[music] rabbit shooting is a sport for all - it'sinexpensive, it's an animal in abundance, done right it is a delicious meat, and itcan be a challenging quarry, especially with an air rifle. for the best results and the best animal welfareit's good to know what's the most effective
best snake proof hunting boots, way of putting them on the ground. well, witha new webley air rifle to try out and three different pellet types to play with, roy wantsto find out which is the best to use in the field. we have the round head - the accupell.theflat head - the verminpell. and old favourites
these pointed jets. all in .22. to make this as realistic (almost dare wesay scientific) roy chest shot some rabbits last night keeping the heads for us to operateon, with the rest of the meat heading for some hungry ferrets. what we have got here, is we have obviouslygot skinned up rabbit head next to our full rabbit head and just looking at that comparisonwise it really does just go to show how small a kill shot or target area you have got witha rabbit with an air rifle. so it looks much bigger because you have obviously got thefur and the ears coming up here with the rabbit with the fur on. but when you compare thatwith the rabbit which has been skinned off
it really really does highlight that you havegot a tiny target to aim in on so accuracy is always key with air rifle shooting. butthat again brings us to the part of the point of the experiment today and that is we wantto trial all the pellets we have got test them for accuracy which is one of the mostimportant factors. but the other incredibly important factor is how much penetration,how much damage the pellets do when they hit the target. so as the rabbit is one of themost probably common targets for a uk airgun shooter, we thought what we would do is geta rabb it head and then we are going to film shootingit with 3 different types pellets with slow mo cameras so that hopefully it will giveus some kind of indication of the damage that
it causes and may be points us in the directionof the pellet which is most effective in doing that. first off we're going to see how accuratethe pellets are. tucked out of the way of the wind, and the rest of the lupton household,roy sets up a target and positions himself 25 yards away. the ones we are going to try first are goingto be the accupells. again we have got to bear in mind that this rifle is zeroed atabout thirty five yards so at 20 yards it is probably not going to be smack on the target.but we are not looking to see if it is exactly on, we are looking to see what sort of groupingwe are getting.
the pellets are grouping, but in two distinctareas - roy realises what has happened and there is a lesson to be learned. so we have taken 3 shots with the old pelletsand then just opened a new tin expecting it to be the same and amazingly we are probablya centimetre and half, 2 centimetres above the same point of impact we had with the oldpellets. between changing the 2 tins of pellets the point of impact had changed. so againinteresting point coming out of it is when you start a new tin of pellets and stick tothat tin of pellets. rezero and make sure they are shooting at the same point. i can'tbelieve that there was that much variant between. next up are the verminpells. their shape suggeststhey should be harder hitting but possibly
less accurate. i think for things like squirrels and ratsbecause you want to make sure you bowl them over and i think they could very easily dothe job. we will see what the experiment concludes. last up it's the jets. these are the leastaccurate. there is poor grouping and - just as an observation - they appear to make morenoise. with the accuracy test completed, it is timequickly to talk through the rifle.. as you can see we have got a new toy to playwith. we have been sent a webley raider by highland outdoors. we have done a little bitof work with a rifle so far and from a nice relatively inexpensive entry level air riflei have been incredibly impressed. nice little
10 shot magazine, but more importantly itis very, very accurate. most air rifles these days do come out of the box ready to shoot,but so far very impressed. right the plan now is to zero the rifle foreach pellet type then shoot through the rabbit skull. the first pellet on test is the accupell.when roy is happy, we secure the target and he shoots. he hits the mark and this accuratepellet passes straight through. so you can see here we have got the entrywound. so that should have gone straight through the brain, right through the base of the brainand exited there, the perfect kill shot, but i am quite surprised at the lack of damage.so it has drilled a very neat hole through the skull and not a huge amount of damagethere at all. so yet again i am very used
to seeing the damage that centre fire riflescause. so when you can actually examine the damage an air rifle causes it shows you howlittle effect it does have. again it really does highlight the need for accuracy. so youcan see that if you had shot the rabbit anywhere around here in the jaw it wouldn't have beena kill shot or anywhere up here in the nose again it wouldn't have been a kill shot itwould have just drilled a neat hole through and off he would have gone. yes, it reallyis quite interesting that when you are using an air rifle you do really have to rely onevery skill you have got and every bit of accuracy you can afford. moving on to the verminpell and roy has toeat his words. the verminpell is grouping
beautifully. and that's not all. it seemsto be a very destructive pellet design. so this is the verminpell and looking at itjust from the exterior it doesn't look like we have got a huge amount more damage thanwe had from the accupells until you actually feel and touch the head. so here you can feelall the skull is broken away just behind the entry would in here and also at the back youcan see here that it is all completely crushed, it has completely disintegrated in its entiretyinside and it has actually broken the neck as well. that has caused a lot more damage. lastly, the jets. roy is not as confidentof hitting the mark - the first is low-ish and the second is good enough to compare tothe others.
we were using the jets for that shot and unfortunatelythey were flying up all over the place. they weren't or they are not an accurate enoughpellet for me to be happy to use in the hunting field and you can see here the entry woundis very low and has gone in to the jaw. so if you were in a hunting scenario that isnot necessarily a direct kill shot. the pellet has gone in and i am struggling to find theexit wound. so all in all it might be alright for plinking the targets, but not one i woulduse for taking out and doing anything serious with. all three do the job but the verminpell isthe one that catches roy's eye. so with roy confident of the rifle and pellet we're offto see if we can bag a couple of bunnies.
rabbit one is further than roy wants but hey- he knows where this rifle is shooting and at 39 yards he is bang on. ok so i am quite pleased with that one. therabbit just stopped in front of the shrubbery there, he was spot on at thirty nine yards.just put the first mill dot up on him and squeezed the shot off and down he went. nota bad kick off. rabbit two is not presenting a head shot butroy is confident of a heart shot. this is also a 39-yard shot. the animal goes nowhereand the webley rifle and verminpell flatheaded pellet combo prove their effectiveness. rabbit three is much closer but the end resultis no different.
now i know it might have seemed a little bitgruesome taking the skin off the rabbit heads, but to get a true representation of what goeson it was an experiment and i think we got some good results off it. it really did hightlightthe difference between shooting with the ordinary pellet where it almost drilled a hole throughthe target. then you go on to something like the verminpell and you get a fantastic exitwound. so it just gives you a little bit more
margin for error. so if your shot is not quite100% you are probably going to take out a vital area which will enable you to kill theanimal cleanly and efficiently. it's been a interesting test - that not onlyshows how small the target area is but also that air rifle pellets are not all made equal.
