A hunt I had planned fell through, buty then something local cropped up....there is a nature reserve up the back of my place, owned and maintained by a non profit-making society. Anyway, I was up running through the reserve a week ago with my dogs when I bumped into 3 men with guns (powder burners). They asked if my dogs were any good at rounding up sheep, and went on to explain that they were after 3 feral sheep that had been spotted in the area and that were unwelcome in the reserve. I had seen them at various times and we talked a bit about where they were last seen. As we parted, I offered to knock a few over with the .50 cal if they were unsuccessful in finding them that morning, so they took my number. Well, a few nights later I got a call to say they had cleaned up two but one crafty ewe had eluded them, and could I please finish the job. So I wandered up the hill the next evening but found nothing. I went back up late last Friday afternoon and as I entered a particular area of the bush, thinking it may have passed through there to a grassy area, the damn thing emerged from amongst the trees and charged past me down onto the track and somewhere into dense bush. I didn’t even have time to cock the .50 cal.
Kicking myself, I wandered back down towards home. Halfway down my paddock behind the house I spotted a magpie, sitting quietly on the grass about 45 yards away. This was obviously a young one who as yet was uneducated about lead poisoning. I briefly wished I had my Falcon with me, then considered using the .50 cal, then thought “Nah, overkill...” As I wandered further down it took off and landed on a fence post, about 38 yards away. Well I still had a slug up the spout, and this bird was taunting me, so I sat down, cocked the gun and let fly. I thought I saw a puff of something but suddenly there were 3 magpies in the air. Surely I hadn’t missed? I walked over and there it was, a very large hole in its chest and with one wing practically torn off

Overkill, yes, but the only good magpie is a dead one, so I felt justified....
Early the next morning I made my way back up to the reserve, carefully approaching the spot where I last saw the ornery feral sheep. These are not the brightest of beasts, and it was in the same place where it had been hiding the day before... the bush looked like this ....

This time I was ready, .50 cal loaded and cocked, and after one miss amongst the dense bush.....

..a shot through the lungs brought it down....

Mission accomplished for the reserve society.
Cheers
Neil
PS Pictures are taken with my new Smartphone , so not best quality.

What a killer ya are Neil! Good job.

I'm surprised just ONE 50 caliber slug brought down that magpie though!!

hahah.

Thanks for the post. Man - wish we could shoot North of the Equator ....

Gary

Well done Neil! Thanks for sharing.

Hi Neil,

I had to come take a look again. I love your pics and stories.

Now ... I always learn something too. Such as the fact that the US Congress owns and maintains a nature reserve up in back of your place.

Ah, I'd love to go shooting ... if I didn't hurt so much, if it wasn't so darned cold and windy, if it didn't get dark about 4:30 pm, if I didn't have so much to do ... if I had a gun ... oh whaaaah .... whaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh



Gary

Hehe, Gary, you should find a reputable gun manufacturer and get him to make you one....there's an old bloke by the name of Barnes somewhere in your area

Now you've lost me with the US Congress quip...

....there is a nature reserve up the back of my place, owned and maintained by a non profit-making society.





Yeah - I asked that old guy about a gun ... what a grouch ... hahaha. He said he wanted one too.

Gary

Great Job Neil! I hope you've made up some business cards to present to the reserve so they can call you up for the next ewe. They should see the benefits of an airgun over the firearms. I'd bet they even have some culling to do of their other game. The Falcon should allow you to help with the smaller critters and not disturb anyone.

(Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there prohibitive restrictions on firearms in your neck of the woods, or is that just the misguided Aussies.)

Next show us the leg of mutton on the barbee (sic).

Thanks for sharing,

Kent

Thanks Kent, I hope I can help out the society when needed!
In the last few months we airgunners (at least those of us who shoot with PCP's) have just become subject to exactly the same laws as firearm owners, due to the fact that an undercover police officer was shot dead by a "P" manufacturer by way of an FX Monsoon. So we have to have a firearms licence now (I got mine last year in anticipation) which licences the gun owner not the gun, but other than that, provided we follow the basic safety rules, it's not too onerous.

Cheers

Neil

What's a "P" manufacturer?

And condolances on the licensing issue. Once the beaurocrats get a foothold, they will never, ever let it slip away. That's the way that the idiots in Australia lost their firearms rights, once licence restriction at a time. The worst part about it is that once it's in place, it only takes a "minor administrative change" to go from "not too onerous" to "forbidden completely". I wish you luck.

Rotor, I'm sorry I didn't catch up with your question until now. "P" over here is methamphetamine, home-baked by many a criminal and highly addictive and destructive.
Cheers
Neil

Oh, I see. Meth is the gift that keeps on giving, a regular world-wide plague. Here in the U.S. the latest twist is that they've reformulated most of the more effective over-the-counter cold remedies to omit pseudoephedrine, which can be used in the manufacture of meth. Now we're stuck with the versions that cost just as much, but don't work nearly as well. It's getting harder and harder for the home-grown meth cookers to find the basic ingredients, so of course, the Mexican drug cartels have obligingly met the demand by just smuggling in high-purity meth that doesn't need to be cooked at all.

Personally, I'd like to see the government decriminalize all drugs. It would hardly make them more available than they are today, and would cut the legs out from under the drug cartels. They're quickly and effectively converting Mexico into a lawless failed state right on our southern border, and the worse the security situation gets there, the worse our illegal immigration problem gets Our current anti-drug policies are pretty much an exact duplicate of our failed experiment with alcohol prohibition in the 1930's and it's obvious that we didn't learn a thing from that..

I figure that it wouldn't take more than a couple years until the worst of the addictive personalities kill themselves off with overdoses, and then everyone else could get right back to drinking themselves into early graves just like they do now. In fact, if the government sold all the drugs in the official U.S. Government drug store, we could cut down on the junkie population pretty quickly by just drastically varying the concentration of the various injectible drugs. You could mark all the pertinent information clearly on the box, and the average addict still wouldn't have a chance in a hundred of figuring out the correct dose. After watching trained, educated nurses and doctors screw up medicine dosage calculations for years, I figure that most people just don't have the math skills to do it correctly.

So...why do they call it "P" ?

"P" is a nick-name peculiar to New Zealand, and is short for "Pure", see extract from Parliamentary briefing paper below:

"The crystal form of the drug is often referred to as ‘Ice’, ‘Pure’ (‘P’), ‘Crystal Meth’, ‘Glass’, or ‘Shabu’.8 ‘P’ is a crystalline powder form that is between 70 and 90 percent pure, while ‘Ice’, a crystal rock form, is generally the purest form available."

Cheers
Neil

I see. The "shabu" reference is an old one in Japanese. It's been available there since at least the 1960's, but for some reason it didn't seem to really take off like it did in the west. The japs apparently use it primarily in injectable form, for some reason.