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I’ve never done it, and I certainly wouldn’t dismiss the obvious skill involved, but when it comes to stalking prey, I doubt the deerstalkers in the Highlands of Scotland, or the hunters on the great plains of African could hold a candle to the humble air gunner attempting to close in on a rabbit or pigeon.
Funny isn’t it? The things you think about when you’re on your own in the woods. Or is it only me? Here I am, plodding about one of my permissions in south Oxfordshire, thinking what it must be like to hunt big game when I should be concentrating on pigeons and squirrels. And yet, I am absolutely certain the sensations and thrill I am experiencing are the same as any big game hunter. Alright, I’ll admit it’s unlikely a squirrel or pigeon will tear me limb from limb if I miss, but no matter what size the game, the challenge of stalking your quarry is uniformly absorbing.

These rambling thoughts are triggered by the use of a Brocock Safari XR rifle. At 12 ft. lbs. and .177 calibre, I’m woefully ill-equipped to take down any charging tigers I come across, but squirrels and pigeons are a different story. And that’s what I’m after today. The permission is a commercial lumber plantation. The squirrels cost a small fortune each year by stripping bark and pigeons use the woods as a staging post to raid nearby crops.

The section of the woods I’m in today is planted with fir trees that provide a year-round carpet of relatively quiet vegetation to stalk over. Entering from the track is like stepping into another world as the thick overhead canopy blocks out much of the light and any wind. It’s like being in an airgunning Narnia but without the irritating posh kids and weird animals.

I shoot most of the squirrels in the woods by sitting in one of several hides I have dotted around the place, staring at peanut feeders. Its very effective but prone to long periods of inactivity. I’ve often nodded off only to wake up in time and see a squirrel leap off the feeder and disappear.
In terms of success rate, stalking in the woods produces a much smaller return but is far more absorbing. Although the trees are thick overhead, the woodland floor is relatively sparse, making it easy to see the pests as they forage about. As a result, I’ve often stalked a squirrel over 100 yards or more. Hardly lions and red deer I know, but I enjoy it.

Added to that is the challenge of tracking down pigeons. They are easy to spot as they flight in, and easy to hear when they start cooing, but locating them in their perch and getting close enough for a shot before they spot you is captivating and frustrating in equal measures.

Air rifles are perfect for this kind of shooting; easily powerful enough to dispatch quarry humanely without posing undue risk or danger when shooting up in trees, especially with a buffer of several hundreds of acres.

Who’d be a rabbit, grey squirrel or rat? Or even an antelope or warthog? Just about everything wants to kill and eat you. And yet, in the animal kingdom, six out of seven leopard hunts are unsuccessful. Tigers are even worse – one on 20. In fact, it seems that hunting in packs is best; African wild dogs and grey wolves are successful around two thirds of the time.

I have no idea what my success rate is, but when it comes to stalking, I imagine I’d make Tigers look pretty good. The simple fact is that airgun species have evolved over thousands of years to avoid predators so its perhaps not surprising that most of my attempts to stalk rabbits and pigeons result in disappearing fluffy backsides and flapping wings.

African wild dogs and grey wolves are successful because they run their prey down to the point of exhaustion. I’d pay good money to see it attempted, but airgunners hunting in packs to chase a bunny across a field just wouldn’t work.

Of course, ambushing is the answer. Not only for predators in the animal kingdom but for us airgunners as well. Be it sitting in a hide covering decoys in a field or peanuts in a feeder, I am infinitely more successful when it comes to waiting for pigeons, corvids and grey squirrels to come to me.

Rabbits though present a different ambushing challenge and, with spring upon us and the promise of long summer evenings getting closer, now is the time to start planning your tactics.

Successful ambushing takes a lot more effort than simply lying down in a sunny field, pleasant though that would be, and hoping the rabbits turn up. Done correctly, you can overcome your quarry’s instinctive caution and make a decent bag for the pot.

The right gear

It really doesn’t matter how good your planning is and how many bunnies you find yourself surrounded by, you will only be successful if you equip yourself with the right equipment, and of course that starts with the rifle and scope.

I’m fortunate enough to have a firearms certificate and several permissions on which to use the rifles it permits. As a result, one of my favourite rifles when it comes to ambushing is a Brocock Commander XR Magnum. In .25 calibre it generates 55 ft/lbs of energy which is enough to propel a 34 grain pellet at around 850 feet per second. When hunting with it, I limit myself to a maximum range of 60 metres and know that at that distance the Commander XR will stack the pellets thanks to its Huma-Air regulated action.

When Brocock transitioned from a bolt action to a sidelever cocking system across its range, it transformed good rifles into great rifles. The sidelever is as smooth as silk and drives a new gated magazine. It’s quiet too, even at 55 ft/lbs, thanks to a 0db silencer, and the 50 odd shots I get from the 480cc carbon bottle is plenty.

Accuracy and engineering are, of course, vital in a rifle, but for me, it’s the Commander XR’s telescopic stock that makes it the perfect ambushing rifle. Most of the time I shoot from prone when waiting for rabbits to appear. The ability to adjust the length of pull thanks to the stock helps me find the perfect shoulder position and eye relief no matter how I contort myself and how many layers of clothing I wear.

The Commander XR Magnum demands a decent scope to exploit its potential for extreme accuracy. I’ve paired my rifle with an MTC Mamba Pro 5-30×50. I zeroed the scope at 40 metres using the ¼ mil turrets, and make full use of the side parallax to focus on targets from as close at 10 metres.

The image is crystal clear, even at extreme ranges on maximum magnification, and excellent light transference to the eye thanks to a combination of lens coatings, the 30mm tube and a 50 mm objective lens enables me to shoot well into dusk.

Reticles are a soapbox topic for me. The SCB2 reticle is one of my favourites; plenty of aim points in half mil increments allow for precise shot placement without being cluttered or overly fussy. And when it gets too murky, there’s an illuminated reticle feature with plenty of brightness settings and a separate on/off control.

Preparation and getting into position

Even the best rifle and scope combination won’t help if you set up ambush in the wrong place. There’s nothing like spending time on a permission to build familiarity and you will soon get to know the most populated areas. But its also worth keeping an eye out for signs. Fresh droppings and holes are easy to spot but keep an eye out for shallow scrapes and in the earth and tunnels in the undergrowth.

When you have decided on your ambush location, make your approach from a direction that won’t blow your scent towards the rabbits. And when you get into position, make sure your scent is being blown away. Don’t be put off by the sight of rabbits scurrying off when you approach. I’d rather see rabbits hop into the hedgerow from a distance out of a sense of caution as I know they will likely be out again before too long. Better that than spooking them close up so they dash underground in a panic and stay there for the rest of the day.

It goes without saying that if its available, make use of any cover, even if it is a tuft of grass, and try to get a position directly facing the hedgerow so you can cover an arc left and right. If no cover is available, simply keeping low off the skyline and wearing camouflage, including a face covering and gloves, will often suffice as long as you keep still.

One of the advantages of ambushing is that it enables you to shoot from a prone position which, personally speaking, is when I am at my most accurate. A bipod will make your position even more stable and I fit one to the Picatinny rail on the underside of the Commander XR Magnum. If you don’t have a bipod, a backpack or even a rolled jumper will help. Sometimes the terrain simply won’t allow you to shoot prone and you’ll have to adopt a different position. The farmer on one of my permissions lets the grass grow long and laying down I simply can’t see the rabbits, let alone get a clear line on them.

The positive is that the grass affords great natural cover and in such situations, I take a set of tripod shooting sticks with me. Sitting down behind them in the long grass dressed like Rambo, I have accounted for as many rabbits as I have shooting prone.

Leave them be

I’ve been ambushing rabbits for nearly 40 years. Back then I used to rush in as soon as I hit one to claim my prize and examine the entry and exit wounds with all the ghoulish relish of a young boy.

Fortunately, I’ve managed to hang on to you the youthful enthusiasm but over the years have come to realise that leaving the rabbits where they fall, assuming a clean kill of course, is much better. Rabbits have acute sensitivity to vibration and tromping above their warren to reclaim a dead rabbit will make them stay underground longer.

I’m not saying I’m an expert and my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it – nothing. But I have learned from several decades of making mistakes and hopefully, you will too. So with lockdown beginning to ease and spring and summer around the corner, try some ambushing for yourself.

Ends…

It’s an undiminishing honour to have my thoughts, opinions and results included in the final version of a rifle, and whenever I’m asked to contribute these, I give it everything I have. Sometimes, fundamental changes are advised, and at other times, the prototype I’m testing is so close to the finished article that my suggestions are merely cosmetic. I tested Brocock’s first pre-production Sniper XR and that was one rifle that didn’t need much tweaking, so I wasn’t surprised to discover that the latest variant, the Safari, was also a done deal. The important thing for me to remember, though, is the need to discard my previous association with a rifle, and to treat, and test, every variant as a new model, because that’s how the majority of our readers will experience it. Besides, I know Brocock constantly refines and upgrades components when better performance becomes available, and these must be assessed from scratch. Here goes then.

That said, the term “invasive species” is potentially misleading when you think of how this small tree-dwelling mammal actually came to be on these shores. It is not that the grey squirrel scrambled onto beaches from longboats landed on the north coast, ransacking and burning red squirrel tree
villages to the ground along the way.

More so they were unwittingly deposited in this country as unwilling pets around the late1800s, brought across from their native North America. Without falling into the trap of judging history by our modern-day beliefs and ideology, you could say the only dumb animals involved in this ecological disaster were the human ones who thought it was a good idea at the time. So the grey did not cause the problem, we did, and it is therefore right thatas airgunners we get actively involved and assist where we can in their management and control.

As ethical and responsible shooters, if we are engaged in the lethal control of any animal then to protect our sport it is proper that w fully understand the reasoning of our actions. I am not saying we should always be sucked into the arena of social media, or spend time in a debate with self-opinionated opponents giving them the spotlight they crave. That would take up far too much of our valuable time when we should be outside with our rifles, but at least have it in your head the justification for what we do.

Here’s a bit of a huge statement to open this test; I’m being forced to think that the days of bolt-action rifles might be coming to an end. Yes, I know various forms of bolt-action sustained us since Johann Nikolaus van Dreyse produced the first one in 1824, but muzzle loaders had held sway for many years before Johan’s genius showed us a better way to cock an action and poke projectiles into a barrel. Maybe it’s just the end of an era, but whatever it is, swapping the Brocock Sniper to sidelever is a major plus. Here’s the thing, though; the difference between sidelever and bolt-action isn’t even noticeable until they are tested side by side on models with similar handling characteristics. I own and happily use several excellent bolt-action rifles, and I have never thought a single one of them would benefit significantly from being swapped to sidelever … until I tested a Brocock Bantam MKII Sniper alongside this month’s test subject. The difference was noticeable then, for sure, and it prompted me to explore other options. My Air Arms S410 was tested cheek to cheek with its S510 stablemate, and there it was again.
All four rifles are tackdrivers, but those sidelevers drove their tacks via an almost effortless, back-forth flick to cycle their actions. Does such a tiny, barely discernable advantage even matter in the real world of hunting7 A very short while ago, I’d have argued that it doesn’t. I’ve now changed my mind, and I’ll explain that more as this review unfolds. First, though, let’s go back in time.