About a week ago a good friend of mine gave me a call and asked me if I'd like to come out to his farm and give him a hand with a problem he's been having and, of course I said yeah I'll help. He questioned me that I didn't even know what he wanted and I just laughed saying that I figured it involved guns and that I was always up to help him - although mending fences sucks. Anyway, he confirmed the problem, rabbits, and asked me to bring my shotgun and help him take care of some of them.
Rabbits dig burrows and on a crop farm that's not a good thing because each square metre of ground needs to be money-producing; they also eat the crops which reduces yield. Soil erosion, caused by their burrowing tenancies, is also a major issue along with the spread of noxious and invasive weeds. There's other reasons but you get the idea. Also, as if that wasn't enough, rabbits are an introduced species so upset the delicate balance that exists here which negatively impacts native flora and fauna biodiversity. Anyway, enough about rabbits.
I was going to take my shotgun but decided I'd take one of my other firearms instead, it's been a long time since I've taken it out for a run.
Shooting rabbits with a shotgun is easy as the shells contain lots of little pellets that spread and only one or a few need to impact the rabbit to gain an effect. So, I took a rifle instead meaning I'd need to be far more accurate considering it sends a single bullet on a single trajectory, in the case of the rifle pictured it's a WFA1 .223 calibre - similar to the military .556 round but with slightly less pressure.
It's a fast gun and super accurate. You can see it mounted above with a Nightforce scope but I demounted that and put my Aimpoint red dot scope on it knowing I'd be closer to the targets and would not need the magnification the Nightforce provides. As a trained long range shooter I'm not super-keen on the close up stuff but, of course, know how to do it so operating with this WFA1 with the Aimpoint red dot was not going to be a problem. You can see the Aimpoint pictured below.
My friend and I headed out on foot just before sunset (but after he provided a legit BBQ) both carrying our kit, lightweight packs with water, first aid and snake bite kits plus some snacks, I had 100 rounds of ammunition and he had around 50 shotgun shells. We both carried high-powered hunting spotlights as well...we went to work for about four hours and got a lot achieved. On our return I counted up what ammunition I had left, 37 rounds, so I'd used 63. I know I missed a couple shots, let's call it 10 rabbits, so it was a pretty productive night.
I'll be honest and say I'm not sure we made much of a dent in the population but with some follow up shoots and his plan to do a little 1080 baiting should clean it up nicely.
The law here is that to use 1080 products (what rabbits are baited with) one needs to have over 5 hectares (12 acres) of land and because he has over 500 hectares (that's 5 square kilometres of land, of which 400 hectares is arable) he's good to go. It's also a good time to do the baiting as other feed is in short supply during/after the summer. We've had almost no rain so with summer over and the land still quite barren those little hungry buggers will be more easily controlled.
I had a great time to be honest, not so much the shooting because I don't really like killing things, but hanging out with my buddy, chatting now and then and walking around his property that lies 50 kilometres from the nearest town...so it's quiet. I'm also glad I took the WFA1 out for a run, it's such a fun rifle to shoot. A good time was had by all, except the rabbits I guess.
