Greetings from Arrowtown

I'm Dave Caesar, based in Arrowtown, Central Otago.

I work in invasive animal pest control so I'm in a bit of playground with plenty of targets running around.

Rabbits would make up about 60-70% of my workload with the odd occasion to get out on a goat or deer job now and then.  I haver the use of a PCP for my rabbit and bird control and rimfire and centerfire rifles for everything else. 

I'm here to share my knowledge and experience as well ask questions and learn from others.

Cheers,

Dave

Paul.

May I assume this is the one and only Paul Blades?

I thought I might run into here.

It's been a busy winter on the guns and with spring coming early, no rest for the hunter.  From one job to the next it's all I can do right now to keep the numbers from getting out of hand on my customers properties.  

I have had some time recently for testing slugs.  I ordered in a decent selection from Krale and found an afternoon a week or so ago with very lite winds to have a play.  JSB, Patriot, H&N, Nielsen, Zan, even Brian send down a few samples of his Spyda Slugs.  With plenty of air supply on hand I would have spent about five hours going through the whole lot.  The chrono was even plugged into an external battery bank. 

So far, all the slugs in the 30gn neighbourhood have performed well through the FX. I have found my barrel prefers .217" diameter projectile, but for the odd few, the .218" performed better.

I'll clean the barrel and carry out this test again, when time allows.

My own experience so far... and I open suggestions and advice.

Although the 25gn pellets that have been in use for a few months have been great to about 75m, I'm needing to find a slug that shows consistent accuracy to around 125m and still carry enough energy at that distance for a clean kill shot. The other issue I have is shot count.  I don't want to have to be a slave to returning to the vehicle after every 30 shots to top up the FX.  There is balance and breaking point to everything and with air rifles that point is around 125m.  Past that I need a slug heavier than 35gn to carry the energy  for a clean kill shot but my shot count per fill is lower. This is point where I return to using the 22lr for consistent accuracy past 125m, and I can carry several hundred round if necessary.

I am newby on the PCP scene, so perhaps I need a bit of professional tuition to what I could be doing better before I develop too many bad habits. 

Cheers.

It's not ammunition that I'm running back to the ute for, it's air top ups.

I have several magazines for the pellets/slugs, however, it's reg pressure that I'm running the 30gn at chews up a bit of air.  I reckon I would get about 35-40 shots before needing to top up the FX bottle before running too low.  I don't like dripping below 150BAR on the FX bottle so I'm getting approx. 40 shots for 100BAR of air.   

The PCP is still much quieter than the 22lr. Having said that the PCP does make noise when releasing that much air under that sort of pressure.  At times, the only my 22lr makes is the firing pin hitting ther back of the cartridge and the bullet hitting the intended target.  So in some ways there about on par with each other.

As far as scope go, I use an Element Helix for sighting in projectiles and bit of bird work.  I also have a HikMicro Alpek 4K LRF for most of my bird work and twilight shooting of rabbits that I sometimes do.

My main go to scope that sees about 90% of the work is a HikMicro Steler 3.0 LRF.  

Once you go thermal it's hard going back.