For many young girls and guys around the country, this roar will be their first opportunity to hunt – or at least to hunt some of the more prized species New Zealand has to offer in their prime coats and colours. While a shooter may be proficient with their weapon of choice, this does not automatically make them a good hunter.
Aside from the bushcraft, fitness and stalking involved – not to mention antler-induced-excitement behind the trigger – a serious consideration is the choice of ammunition. Fortunately for those shooting a more common calibre, there is plenty of off-the-shelf ammo that will do the trick. If you don’t intend to shoot much aside from sighting in and hunting, then buying ammo makes much more sense than reloading.
Bullet choice in New Zealand
Some common hunting calibres in New Zealand include .308, .303, .223, 6.5×55, 7mm-08, .243, .270, .260 and .30-06. To a limited extent the old Russian military calibres see some use (7.62×39 on goats or yearlings at close range or 7.62x54R if you’re running around with a sporterised Mosin-Nagant). And .300 BLK is becoming quite popular for goat culling or in short-range (but fancy) bush guns.
If you’re buying ammo for more common calibres like .308 or 7mm-08, your store owner’s recommendation will likely be good enough. Remington Core-LOKT and Winchester Power-Point are popular choices, and Hornady Whitetail does very well in most modern bolt actions too. However, for reloaders who have been chasing accuracy, bullet choice can change the game completely.
Some of the more common 7mm-08 hunting choices.
For example, with my 6.5×55 a 142 gr SMK or 140 gr AMAX does a beautiful group at 100 yards. In fact, my new favourite is Norma-Sierra 144 gr – it’s a factory load, but I can’t seem to beat it with the projectiles I have on hand. However, all of these loads have hit-and-miss performance on game. The AMAX less so, but certainly the SMKs are not meant for hunting. They have erratic terminal performance, sometimes yawing and producing massive wounds, sometimes producing pinhole wounds that can lead to inhumane kills and extended tracking of wounded animals.
But isn’t the Sierra Match King a hollow point? Yes it is, however the HP in this projectile is not designed for expansion on game. This hollow section in the bullet is to keep weight to the rear of the bullet, stabilizing it in flight and making it a more accurate round.
The SMK looks great on paper but does not produce consistent wounds.
Factors like this need to be considered carefully, especially in calibres with higher sectional density, which can lead to deep penetration, but poor expansion if bullet choice is incorrect. This can be prominent in the 6mm and 7mm calibres.
If you’re about to start working up your hunting load for this year’s roar and do some quick sighting in, there are a few ways you can narrow down your bullet selection. You could start by checking out the forums or facebook pages and seeing what others with your rifle/calibre have been using. Or you could start by doing some research on sites like Nathan Foster’s Terminal Ballistics, or checking out the projectile manufacturer’s website. If you are the type to learn better by doing rather than reading, try a sampler pack from Gunworks to get a few different projectiles through your rifle and find its sweet spot.
There are a few centrefire rifle events every year that are just thoroughly enjoyable and worth attending. The Auckland NZDA Prize Shoot is one, as is the Thames NZDA shoot. The Hangiwera Station Sniper Shoot is definitely up there, and so is the Swiss Club’s Any Sights Any Rifle 300 metre shoot.
This year was my first shoot at the Swiss Club, although some of my shooting buddies have been going for years, and I attended on their recommendation.
An enjoyable shoot
The shoot is well organised, and is accommodating for younger or inexperienced shooters. There are club rifles available and the RO is very helpful with sighting in. The club rifles are either straight-pull Karabiners (K31s), chambered in the venerable 7.5×55, or modern semi-autos in 5.56 NATO/.223 Remington.
If you’re bringing your own rifle (as most do), you can use anything you like. If you’re really ambitious, you can try your open-sighted SKS and see what it will do at 300, but you’ll be going up against Bench Rest rifles that hit 10.1 more often than not. Most rifles on the day were a mix of F-Class, BR, sporting and service rifles. Because there is such a variety of shooters and equipment, it’s more likely that you will be competing amongst your group of friends than with the top of the table – unless you’re an excellent BR shooter.
The variety of rifles on the range is a joy in itself.
Although I knew there was no way I could beat the top BR shooters with my modest sporter, this did not diminish my enjoyment of the day at all. I’m pretty competitive by nature, but found myself comparing my scores to my wife’s and those of the other Howick shooters. It also meant I got to see a bunch of really cool guns that you wouldn’t usually see in one competition.
Three-hundred metres is a pretty challenging distance if you haven’t shot past a hundred before. There were even a few who had not shot at all before. However, with the help of the club’s rifle master, these young shooters were hitting paper in no time.
The cost of the shoot is not prohibitive, with a range of $20 on the day, and of the cost of 25 rounds of ammo. The Swiss Club has a really good website for the ASAR shoot, which lets you book your position on the mound ahead of time. With several details across a few days of shooting, you’ll definitely find a time to shoot, and you may even try and better your score on another day.
Swiss Club target.
The format
The shoot starts with 5 individual sighters. Each shooter on the line takes a single shot from the prone position (all shooting is prone), after which the targets go down and the scorers call back the score and location of the round to the RO via radio. A notepad and pen are handy, as you try and figure out where your sighters are landing. The shots are called out like “9 at 3 o’clock” or “7 at at 1 o’clock”, with the first number being the score (1-10) and the position on the clock helping you to identify which segment of the target you are landing on.
After you’ve gone through your 5 sighters, there are 10 individual scoring shots, shot in a very similar fashion. Each shot is still called out, helping you adjust your shot placement, especially if the wind picks up downrange.
A notepad is essential to sighting in at 300 metres.
After the individual shots, you have “rapid” groups of 2, 3 and 5. I say rapid, but it’s really not. It’s simply a few shots in a row. There is no pressure to hurry up, and there are plenty of people single loading their shots.
All shots are still called out, except for the final group. This means you can adjust your shot placement right up the last minute.
How hard is it to hit the 10 ring? You’ll need to be shooting around MOA (just over) to consistently hit the 10 ring at 300 metres. If you want to notch up a bunch of 10.1’s, you’ll need to be shooting around between 0.5 and 0.66 MOA.
The experience
I thoroughly enjoyed the shoot. I went a bit early to watch some of my mates shoot, but also to familiarise myself with the format and calls. I did end up waiting around a bit, but I ended up being there for most of the day, as I had some “technical difficulties”.
After watching the 11 am detail, I hung around over lunch time before taking up my spot on the mound. I was a bit nervous as I was shooting my rifle in its complete configuration for the first time. Since the last time I had shot, I had fitted and bedded my Boyds Prairie Hunter stock, had a new bolt handle machined, and modified my magazine follower. Also unfamiliar to me was a 6-24 scope that I had been sent to review.
One new bolt handle coming up, thanks to my mate Thomas.
Unfortunately the scope did not perform and was unable to be zeroed on the day. This meant I had to wait through an entire detail, pushing out my wife’s shoot as well. However, I used this time to fit my trusty Vortex Diamondback 4-12×40 BDC, which I brought just in case. I have learnt my lesson with taking unfamiliar equipment to a shoot.
Unfortunately this meant I had to sight in from scratch, however, I was on paper on my 3rd shot, and the rest was just fine-tuning. By the end of my shoot I had it right were I wanted it, which meant my wife had the rifle ready to go for her shoot, and actually did quite well. Results can be seen here.
Overall I was very happy with the my complete sporter set up, and with some more powerful glass, I think I’d be comfortable taking this rig out onto the F-Class range.
Looking forward to some Norma brass at the end of this.
I think the load development still has some way to go, particularly as the barrel on this rifle is quite short. Not having developed a satisfactory handload, I shot this competition with factory 6.5×55 ammo. I used the Norma-Sierra 144gr HPBT, and the round seemed to perform pretty well. To be honest, I was more interested in the brass than anything else, as I think this rifle will prefer lighter projectiles, in the 130 – 140 grain range. Over the holidays I’ll be testing out the 129 gr Hornady Interlock and 140 gr A-max. I’ll be comparing this projectiles side-by-side with the 142 gr SMK and the 144 gr OEM projectile in the Norma-Sierra load.
At the end of the day, the shoot was enjoyable, and definitely an experience worth repeating. You can shoot multiple times on one day, or on multiple days across the competition. If I have the time next year, I’ll probably try shoot it on a few days. Being located only 45 mins or so north of Auckland, the range is really accessible, although it is also rarely accessible. The Swiss Club is, of course, a club for Swiss nationals, and as far as I know, this shoot is the only time of the year that the range is opened up to the general public.
If you would like to try a different range and format, and perhaps a longer distance than you usually get to, you’ll definitely enjoy the Swiss Club’s ASAR shoot.
Action movies are great. You get to relax and get pumped up at the same time. However, there are certain things that Hollywood, news media and general ignorance get people thinking about guns that just aren’t true. Here are four myths that need to stop, right now.
1. A silencer makes your gun sound like a mouse fart
There are very few “silent” firearms. Those that have been created to be virtually undetectable from about 30 feet (10 metres) away, were mostly clandestine firearms developed in war time, such as the De Lisle carbine and the Welrod pistol.
However, almost every other firearm in existence is still pretty loud with a suppressor on. The aim of a silencer, suppressor or moderator, is to reduce the decibel level and take out the loud “crack” of the round being fired. This helps in several ways.
It protects your hearing – especially for hunters.
It makes it harder to pinpoint the origin of the sound – keeps the animals confused for a couple seconds longer
It keeps the volume down at the public range or when on private land near to neighbours
The suppressor also makes it easier to shoot more accurately, as it reduces the recoil felt by the operator of the firearm, as well as the muzzle climb. This means shooters have less of a tendency to flinch or close their eyes, and can take follow up shots more quickly if an animal has not been taken cleanly.
While incredibly quiet compared to what is was before it had a silencer, this rifle is still loud enough to not be confused with a grandma spitting
2. Cars are often blown up with bullets
This is one of the great contradictions in movies and video games… Shoot a car enough times and it’s apparently going to blow up. While it’s possible, it’s not very likely. Fuel lines and tanks are very hard to puncture, and are right in the guts of the car. Even if you do manage to spring a leak, you have to continue shooting in that vicinity to try and get sparks from your rounds’ impact to set the fuel alight.
Tied in with this fallacy is the idea that cars provide great cover. No they don’t. Most hunting cartridges could penetrate through a car door or roof and still do a great deal of damage – never mind the shrapnel created in the process. Twenty millimetre rounds from a jet, 7.62×51 armour piercing rounds from a gunship or .50 cal rounds from a ma deuce will rip you and your car to shreds.
3. Guns click and clack whenever you point them at someone
This is one of the most aggravating things to see in a movie – and few are exempt from this awful foul up. Every time a character handles a weapon in any way, it makes a lot clicking, mechanical noises. As if it’s doing something. If I hold a gun, it makes no sound. If I lift it up and point it at something it still makes no sound. If I swing it around in circles and dance around with it – it still makes no sound.
A firearm will make a noise in these situations:
It is being loaded or unloaded
It is being calibrated or sighted in some way
A gunsmith is busy taking it apart
Your pulling the trigger and making it go boom
A safety or selector is being applied
A hammer or slide is being pulled back
You drop it on the floor
You hit someone/something with it
Other than that, they’re pretty darn quite. If you leave them alone in a safe for a million years, they still won’t make any noise.
4. Guns need to be racked/cocked every few seconds
Directors seem to think that working the slide on a shotgun is punctuation for a tense sentence. For those that don’t know, every time you rack a pump action shotgun, it ejects the round that is chambered – whether it has been fired or not. This means that every time the hero says something cool and makes that “kachook” sound for effect, he’s ejecting a perfectly good round. If he keeps doing that, he’ll have nothing left in his magazine by the time he’s done talking.
Keep racking that bolt and you’ll have an empty magazine soon enough.
The same applies to the slide on a pistol, or the charging handle on a semi-automatic rifle. When the SWAT team makes all those clicky sounds as they’re leaving HQ, then again during the pep-talk in the truck, again when they get out of the vehicle, and again when they confront the bad guy, they’re ejecting a bunch of perfectly good rounds (if this were real life). At three rounds per SWAT member in this example, and a team of 10 people, that’s a whole magazine of ammo wasted every call out. Terrible economics.
I could go on, but that’ll just have to be food for another article. What bugs you about firearms in popular media?
It can be hard to find the perfect gift for someone. It can be harder if they’re into shooting and you’re not – harder still if you don’t have a firearms licence and can’t legally purchase the things they would like. However, there are a few go-to things you can consider, and they won’t break the bank either.
Things made out of ammo that aren’t ammo
Shooters like things that go bang. However, the next best things might be something that looks like it goes bang. However, not all mementos are created equal. Ask any golfer, and they’ll tell you every year they get terrible golf-club or golf-ball shaped items to bury in a draw somewhere. Every now and then they get something that’s actually kind of cool. It’s pretty similar for hunters.
It’s hard to find a cooler bottle opener than this .50 cal case from Gunworks.
A barbecue lighter shaped like a shotgun may not get someone’s juices flowing, but a bottle opener made out of a .50 cal. case with a 750 gr A-MAX projectile seated in it might just get the right reaction. Yeah – 750 grains – that’s four to five times the average .308 projectile weight. My wife and I got one for my father-in-law last Christmas – and I liked it so much I got myself one too. The brass is obviously softer than bottle caps and will mark after use, but hey, it looks so freakin cool. You can get them from Gunworks in Christchurch, and because it’s not live ammo it can be sent anywhere. They have other options too.
Another cool ammo-looking option can be cuff links. These can be done poorly or very well, so be selective. The imitation 12-gauge cuff links my wife got me are not only well made, but look pretty damn good too.
A magazine subscription
If you’re significant other or best friend has a hunting magazine lying around but they don’t have a subscription to it, that could be a great option. Look for the subscription page and photocopy or scan it, or find the magazine’s website. It’ll be pretty obvious if you tear out the page…
Make sure to take a picture of the product code so you can find what you need at the store.
While everything and anything can be found on the internet, gun magazines are a great way for shooters to enhance their knowledge of local shooting spots, new equipment or competition results.
Reloading supplies
Well, you can’t buy ammunition for your partner if you don’t have a licence, but if they reload, you can buy them everything they need to make their own. You’ll still need to have ID, as primers and powder are explosives.
How do you know what to get? Go over to their shooting bench and see what’s running low. Make sure to take a picture of the item or the product code to show the guys at the gun store. Also, make sure to shop around. When you’re spending near a hundred bucks on projectiles or a box of primers, looking at different websites or stores can save you around 10 per cent.
There are many opinions, myths and vagaries about rifle cleaning. Some will tell you to clean and polish your bore after every trip to the range, others will tell you cleaning your rifle is a waste of time or a bore snake will do the trick. However, one thing’s for sure – maintaining your .22 is completely different.
What’s the difference?
Whether it’s rimfire or centrefire, some fouling is often needed to get a barrel shooting to the same, reliable point of impact. Lead rimfire projectiles are much softer copper-jacketed bullets, doing minimal damage to the bore, and the lead deposits left in the barrel don’t do any harm either. Copper not only wears down the barrel, but leaving it in the bore can lead to quicker deterioration of the rifling after subsequent shots.
So, the question then becomes – if fouling is good and lead isn’t harming your barrel, why would you clean your .22?
This picture shows how a clean barrel walks to its point of impact once it fouls up.
How often to clean your .22LR barrel
I don’t personally clean my barrel very often. The standard is “when accuracy starts dropping off”. And to be honest, I’ve never got to that point. I give my .22 a couple pulls through with the bore snake and some Hoppes No. 9 after a couple thousand rounds – give or take a few. But, lead crud is nasty on the action.
I mainly shoot bolt action when I’m shooting rimfire, which means I can feel when the bolt starts getting stiff or it doesn’t feed nicely. Semi-autos tend get gummed up a bit more, as gasses from firing come back into the action. What to do? Use some bore solvent and angled brushes, cotton swabs or cloth to clean the gunk out. Every now and then disassembling the bolt or action could be necessary to ensure reliable functioning. Some shooters also like to clean up the crown, however, I shoot with a suppressor, so I’m not super-fussed on that score.
If you have any questions or tips for cleaning your rifle – share them in the comments below.
Prvi Partizan ammo has been on the market for years – decades even – but has only just started to make an impact in New Zealand. Or so you thought. Abbreviated to PPU, Prvi Partizan as we know it today has been around since the 1940s, although the company traces its roots back to the late 1920s and has had a few different names as wars and politics have shaped Europe.
My Serbian friend tells me it’s pronounced “pr-ah-vi”, not “privvy” as most people sound it out. It translates roughly to “first partisan” and gets its name from the long and thing rifles produced for partisan forces by the factory in earlier years.
War – what is it good for?
Well, most of the sporting arms and ammunition we enjoy today share their history with their military counterparts. A tonne of the most popular hunting and sporting cartridges today are military cartridges from the past 100 years or more, including:
7.62×51 NATO (.308)
5.56×45 NATO (.223)
.300 AAC Blackout
7.62×39
7.62x54R
6.5×55
7.5×55
7.92×57 Mauser
30-06
.303
.338 LM
.50 BMG
The price of PPU makes it hard not to stock up.
Not to mention the endless array of pistol ammunition too. Of course the search for bigger, better and boom-ier things has led to a surge in development in the cartridge market today, much of which is driven by shooters who demand a high level of accuracy. Ammunition that used to only be available to wildcatters for varminting or bench rest shooting is now common place in the USA and is making its way over to New Zealand as well. Rimfire is also growing in leaps and bounds with the .17 WSM making waves in the shooting community.
But what about those stalwarts of scrub hunting and cheap and cheerful plinking? The cut down .303 bush guns and the semi-auto fun-makers in 7.62×39? Well, PPU is your knight in shining armour. For those that love shooting their military calibre rifles without breaking the bank, the ammunition produced by Prvi Partizan is worth your consideration.
On the plus side
While you might think Prvi hasn’t been in the New Zealand market for a while, it actually has. If you’ve shot Highland ammo, you’ve shot PPU. It’s the brand they’ve been using down here. In terms of military cartridges, Highland hasn’t been the cheapest, but it’s a step up from the dirty steel-cased stuff from Russia. It’s certainly better than putting corrosive ammo through your firearms, especially if you’re not that thorough with your cleaning.
Annealing marks on .303 and 7.62×39 PPU factory rounds.
Prvi Partizan ammunition is brass cased and generally considered to be good brass for reloading. Many Swedish Mauser fans rate the 6.5×55 PPU brass behind Norma and Lapua, but ahead of the American-made stuff. In terms of how soft or long-lasting it is, I can’t personally say. I’m on my second round of firing with this lot of brass and haven’t seen anything untoward yet, but we have a ways to go before anything should be cropping up. When I do get my brass into the higher firing counts I’ll post again to let you know, but considering I have over 140 cases for 6.5×55 alone, I doubt that will be any time too soon.
Considering how good the brass is, it’s certainly worth the price. This is especially the case with calibres like the .303 where you might only have a few options, all of which are more expensive. Not only do you get an acceptable level of accuracy out of it, but you have (I’m guessing) between 6 and 10 more reloads out of them – if not more.
What is the cost? I’ve seen the blue boxes cropping up in a few stores around the country and they’ve ranged in price from $31 to $36 for big rounds like the .303 and 6.5×55. The 7.62×39, which I’ve bought for a reloading experiment, runs at around $30, but if you go to the right Hunting & Fishing, you can pick it up for $25. Most stores will give you a bulk discount if you buy a few packets anyway.
How accurate is it? Well, how long is a piece of string? How accurate a particular round is will be determined by many contributing factors, not least of which are shooter skill and the particular firearm in question. The picture below shows PPU 139gr FMJ 6.5×55 three shot test groups, one is about 1.5 MOA and the other is 2.6 MOA. These are shot from my cut-down 20.5″ barrelled Husky M38. The other target, for comparison, is another reasonably priced brand, Sellier & Bellot 140gr SP, at 2.4 MOA.
PPU 139 gr FMJ and S&B 140 gr SP
This is not bad, considering many are happy to get 3 or 4 MOA groups with milsurp rifles and cheap ammo. However, you don’t get many people bragging about S&B brass for reloading. The picture below shows the S&B group with an unfired round for reference. Bearing in mind that the orange circle is about the size of a kill zone on a deer, this is very reasonable accuracy. If these groups were zeroed in, every shot would be a clean kill.
S&B 2.4 MOA group with unfired 6.5×55 round for comparison.
The negatives with PPU
Well, no one on the range is going to look at your ammo tin on the range and think your other car is a Porsche. But, if you don’t mind that, there’s not much to gripe about with Prvi Partizan. So far I have only shot .303, 7.62×39 and 6.5×55 in PPU and each has performed better than I would expect budget ammo to. I also find it to be quite clean, generally speaking.
However, if you’re wanting superb accuracy without hand loading your own ammo, this may not be the ammo for you. I would suggest trying it – your rifle may love it – but you may be better off paying one and a half or two times the price to get match-grade ammo.
0.64 MOA group shot off a bi-pod with PPU brass, Federal Match primers, 142 gr SMK HPBT projectiles and 34.7 grains of AR 2208.
There may also be variations in weight of brass and even wall thickness or hardness. This is pure, untested speculation. The only reason I say this could be possible is that the low price indicates that the machinery that produces this brass may not be as thoroughly regulated or maintained as those operated by Hornady or Lapua. The staff may not be as well compensated. But who knows?
What you may wish to do is individually weigh up the clean and empty brass out of a box or two, and see what the variation is between cases. Some spread is to be expected, but too much could have an effect on reloading. You could also see how much water each case holds to determine case-wall thickness and internal capacity. Anyway, I’ve been managing to get smaller than 1 MOA groups out of this brass, so I’m not complaining.
Overall, I think it is well worth the purchase. The accuracy is good enough for hunting ammo if you get the soft point variety, and there’s certainly a place for it in the safe if you just want plinking ammunition or a source of cheap brass.
