Cyril Lyons

If I’m honest, I’m still working out what a hunting adviser does. I’ve spent some time on the internet and found several blokes who describe themselves variously as ‘brand ambassadors’ or ‘resident hunting experts’.

From what I can work out, their job entails a lot of shooting and having photos taken of themselves looking very serious in the woods or a field. That seems pretty good to me. I’m always out shooting and I’m handy with a camera, the idiot-proof kind, too.

I’m sure the folks at Brocock are expecting a little bit more than that though, so my plan is to put their rifles through their paces and let them know what I like and don’t like. I hope that’s good enough.

I had the Mamba Pro scope attached to the rifle before the Parcel Force van had even backed out of the drive and have been itching to give the combination an outing ever since. God, worked dragged on today but eventually I was able to down tools, put on my shooting gear and get out in the last couple of hours of daylight, my new Bantam HR Sniper under my arm.

As if getting to play with new Brocock rifles and MTC scopes isn’t lucky enough, I’m also fortunate to have plenty of shooting permissions, several of which are within a 30 minute drive of home.

However, I begrudged every wasted minute spent travelling so planned to go to my nearest permission which is about five-minutes away.

The main part of the farm is a plant nursery where shrubs and flowers are grown on before being sent off to garden centres. The rabbits eat their way through a small fortune each year – apparently, they have a particular fondness for holly. I don’t know, but I get the impression the place is run on a bit of shoestring and the pennies count so every rabbit I’m able to remove is one less to eat into the farmer’s slender profit margin. Its also one of the few permissions where the farmer asks me to leave him a couple of rabbits for the pot whenever I can.

The weather today was fantastic. Its been too hot this summer, for me at least, and today, whilst it was up in the mid-20s again, the humidity was low and there was a gentle breeze to move the few clouds around.

I arrived at about 7.00pm and the farm was nice and quiet. I’d sent the farmer a text to let him know I was coming and left the keys in the truck in case he needed to move it.

I planned on targeting a large warren in a field that has been left to grow wild. If only the rabbits stayed and ate the grass there, they’d be left alone, but the warren seems to be the launch pad for their raids on the plants and shrubs.

The wind direction was perfect, right in my face. There’s very little cover in the field to creep about in but the grass has been left to grow high. Spotting rabbits to stalk would be nigh on impossible and there was every chance I’d spook them before I saw them.

Instead, as I have done on many other occasions, I planned an ambush, which meant a long walk around the entire perimeter of the field to get into position. I had two locations in mind. On one of them I’d be able to lie at the edge of the long grass and shoot from a prone position. The other meant having to sit amongst the grass so I fitted a bipod to the Bantam HR Sniper and took my shooting sticks as well.

As I started off, I could see three or four rabbits on the far side of the field, probably 300 metres away. They’d been shot at enough times in the past to be on the lookout for danger and one glimpse of me convinced them to slowly disappear.

I wasn’t too bothered. I’ve always operated on the theory that its better for rabbits to pop back into their holes out of a sense of precaution rather than panic. In my experience, they usually reappear before too long. On the other hand, spook a rabbit at close range and it will disappear underground in a flash and likely stay there for the rest of the day.

Anyway, I had plenty of time so continued walking slowly and, I hoped, stealthily towards where the rabbits had vanished. Fifteen minutes or so later and I was in position in the spot where I’d be able to lie prone.

Gratefully I sank to the ground, the Bantam HR Sniper on its bipod in front of me. Brocock had sent me the steel bottle model, but even so I had found it light and comfortable to carry. The cut away stock makes a convenient handle, but I plan to fit a sling at some point anyway.

As usual, I managed to lie down in a spot that had a few spiky thistles in exactly the wrong places, so spent a few minutes wriggling around to get comfortable. At last I was happy with my position on the fringe of the long grass, confident that it, along with my camo hood, face veil and gloves would make me pretty much invisible.

From experience, I expected any shots to present themselves anywhere from 25 to 35 metres away. I’d bunked off work a little early yesterday so I could zero the Bantam HR Sniper and Mamba Pro and work out my hold over points.

I zero most of my sub 12 ft. lbs. rifles at 30 metres. As a .177, the Bantam HR has the same aim point at 20 and 30 metres with half a mildot of hold over at 35 and a full mildot at 40. Practice had gone well and shown the Bantam HR Sniper had a fondness for Daystate Sovereign pellets, stacking them on top of each other at any distance.

Peering through the clear lens of the Mamba Pro 5-30×50 I was confident of taking any rabbit that showed itself cleanly and humanely. I dialled the magnification on the scope to 12x and twiddled with the parallax dial to fine tune the image for maximum crispness.

Then, resting on my elbows, it was just a case of waiting.

It didn’t take long for a couple of tiny kits to re-emerge. They couldn’t have been more than a few days above ground. I’m not squeamish about shooting small rabbits, they grow into larger ones after all, but I wanted a fully grown adult to christen my new rifle and scope.

So I waited, watching the baby bunnies through the scope and practising laying the SCB2 reticle over their heads and mentally at least, placing perfect shots. Before long, my back and shoulders started to ache. I was considering a move to my second location when a fully grown rabbit obliged by hopping out of the hedgerow right in front of me.

I froze and it seemed to be staring me right in the eyes. I don’t know whether it could see me or not, but it seemed reasonably relaxed and after a few seconds hopped a couple of metres to my left. It sat there in profile as I manoeuvred fractionally into position and looked through the scope.

I eased the Bantam’s safety catch off, careful to stifle any click it made, and held my breath, picking a small dark patch behind the rabbit’s eye to aim at. Before I knew it, the trigger seemed to go off by its own volition. The rabbit leapt forward a couple of feet and I had that moment of trepidation, thinking I’d somehow missed from 30 metres and wounded my quarry.

It was only a moment though as I could see the rabbit laying on its side, stretching out its legs and splaying its toes before laying perfectly still.

I could have stayed in position and would probably have had another shot or two – I have in the past – but I’d been laying down for too long so I collected the rabbit, confirmed a clean hit exactly where I aimed and squeezed its belly to empty the bladder before putting it in my game bag.

The Bantam HR Sniper and MTC Mamba Pro combination were off to a great start.

My second ambush position was a short walk away, located just along from the corner of the field where the rabbits burrowed into a sandy bank.

The long grass once again gave me excellent cover, but this time I had to sit amongst it and shoot over the top, making my bipod redundant. The prospect of sitting rather than laying down was an attractive one though.

I’d seen no rabbits on my approach which wasn’t much of a surprise as I hadn’t had a chance to fit a silencer to the Bantam HR Sniper and although the barrel is fully shrouded, the sound of my last shot would have carried.

I eased down into position about 25 metres from the sandy bank and set my trigger sticks up to give me a perfect position for where I hoped the rabbits would appear. Once again, I settled down to wait, insects buzzing around in the last hour or so of daylight.

From the comfort of my position, and with the advantage of the shooting sticks, I dialled the Mamba Pro down to 5x so I could scan the hedgerow more easily. About 60 metres to my left – too far for a shot – two fully grown rabbits emerged and settled down to nibble the grass. I knew that if I tried to inch closer, they’d disappear before I’d even moved a yard.

I spent some time watching the pair, willing them to get closer. As is often the way though, they did the opposite and edged further way. When I swung the Mamba Pro back to the hedgerow in front of me a rabbit had materialised out of thin air. No matter how many times it’s happened, I continue to be amazed every time. It’s almost as if they wait until you’re not looking to show themselves.

The rabbit was in fact a little to my right and about 28 metres away. Once again, I shuffled into position, taking care not to clatter the trigger sticks, and placed the SCB2 reticle on the rabbit’s head. It was looking straight at me. I prefer to take rabbits side on with a 12 ft. lbs. rifle but after waiting a minute or so, peering through the scope, the rabbit refused to budge so I took the shot. Once again, the Bantam HR Sniper cracked and the pellet found its mark, killing the rabbit instantly.

He joined the one in my game bag and I made my way back to the farmer’s house, glad it was still early enough to catch him up so I could give him the rabbits and bask in his appreciation of two less to plunder his plants.

I go to all the glamorous places; last night I found myself creeping around the farm yard trying to pick off a few rats. With all the wet weather we’ve had recently, they’ve been more of a problem than in recent years, seeking the shelter of barns and outhouses.

I went down to my egg farm permission about 6.00pm. Kev and Neil joined me soon after. It’s got more than six thousand hens which wander about huge enclosures during the day, scratching about and generally doing what chickens do. As soon as the sun goes down they put themselves to bed in one of several large hen houses where they sit on nesting boxes a metre off the ground. Unfortunately, the space below the nesting boxes is full of what comes out the other end, and I’m not talking about eggs.

The combination of shelter, chicken muck and plenty of food makes the place an all-inclusive, five-star ratty resort. Shooting the rats involves little in the way of stealth or bush craft and our sessions at the egg farm have turned into something of a social event for us.

We break up endless tea and fag breaks with a bit of shooting here and there. The farmer is pleased enough – he always has a cake, tea bags and plenty of fresh milk to keep us going and most nights sends us home with a tray of eggs each.

Our tactics haven’t changed much in the years we’ve been coming. We station ourselves at different points in the yard where we know the rats are likely to show themselves and then pick them off. We even take comfy camping chairs to sit in; mine has a side table for my tea and fags.

If the sport is a little slow we venture out in the scratching fields. Often the rats will scurry around the edges of the hen houses. Thanks to the constant attention of thousands of chickens, the fields are a mass of muddy, poopy craters and with the recent rain, they are also slippery. No matter how much we encourage each other to ‘go and have a look’ all we really want is to see one of us face-plant into the chicken muck.

Air rifles are ideal for rat shooting. My favourite rifle for ratting is my .22 calibre 12 ft. lbs. Brocock Bantam Sniper HR on which I’ve mounted an MTC Viper Pro 3-18×50. The rifle has a reliable 10-shot magazine-fed regulated action which gives plenty of shots, and the scope has a tremendous magnification range – the wide field of view from the 3x magnification is great for spotting targets.

A Nite Site infrared system is another vital piece of kit and is perfect for scanning large areas comfortably, especially when used in conjunction with a set of trigger sticks. The whole set up is zeroed at 20 yards which results in a flat trajectory between 10 and 20 yards and covers most shots.

Thankfully it was a rare and relatively warm, dry and wind-free night.. As a result, the rats were more eager to venture out of their poop palaces and in between our cups of tea and fags we managed to pick off another 20.