructive. I never found the bullets but it's safe to say expansion was, er, complete.The biggest deer Ive ever shot, and the most deer Ive ever shot in a day, or hour for that matter.

Lots more to tell

Will try to post more regularly

Your pal

SBW

Chinese Water Deer: A tale of hunting hubris, or is that being hunted by hubris?

The idyllic nature of this shot can never show the sheer agony my butt cheeks were in after a couple of hours sitting on the bare metal slats that had once supported the seat

There's two trophies: a full freezer and a great tale. Ticked those two off, nearly got the other kind too. Nearly. Pull up a log, warm your hands by the fire, pour yourself a tin mug of scotch, this one has to be the most SBW hunting saga yet

Long term readers will remember the blogger known as Shooter and his Mountain Lion hunt. In the intervening years his kids have grown up a bit and he's moved to the country. Back in touch I was delighted to accept his invitation to a walked up day which I'll tell you about later, obviously we agree to catch up next time I'm in the area.

The ACL [who features in a few of the more recent tales] and I had made the journey to the fenlands, a hundred miles north east of London, for Shooter’s walked up birds, we'd got chatting to the gamekeepers; they'd shown us some pictures of substantial Red Deer, we'd seen some bloody deep slots left behind by some even bigger deer, and listened to their tales of many many Chinese Water Deer seen on the thermal scope while Foxing. These are the closing weeks of the season. With a much needed freezer top-up on our minds before we sack most stalking off until the big boys are back in season on the first of August. We eere both keen as mustard to get out there

Having been the victim of the curse of the Bushwacker- where I invite you stalking, shoot two deer and miss a third while every deer you see will be siluetted against a farm house or scared off by a dog walker, the ACL had booked us in for a couple of stalks so he was inviting me Prudent

My favourite Russian saying : we wanted it to be different, it happened just the same

The usual early start, the usual delays for all the usual reasons, [misplaced firearms certificate, wrong socks, only one boot] then once on tbe road it’s the usual realisations that the usual X,Y and Z had been left behind. That exhilarating feeling of the open road, the frustration of rounding the corner into a slow moving morass of traffic, the inevitable phone call to announce our arrival would be significantly delayed and the surreptitious roadside consumption of banned foodstuffs

Fortunately the ACL is excellent company and has been avidly following the war in Ukraine and so knows all kinds of great stuff about it. that soaked up a couple of hours and we found our way to Shooter's place. Only driving past it twice

Shooter, the long suffering Mrs Shooter and all the little Shooters are all in fine fettle. The new house is perfect for playing Tom and Barbara The menagerie has expanded to include rare chickens, peacocks and goats have been ordered. Theres even a puddle rather optimistically being called the pond

Where as the ACL,has one rifle per task, all rare and charismatic, Shooter has a vast collection of rifles all as horrible as i remember them being. On the other hand his shotgun cabinet is as glamorous as a weekend at Downtown Abby and he’s the only person i know with ore than one 10 bore shotgun

After a hearty and sustaining lunch and some trading over a .410 we set off to meet the keepers

Norfolk is pretty big and pretty flat the fields are punctuated by drainage dithlches the locals call sewers. Great banks of rushes line the sewers. You can really see how a deer with water in its name would be at home here. The road kill count suggests there are lots of them. Every 200m there's another dead deer by the side of the road

Chinese water deer are natives of the Yangtze flood plain and Korea. They were introduced to Woburn Park, Bedfordshire, in 1896, and Whipsnade Zoo in 1929-30. I’ve not tracked down why they were deliberately released into surrounding woodlands from 1901 onwards, but that release is often sighted as the start of their spread. Since then there have been numerous releases, translocations, and escapes. Adapting to live in gardens, deciduous woodland, grassland, arable land as well as their native wetlands, coastal & marshland,

A small, even compact deer, a pale fawn colour, with large rounded ears and button-like black eyes. The Bucks are antlerless, but have moody long tusk-like canines.
A bit taller, and paler than muntjac, lacking that hump-backed look. They look more like a mini roe deer.
Between 82-106 cm long with a tail length 2.5-9 cm tails and about 42-65 cm at the shoulder Males weigh 12-18.5 kg; females 14-17.4 kg. Some study’s show them living to at least six years old.
As the name Water deer would suggest they seem to prefer wetlands adjoining woodland and fen, though they often range onto nearby farmland where they will feed in the open. They are most evident in the Norfolk Broads and the coastal wetlands. Although a feral, uncontained, population in the grounds of Whipsnade park inhabits parkland and dry woodland, with no wetland available.feeding mostly around dawn and dusk, on weeds, grasses, herbs and some browse. Although they often feed in arable fields, they seem to be eating weeds rather than crops.

The keepers drop me off and I walk to my highseat, wish I’d noticed what I noticed later. I climb up to find that the seat is missing, tentatively I settle onto the slats that once held the seat arse rest. For a while I manage to space out and even doze a little, but the sheer agony brings me back I roll my jacket up and that alleviate a some of it now I’m cold This is clearly what Buddhism refers to as the sheer unsatisfactoriness of existence Some very encouraging barking is coming from the reeds behind me to pass some time I spend a while twisted round looking into the standing reds and willing something to wander out what looks at first sight to be a car gliders silently past, a human head pops up , it’s the roof of a boat

Meanwhile at the other end of the field The ACL has found his highseat knee deep in water and looking precarious so he sets up shop in the hedgerow a while passes, a couple of Hares bounce past, a Fallow doe rocks up, spooked by something behind ACL. Weary of this life she sets herself down within range and waits to be shot, ever the gentleman stalker ACL decides it’s somehow outside of the pact between hunter and prey to shoot while they are both seated, not used to being ignored she waits a while and then ups sticks and toddles off in search of someone who will release her from the wheel of earthly suffering

Meanwhile back at the SBW end of things three deer have ventured out of the reeds if they turn left they’ll at the only buildings in the neighbourhood. I’m willing at them, trying to lure them in my my Jedi powers it’s actually working ….

ACL feels a bustle in his hedgerows and a little CWD saunters into range having got all his nerves out of the way with the Doe ACL turns theory into practice, pops his cherry and her right through the shoulder. Text book

His story proves something of an interruption to mine. There’s a fizzing whoosh from his moderator, the posse of three deer disappear. Spooked deer usually run them pause to add whatever scared them to the database, if they check and it’s looking like a false alarm they often resume their previous behaviour. I’m promising Artemis the earth and everything on it, for once she delivers and the three of them come back down their unseen camino towards me The X from the X Yz of left at home were my posh binos, the short comings of the Bushnells the ever cost conscious Shooter has lent me are becoming clear, but that’s the only thing that is, I resort to spotting through the scope the Deer’s on the right is wearing some pretty impressive mandibles

The balancing act: wait but don’t let chances evaporate while waiting for better chances

The bolt of the SR30!acts as the safety catch, by some kind of German engineering voodoo it snicks forward into battery without a sound our boy turns slightly to look up hill and catches one in the pocket behind his front leg the 120gr S&B blue takes the top off his heart and purées his lungs we are both unaware of this development and he takes off like South Side D’s Porsche for the first time in my life I’m completely invested in the trophy, they usually stagger and die, i e only ever had one run off into the last light and hail of a Scottish hillside I can’t bear to risk it he’s arcing back towards the reeds, he breaks stride and gets another one, staggers a bit and lies down twitching the other two are watching Muntjac doe points herself towards the reeds, the buck presents a shot, jumps to the bullet and legs it too. If it’s in the Reed bed that’s all she wrote the light is dying and the keepers and a dog are a long way off

A long time ago someone who gave me a rifle lesson told me he’d spent a summer reading the accounts of deer stalking written by army officers in the late 1940’s and 50’who brought the concept of Roe stalking home from Germany. smoking wouldn’t be bad for you for years, so smokes were a unit of time ‘Shoot the deer, then smoke a cigarette before going to look’

I’m still worried the Muntjac will have made it to the reed bed. I’ve not walked 25 meters before I find him must’ve pulled the shot a little, bullet entered third rib mashed things up a bit and destroyed the off side shoulder from the inside. Dead is still dead



Finally. The Money Pit a Heym SR30 in 6.5CM doing the job I've always believed it was born to do.

Ive just taken the picture above when suddenly it hits me, a wave of illation the joy of not having to hear my own whining as i look for my much fettled Lapua cases in the long grass beneath the high seat! Turns out there’s a lot to be said for factory ammunition i leave the spent cases where they fell, walk past where much needed seat from the high seat lies almost at the bottom of the ladder and head off to find the ACL

The Y is why did I leave my rifle sling behind?




Shultz and Larsen Victory in 6.5x55 Swedish Nice

He’s standing around looking at his dead deer with a ‘I always wanted one, now I’ve got one I don’t know what to do with it’ look on his face I give him a hug I remember that moment all those years ago, when I had the same face on ‘Sheeet I’m a deer hunter!’

Gralloch and back to Shooter’s place

Just because that part of the story ended on a high don’t think for a moment that the feral failure ends there oh no not for a moment

The hour back flies by but it’s been a long day Shooter is a wonderful host, and a fantastic cook we hang our deer in his outbuildings and set about the feast he’s laid on Pile of carbs and a bucket of Islay malts later we hold a snoring competition for a few wee hours.

“Are you still alive? I thought you were dead for a moment there”. “Why had i stopped snoring?”

I’ll leave it to you dear reader to guess who said what

A brief tussle with Shooter’s coffee machine and hit the road

Trying to learn the ground we set up near a wood we saw muntjac in on our walked up day. Not a lot happens. I start to regret not wearing a smock length coat. By now I’m not only cold but busting for a piss. Out of the high seat and out of the wind it’s a beautiful morning still sling-less I’m pissing with the money pit leaning against me Who should pop his little antlered head out of the bushes but Mr Muntjac, by impatiently raising the rifle when I should have made like a statue , I spook him

The ACL tells his usual tale of dog walkers and we make a shameful detour to the Golden Arches

We’re three little deer up, its a beautiful morning, we’re a hundred miles from home, neither of us is wearing sunglasses and ACL is making all kinds of rash promises to Mrs ACL regarding his arrival time

You could say its all going swimmingly. Could

As we walk over to the hanging Chinese Water Deer Shooter gasps in administration “you didn’t say they were that good! Those tusks are Bronze, or maybe Silver” I grab the CWD lift and turn to check the symmetry and im met by a sickening tale of rural vandalism. During the night something with immense bite strength has grabbed hold of the lowest part of the carcass and rented at it, trying to break it free from its rope the broken off tusk is nowhere to be seen, my broken dream lies all around










Best crack on with the butchery Chinese Water Deer have hair, but unlike other deer it looks almost fur-like and is hardly attached at all, moving the carcass onto a different larder hook it’s coming off in clumps The skin too seems barely attached, even this end of the season theres an impressive layer of subcutaneous fat, you call pull the skin off with no knife work The ACL has just been on a butchery course so Shooter and I are at our most encouraging

“You’re actually in luck today. You want to process your first deer and we're here. I don’t know if you know this but Shooter was in the Indian National team for butting in, and I’m an exceptionally gifted amateur, if you'd like us to mither at you and butt in while you do it, we’re standing by. ready to interfere.”

All bagged up and ready to go we wend our now weary way back home

I cant help but wonder what might have been, so I make one last mistake..I post the good side picture on Facebook

Next time it’s pigeons
Your pal
SBW

Hunting Goats In Scotland. Stalking Roe In Scotland.

An adventure in the Lowlands of Western Scotland featuring: your pal SBW, and South Side D a target shooter and sportsman who dives an electric taxi. 

Work, that curse of the stalking classes: 

Covid 19, overly emotional Milfs, air travel diminished by 97%, clients putting off having repairs done, annoying offspring, the range will be closed for the foreseeable, theatre-land may never reopen. A shortage of primers. I think its fair to say that your pal SBW and South-Side D are beset by difficulties on all sides. 

SBW: This is bullshit, shall we sack it off an’ go stalking?

SSD: Not doing much else.

SBW: Do you have a midge net?

SSD: What’s that?

SBW: Your only defence against Scotland’s apex predator.

I once read that the Scottish tourist board had conducted extensive market research. Scotland is a popular destination for all the reasons you might imagine; Whiskey, Salmon, Deer, Ginger Birds. 

The last two questions proved more illuminating: 

Will you be coming again next summer ? NO 

Why not? MIDGES!!!

Been a while since i made it North of The Wall, to the land where you can hunt Roe Bucks with a 22 centerfire, Mars bars are served fried, sausages are called Lorne and served skinless and square, Tablet is a cause of diabetes rather than yet another iProduct .

SBW: How much would it cost to go to Stranraer in a Taxi? 

SSD: Where’s that?

SBW: west coast of Scotland, south of Glasgow, for stalking purposes.  

SSD: £ LOTS, each way. But to you SBW, for stalking purposes, we can split the juice.

SBW: I’ve found this guy on the internet… 

SSD:  I need to sort out someone to look after the dog

SBW: No worries my ex wife would love to help me out, I’m the only person taking her side against the kids. 

A long time ago: I was making idle chit-chat with one of the guns at a shoot, as we fell to discussing a sportsman's travels he said ‘ ah yes the Scottish stalking experience, I’ve been, you spend all day crawling through very soggy ground, shoot a deer, then the walk back to the cottage turns out to be 200 yards, I bet you love it” 

That very morning a member called Gallowaycountrysports had posted on the Stalking Directory that he had availability and accommodation. A few days later we were on our way north. By london black taxi.

The first six hours pass in a pleasant re run of: the calibre debate, chewing over the  design stratagem of Porsche 1967 to 1992, the latest outrage(s) perpetrated by my daughter against her long suffering family, and the lack of strategy being deployed by our lords and masters at this most difficult of times.  

Somewhere just the other side of the wall the roads narrow and out pace slows considerably. We pull into a Shell service station where we were surprised to lean that the sad-arse sandwiches they serve are now ‘By Jamie”.  Yes that Jamie Oliver the fat-tongued deceiver himself, has sunk so low that he’s now shilling for the sweat shop where they fulfil service station sandwich contracts.  

At the service hatch a bleached, shivering whippet of an Emo is manning the till. His stupid haircut reflected in the luminous glow of his pasty skin. 

SBW What kinds of sandwiches do you have? 

Having seen Jamie Oliver’s fat face I was expecting some kind of mangling of the cuisine of several nations, Jerk Chicken with a Mediterranean Herb Crust, and the like.

The Emo: What’s this the feckin’ Krypton Factor?  

South-Side D: Think of it as a job, what’s in the meal deal?

Some crappy sarnies, indistinguishable from crappy sarnies not ‘by Jamie’  later. 

Alan calls

‘So yer nearly here? oh aye what’s yer vehicle?’ 

“We’re In a sherbet” then I remember to translate “a black cab, a london taxi”

“Slurhh feckin’ heel, what’s that cost? Poond-a-mile?”

SBW “Nah South Side D is a cab driver it’s his whip”
SSD “tell him it’s £LOTS to Glasgow ’bout £X a mile.

The rest of the drive passes without incident and were soon following Alan’s seemingly vague but surprisingly accurate directions through the village. By the time we arrive Alan has gone to bed leaving his lad to welcome us to the self-catering accommodation end of the business. Alan runs a great outfit, or I suspect Mrs Alan runs a great outfit, and Alan fronts it. 

If you’re thinking of heading north I’d warmly recommend Galloway Country Sports, they have something for every kind of visiting stalker or Gun. Alan is dad-shaped and around 50, a fantastic host and an experienced rough shooting and goose guide. His lad is built like a racing snake with the eyes of an eagle. Between them they provide some fantastic days afield. The beds are comfortable and the duvets reassuringly weighty. I sleep the sleep of the self-righteous.

The following morning 

Alan’s birds have just arrived so he’s out looking over his pen and feeding them up. We stumble out of our rooms to find glorious sunshine, a neighbour enquires as to our well being, we ask after his. “sumingz rang, dez ner water fal-in from the sky” 

The village has no shops so we head into town, all of three miles, to look for a charging point and some breakfast. With me enthusing about the Scottish breakfast experience. Sadly no Lorne sausage is available but we do get a Tattie-Scone. It’’s a lot like the backing board for tiling. Which is a shocker as they are easy to make and usually delicious. 

Ingredients: 

mashed floury potatoes

an egg

some flour  .00 is best 

teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda 

perhaps a little cream or milk - emphasis on the little, the dough must be firm

Method:

mix into a dough

roll out and cut into pleasing shapes

Either fry or bake at a moderate temperature

Serve lathered in butter. Unsalted is my preference.  

SSD has asked that the record show that our visit to Stranraer was also the occasion of my saying the most Middle Class / English thing ever.

SBW “Is there a Marks and Spenser here? I need to buy pants”

Under-crackers un-purchased we return to the house in time to meet Alan and do my laundry in the wash basin. 

Wisely Alan wants clients to confirm their rifles and marksmanship, he tries to be as polite about this as he can, I suspect he’s had some resistance from clients before, and seems a little surprised at my enthusiasm. 

I’m keener on shooting a confirmation than the in-house photographer at St. Ursula’s.  

Here’s for why. 

Having survived [just] the shame of having a loaned rifle where the scope wasn't moored to the rings and missing the first five deer on a previous trip to Scotland, to say I’m keen never to have it happen again, is what is known north of the wall as a feckin’ understatement.

The sheep rifle should above all be portable, handy, and relatively light, as the sheep hunter carries a rifle a lot more than he shoots it. "Notes on the Sheep Rifle," Jack O’ Connor

There’s a question mark hanging over my .243 so I took my Tiktac. Its a wonderful target rifle, but there s something deeply un-stalking about it, its heavy, the opposite of handy, and all those sections of picatinny rail mean it snags on your clothes, Its also laughably Black Rifle.

Alan: ‘does an Afghan campaign medal come free wii that?’ 

Its way more accurate than me and has no trouble mashing up the 4 inch square used as a zeroing target. Zeros established we break for lunch. 

As Roe are best stalked at the top and tail of the day, Alan has a suggestion. 

How about we go and look for some Billies? 

I’ve met people who have been to Scotland to stalk feral goats before and none of them has had a good word to say about the beasts: they are extremely wily, live in inhospitable terrain and are pretty smelly. They often reside in places called Heart Attack Hill, Fat Boy’s End or Dead Plumber’s Gully.  

Alan explains that he cant stalk Roe or shoot Foxes on this particular stretch of coast as the landowner has a sentimental attachment to both, however he is a Juniper Berry enthusiast and as the goats eat them he’s more than happy for Alan to thin the trip. 

These are coastal goats, living where the Irish Sea batters mini fjords. We spend a while glassing the rocky outcrops, things that move turn into tricks of the light, every shadow seems to be cast by horns.  When we’re finally sure only shadows are moving we turn south and our luck improves, a trip of ten or so goats are just the other side of a bluff, we walk the long way around and begin the crawl into range. Oddly its still not raining. 

There’s something about seeing your precision rifle and its posh scope lying in the muck that’s deeply disconcerting, later I’m to learn that loosing a round and seeing your fettled Lapua case disappear between the tussocks isn't much better.  All I can do in consternation is mutter “that’s £1.08p I’ll never see again”.

With the goats only about 50m away SSD starts crawling forward and I’m trying to deploy the Harris bipod without that annoying D’oing noise from its springs. The goats are suddenly on the move, towards us. SSD is between me an them so I’m still to set up for a shot. I’ve taken all of five off-hand shots with the Tiktac all of them were over a year ago, in Norway.  Heavy is a help, but the shape and balance point are unwieldy. We both fire. Someone hits the largest Billie and it disappears down the seemingly vertical cliff. As SSD and Lad pursue it 

Alan points to the next spur, “There’s yours, can you shoot it?”    

“The mountain sheep keeps his horns as long as he lives, and on them he writes his autobiography. He records his age, his species, his good years and his bad, and his battles.”

The Stories Sheep Horns Tell - Jack O’Connor

I love it when the leaves change colour - Hodgeman

He’s right, there on the next spur, partially concealed by the dead ground, my Goat is waiting patiently for his dinner invitation. Yet another outdoorsman’s skill that still eludes me is the ability to judge distance. Alan’s call is 300 yards, deduct 10% is 270m which the muscle memory in my fingers tells me is fifteen clicks aka 1.5 milliradians. The legs of my bipod are a constant annoyance to me, off the bench they are too long, prone, which i hardly shoot,  they are ok-ish, off the tussocks of scotland they are invariably too short. The first one sails over his head, which prompts him to make the fatal mistake of standing up, so after a bit of contortionism on my part he catches the next one on the left side of his spine. While I’m still listening to that resounding TWACKKK expanding ammunition makes as it hits flesh, as if by teleportation he disappears. 

To my delight I actually find one of the Lapua cases. £1.08p up on the day!

A deer that has been shot at will go around the side of a hill a quarter of a mile away and lie down. A ram will leave the country.—"The Bighorn," Jack o’Connor

Its a long walk around the spur tops and when we get to the patch where Billy was last seen there’s a patch of frothy lung blood, and no more. Nothing, zip, nitch, nada  no sign of a trail to be seen. There’s only one way to where we were when I took the shot and we just walked along it, there’s only one way down from where the blood trail starts and stops.  The mini canyons are treacherous under foot and the drop below enough that the medics would be well pissed off by the time they recovered you, or at least your body.

Alan is ahead of me and has taken a turn away from the direction of travel, I skirt round to catch him up and squeeze past him to climb into the line of sight he’s gesticulating down. There’s Billy sitting panting under an overhang, its just the place you’d want to shelter if you were going to overnight there. I wind the clicks back off and put an SST through his neck. Another £1.08p case tumbles away never to be seen again. 

High above us and 300 yards across a mini fjord Lad and SSD are struggling with two goats the extraction looks like the 200 yards are ‘feckin vertical’. Turning back to our own situation this isn't going to be easy, especially with the long dead black weight of the Tiktac to hump along. 

On opening him up, Billy has been doing very well for himself, easily the fattest wild animal I’ve ever butchered, great globs of shining white fat around his organs. I’ve still got his dinner pate sized liver in my freezer. Gralloched he’s lighter but not that you’d know it draggin’ him along.

You can see why the locals shoot ‘em with a little Tikka Triple Two. 

As I puff along the Tiktac seems to have trebled in weight .

A couple of words about Alan’s place

If you want to go shooting with a few pals and make a few days of it, you’re the customer alan had in mind when he set up shop. He has his own pub that you can stock yourselves. Being only three miles out of town you can call in a takeaway delivered or, you could copy a team from France who bring their own chef and use the fully equipped kitchens.  

A Galloway Roe Buck 

I’ve been having a run of luck, lucky for me not so lucky for the new people. At my gun club we have an unofficial hunting committee - if you express an interest we’ll hook you up with some stalking. 

I know a couple of people who I regard as as near to dead certs as its possible to be. We go to their ground, I tell the guide ‘this a newbie they need to shoot a deer’, they see deer, I shoot deer, they don’t. Sometimes I shoot more than one deer.

Lad and I hop out for the truck and as soon as we’ve negotiated the first fence we have a doe under observation. Not doe season but every night is ladies night, girls get in free, so it wont be long until a buck shows up. Sticking to the hedgerow we make out way up the field conveniently into the wind. About 30 feet in front of us, there’s a bustle in the hedgerow as a Roe fawn makes several frantic attempts to first ram and then jump the fence. We wait patiently until he thinks better of it and turns, sprinting across the field. Stooping down we do a bit of glassing. Lad is all over it, doe one, doe two which I could see but then the Buck which is both standing between them and invisible to me. Trying of suppress the hateful doioiing of the Harris bipod’s springs and get set up, I even had time to dial the zoom in a bit. The Buck stands at three quarters, Buck helpfully turns broadside, takes a step or two, I take up stage one of the trigger, one more step, “stay right where you are” and pop-TWACKKK. Lad awards me the accolade “Feckin’ textbook”. Buck runs on about 20 feet and slumps into the dead ground. The girls are now nowhere to be seen. We saunter over. he’s never going to win a medal but has  pleasing symmetry. I couldn't wait  to take him to dinner. 

In that great tradition of Scottish stalking, instead of dragging the deer across the field back the way we’ve come, we amble down a tarmac road that was just the other side of the hedgerow we’d crawled along. 

SSD is yet to score a deer.

About half of our trophy stash

Unlike most of the places I go stalking Alan has full food processing and vacuum packing facilities. I spend the last day in the chiller doing the butchery and caping the Billy and Nanny SSD shot. To my surprise, in a moment of wild profligacy, SSD commissions not one, but two rounds of taxidermy. I get the feeling he’ll soon know how the punters feel when they get out of his taxi.  

More Soon 

Your Pal

SBW 

Review: Tika Tac A1 Part 2

20" Barrel chambered in 6.5mm Creedmoor, scope is a Delta Stryker FFP with the DLR1 reticle.

Been a while since that happy day when I bought the Tiktac, and the even happier day when I could afford a scope worthy of the name, and finally got to shoot it. I've put almost 500 rounds through it.
In skilled hands these rifles have put the hustle on some very expensive custom rifles.

Accurate AF! As the petulant teenager formerly known as 'the littlest bushwacker' would say.

But what, SBW, is it like to live with? I hear you ask.

Well dear reader, it is big and it is clever, and in fairness there are a few things where you get to see the corners that were cut to bring it in for its bargain price.

Finish
The Tiktac is anodised, which is great if you just carry it from the car to the firing point, mine has been yomped up and down a grimy Norwegian hillside and is showing a few marks.
I'll probably Cerakote it at some point. A sleazy purple, seeing as you ask.

Weight 5, 098kg  
Its not a light rifle, there's always some online-hero telling how he uses it as his stalking rifle, wouldn't be my first choice.
By the time you've added; scope 1,042g, moderator .380g, and mounts .100g
You're at  6,630kg or 14.6 lbs + Bipod.
For competitions where there's a bit of walking involved, or very active Stalking, it might well swing me towards a lighter option if it was to be my only centerfire.

Trigger
There are both kits and aftermarket triggers, I thought the one it comes with an absolute joy, and in search of greater accuracy the money would be better spent on bullets, powder, primers, and practice.

Muzzle
I'm not a muzzle brake kind of guy, I find them obnoxious and frankly anti-social. Tika ship all Tiktacs with a .30 brake. The barrel is both threaded and the brake clamps in place, so Tika didn't concern themselves with cutting a shoulder for your suppressor/silencer/moderator to mate to. As I'm using a Stalon moderator which is sized up to .30 cal. this hasn't affected me, but some shooters with more bore specific moderators have had issues. Tika and the UK importer GMK have offered some washers, and the option of voiding the warranty if you get a gunsmith to sort it out.
Yeah, pretty crappy isn't it.

Magazine
While we're on 'pretty crappy' the magazine is a proper let-down, where the rival Ruger Precision takes generic aftermarket magazines, yer Tiktac  can only be fed from Tika's £120 magazine that, from new, wobbles about and fits so poorly the rifle feeds from it sporadically.
You can bend the cut-out for the magazine retention catch with a pair of needle nosed pilers and its all good. But really?

That's not the end of it.
I'm not the only person to have the magazines floor plate bind, and the spring fail to lift rounds 9 to 1, I've seen this fixed by drilling out the rivet that holds the magazine together bending the spring to give it a bit more push and reassembling. For my heard-earned £120 I'd expect better.

A welcome upgrade (not shown, I'll update the picture at some point)
If you've ever shot an Accuracy International (if you want to you can rent one for the McQueens at Bisley) you might well remember the ergonomic joy that is its bolt handle, its not one of those knurled "tactical" numbers, just a sphere on a short length of bent bar that falls to your hand with a pleasing proportion. Sterk in Australia make something similar for Tika rifles, book early to avoid disappointment they do a couple of batches a year and you can put your name on a waiting list. After an interminable wait I got the 'its time to pay' email and mine shipped within ten days.
It's wonderful, everything the original design should have been.
In order to fit it you need to strip the bolt which brings us to....

The Firing Pin.
While I had the bolt stripped down to add the new handle I was horrified to notice there is some  galling -  binding and scratching on the shaft of the firing pin, leading to an unwanted increase in lock time. I'll add some pix when I decide how to deal with this niggle.

Would I buy another one?
If all I wanted from it was shooting from a highseat or firing point near the car. Hell Yes. Unequivocally. Several people have shot gold medal scores with mine.

Coming soon - Clash of the Creedmoors: Tiktac Vs Ruger Precision Rifle

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Your pal
SBW

Buying A Precision Rifle: Tikka Tac A1 Pt.1

How would you feel if I said you could have a no waiting list precision rifle that's served humble pie to some very very nice custom builds? For 30% of the cost of an Accuracy International? Yeah me too. Choice of three. Or five depending on who you listen to. What a time to be alive.

Some of the younger members of my club [which means people under 60] have been saying good things, very good things, about the Ruger Precision.
Not for the first time Ruger set the pace for the industry, to give them their due the RPR has done just that. Catching both the Precision Rifle and AR trends; a rifle you can customise at home with thousands of readily available options, it takes AR grips and stocks.  That's also ready to compete in precision matches right out of the box.

Now on Gen.3 there's a growing choice of factory calibers and aftermarket barrels, parts and it takes Pmags. Down on the south coast at OMR's club there's a whole cadre of owners. At both clubs .308 Nato and 6.5mm Creedmoor are neck and neck in numbers.

In Spain Bergara Rifles offer their riff on the idea. They have an excellent reputation for their button rifled barrels, and have wisely chosen to build their rifle on the Remington 700 footprint. If you wanted to develop a rifle from one; you can have your choice of 100's of stocks, triggers etc, and it takes the proven and readily available AI magazines. Money pit, fun money pit, but a money pit I can't allow myself to be sucked into. This time.

On every thread I read; where someone was asking where to drop their hard-earned, there was the 'That being said Now try the Tikka' comment. I have never shot a Tikka that wasn't accurate and amazing value for money. Asking about; people who wanted one because their mate has one shed out and bought the Ruger, people who have shot both bought the Tikka. The best review the Bergara got was 'its the equal of the Tikka'.  It might be different where you are but here there's less than £100 in it either way. No one I found in the UK is including extra magazines or postal rebate magazines from any of the brands.

The Howa guy is yet to return my calls. Not even sure you can even order the Savage here.

I was feeling pretty swayed, but you know, cash is king. There just weren't that many second hand Rugers in Creedmoor, even fewer Tikkas in general, and no sign of a Bergara.
I was becoming pretty much resigned to saving up to pay full-whack for a new one when I found a 20 inch Tikka in 6,5 CM with a Stalon advertised. The owner had a presence on a couple of forums where he'd posted enough to give me a bit of comfort. He's hanging up his spurs and offered to throw in the contents of his ammo boxes and a goodly pile of Lapua cases. Rude not to.

We had a couple of false starts while I traveled in the wrong part of the north, with my ticket back at home I couldn't take delivery. We prepared to do a dealer-to-dealer exchange, then the seller announced his work had scheduled a meeting for him in central london. We agreed to meet in a business traveler hotel just down the road from an office I myself am occasionally compelled to attend. I was envisioning something out of James Bond or Lord of War, with a sniper rifle laid out on the bed. Just in a cheaper hotel.

"Sorry it'll be a day later and they've  moved me to another hotel". The next day he found he had no hotel, 'but don't worry there are plenty of meeting rooms at the london office'.
It's not like this in the movies. The receptionist denied that he worked there or existed. I rang him. He was sitting on the sofa next to her desk. Frosty doesn't cover it. It's as though we'd been married already. My laughing didn't seem to help lift her mood.
Now we get to the paperwork, three lots; firearm, silencer/moderator, and ammo are all controlled, and need to be listed. The only available meeting room has a young fella working away at his laptop, we sit at the other end of the boardroom table.
Now for the moment of truth.
The seller walks over to the young fella, shows his office ID, and licence before he says "we're both licensed to possess firearms and I'm selling him a rifle, he needs to confirm its serial number" There's a slight pause, "I'm cool" says the young fella. We complete the transaction; re pack the Tikka back into its cardboard box, say our goodbyes, quick "thank you" to reception, and I'm back in the street.

Wondering if the Uber or the armed response team will get there first.

I''m going to test this rifle and take it for a few trips - follow our adventure on Facebook

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Your Pal
SBW

Its All About The 6.5mm

While there's no cheap-to-keep like a .308, I've always been of the church of 6.5mm, a prejudice that's been comfortingly confirmed many times.

Here's an article from The Hand Loading Bench written by accuracy legend Laurie Holland for the excellent Targetshooter.co.uk magazine.

6.5MM CARTRIDGES: AN OVERVIEW (PART 1)

6.5MM CARTRIDGES: AN OVERVIEW (PART 2)

6.5MM CARTRIDGES AN OVERVIEW PT3

6.5MM CARTRIDGES, AN OVERVIEW (PART 4)

6.5MM CARTRIDGES AN OVERVIEW PT 5
and you can read some more of his pieces for Target Shooter here

Hope you find them as interesting as I did

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SBW