Shooting – and – fishing dot com

Using binoculars to give you the best advantage is as important when you are shooting pigeons as when you are stalking deer or birdwatching. This is not to say it is difficult to use them correctly, but a little preparation and practice can make a huge difference to the success or otherwise of your sporting day.

The first thing to do when you get your binoculars out of their case is to set the correct width between the eyepieces – these must match the distance between the centres of your pupils. The easiest way to do this is to put them to your eyes, and aim them at something that will not attract your attention and cause you to focus. This is probably best done by pointing them at the sky, making sure not to aim at the Sun, which can result in permanent eye damage.

Now adjust the distance between the eyepieces by pulling the two barrels apart or pushing them together, until the two circles become one. At this point you should be able to obtain a measurement of the angle between the barrels from the central pivot – this is normally marked in degrees.

Next focus the binoculars in to the closest point you can – maybe just across the other side of the road (by this I do not mean into the bedroom of the house opposite!). Now shut your right eye, and finely adjust the focus until the image is clear. Once you have that, close the left eye and open the right one again. Point the binos at the same point you focussed on previously – the chances are that it will be out of focus. Focus this by twisting the eyepiece, which will perform a fine adjustment on the right hand barrel. Once this is done, check the focus by looking through both eyepieces at once.

You should now see a single circle, clearly in focus with both or either eye. If this is what you see, make a note of the angle between the barrels, and the setting of the eyepiece, which will normally be in a range between 2 numbers, half of which is positive and half negative. With these two numbers you can quickly set the binoculars to suit your eyes within seconds of getting them out of their case.

The reason for setting them initially to the closest focus is that it gives maximimum sensitivity to the adjustments. At further distances the adjustments are much coarser, and if you then focus closer you will notice that the two eyes will go out of focus.

Rabbits in a garden can be a minor catastrophe. I don’t mind a little bit of veg disappearing, and my wife can spare some of her flowers; the lawn they are welcome to keep short; but it doesn’t work like this! 

Bunnies have a habit of breeding - the smaller they are, the easier to control!

Young rabbits are much less cautious than their parents. This is nature’s way of feeding predators; breed lots, breed idiots and breed more! 

 

I love having rabbits in the garden, it gives my pointers something to practice on right outside the back door. The problem is, if you don’t have a cat or a whippet, or regular fox visitors then the occasional visitor can all too quickly become a plague.

 

If absolute control of the population is your aim, then midwinter is the time to kill rabbits; the number of litters below ground will be at a minimum and they can be ferreted and shot; the less alert and the plain unlucky rabbits will have been taken by foxes, badgers, buzzards and stoats and weasels. With the numbers at a natural low, your attempts will be much more effective.

 

If, like me, you consider the rabbit is good eating and don’t mind swapping a bit of veg in return for a few young rabbits, then late Summer and Autumn are good times. You can select the three quarters grown ones for eating, knowing that they will not have litters to leave underground to die.

 

If you find you have two or three does breeding close to your garden it becomes a more challenging situation; I find it quite difficult to shoot very young rabbits, but it is fairer on the rabbits than being orphaned at a very young age. In this case, I generally aim to identify the doe when she has young rabbits outside and eating, and then cull her.

Baby rabbits are just to cute to shoot; but the rabbit holes on these slopes create a hazard when the cattle run

 

Baby rabbits are just to cute to shoot; but the rabbit holes on these slopes create a hazard when the cattle run. 

 

The air rifle in each case must be accurate at the range you are using it. If you imagine the rabbit above with a one pence coin between his eye and the base of his ear; and a two pence coin just below the line of the top leg, and about a third of the way up the body, then you have the killing points to aim for. Don’t take the shot unless you can hit within these areas. A full power (12 ft Ibs) air rifle with a decent telescopic sight will be sufficient at this range, whatever that may be.

If you can sit patiently towards dusk, rabbits will often present an opportunity for an air rifleman

 

The head shot will be instant, dropping the rabbit on the spot, often without a twitch. The heart and lung shot can take 10 seconds before the rabbit stops; but it is a larger target. I have had rabbits run thirty or forty yards before dropping stone dead from a lung shot, completely bled out. This is obviously a consideration if you have close neighbours; I well remember shooting pigeons on the allotment at the back of my Dad’s house and having to ask the neighbour if I could have my pigeon back! In these more politically correct day and age, you will not be popular (unless they don’t like rabbits either; or they like eating them!). 

Cock sparrow in spring plumage, rich browns and greys.

When I was growing up in the early seventies it was still not unusual to use sparrows as your first quarry with an air rifle; I was more fortunate than most because I also had access to a set of pig sties where rats abounded and the very occasional mouse survived. I still shot the occasional sparrow; they were very common then, and no, I don’t think that me shooting half a dozen or so made any difference to the population drop that occurred and from which they are only just starting to make a recovery from.

A male sparrow resting on a twig in early Spring sunshine.

To be honest, I have had so much more fun from photographing sparrows than I have from shooting them that I have made sparrow nest boxes to encourage them; as well as turning a blind eye when they eat as much of my hens’ feed as the hens themselves.

By the way, for those of you interested in photography, the photos on this site were taken with a Samsung GX20 camera – more details available here: -