So...ive wanted the opportunity for a long time...
Have a crack at a bunny at 300 yds & over, but the opportunity just doesnt ever seem to arise for me.
There i was, after a day of target shooting, with a 2 hour drive home ahead of me, & it coming on sunset, i thought id call into a block 10k down the road to try my luck.
The farmer had mentioned that every time he drives in there that bunnies scatter.
So i pulled up out on the main bitumen drag & had an optic nerve through the range finder...it took a bit of looking, but eventually i saw the outline of a bunny, then another, then another...
So i pulled in & drove past the rise so i could see the bunnies, ranged them at around 200 yds, the furthest being 230 ish...
The doubting thomas thoughts of reversing back to 300 yds & making a good shot crept in & so i pulled the rifle & bag out over the bonnet.
I had just spent an entire day on a bench so my trigger finger was on the ball, so i dry fired at one bunny, then at a further one, & it looked so dam good through the scope i decided to risk disturbing the furry critters & reversed the car back a decent ways.
The sun was dissapearing over the horizon so i had to make it snappy as the cheap as crap scope i have on the rifle needs a good few gamma rays to be able to resolve anything thats small, grey, furry & so far away.
The scope is also not behaving well in that it is not repeatable--come up 4 clicks & nothing happens, then come up another 4 clicks & the POI lowers by .25" before suddenly jumping up 2.5", so dialing holdover wasn't an option, i had to guess it.
The range finder said about 270 yds (but hard to tell from interfering structure in the forground).
The first first shot went a good 2-3" over the first bunnies head, to which upset the clan & had them all darting around like someone was shooting at them
.
Once they settled & the uneasy (smart) ones went & hid in their laundries, i lobbed another shot at one having a munch on some grass & i rekon i pierced his ears
if not was VERY close to its head given his matrix moves
...he vanished, but flushed out some kinky cousins who were apparently up for piercings.
Another frustrating thing about this scope is the thickness of the cross hairs, they are so thick that it makes picking points in the distance for hold-over very hard...not to mention at that range the reticle lines cover so much of the image-in this case basically the entire head of a rabbit.
Ok surely this time...i can see one thats been still off to the right..its a little further away at around the 300 mark, but i give it a crack...
- 304 yds
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Thats my first 300 yarder, played for a head shot, but cracked it in the neck.
Then another shot, & hey presto...not as good a shot, & a way off its head but still it fell over...311 yards back to the car in the backround
- 311 yds
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So i thought thats enough, ill go get them & go home...but who was i kidding--the opportunity doesn't arise very often at all, & i saw another way up the back & decided to send off another one, really concentrating on that trigger making sure of not pulling it off line...
- 351 yds Yeah Baby...!!
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- My longest ever knockdown 351 yds to the car
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So this one managed to drag itself a metre or so before it succumbed to blood loss & shock.
While im disapointed i didnt crack it in the head where i had aimed, im pretty happy with the shot placement at that range being just a smidge below the chipset..standing over this one the car pinged at 350-351 yds.
Bludy stoked...!!
The round is 204 shooting the el'cheapo 32gr Zmax & the load is not hot at all...and i should add that there was not a breath of wind to deal with, so i had it easy for my first trifecta at 300yds
- Three at 300yds plus
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So this was the sight just as id packed everything away for the trip home last night...nice...!!
- Nice end to the day
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excuse my self indulgence--i know its not much for some, but its my first 300 yarder, & first 300 metres plus bunny all in the one sitting, not to mention with a stock rifle...im pretty stoked...!!
The man who knows everything, doesnt really know everything...he's just stopped learning...