On a previous episode of Air Arms TV, we travelled to a farm in the heart of South Africa
Eastern Cape to hunt Dassies,
small furry animals that live amongst the mountains.
Today, I found myself in another part of the country
on a mission to shoot some more Dassies for the pot.
I'll be using my trusty Air Arms S510 Ultimate Sporter.
An air gun that is perfect for this job
and I'm hoping to take some cracking long range shoots if the opportunity presents itself.
Right, we've got a really exciting episode lined up for you today. A few 100 metres behind me
is a cliff where we know there are literally hundreds of dassies, so we're are bound
to get a few today.
We're just going to have to sneak in quietly as we get closer
We're going to setup,
do some range finding
set up the scope for the long range shoots,
put the scope cam on and start getting happy with the trigger.
i'm expecting some good long range head shots
I think it will be quite good and I hope you enjoy it.
Dassies are incredibly difficult shoot for a number of reasons,
firstly they are very alert,
make too much noise and they are gone.
Secondly they blend in very well with their environment,
It really does take a trained eye to spot them quickly.
I setup in a valley right next to a very promising looking cliff
and it's only matter of minutes before I get my first opportunity from 80 metres out.
I hear the thud as the .22 calibre pellet pass straight through the head
and dassie number one collapses right on the spot.
Video footage captured through the scope at 20 times magnification
shows a perfectly place shot
and I really couldn't be happier.
It's not long before I get another opportunity,
but this time I'm not so lucky.
I think that went just above him.
Do you know what I think happened?
He was the same distances as the other ones, 80 metres,
there's a slight deeper incline, maybe five or six degrees more, and even five or six degrees will change exactly where that bullet goes
I think the pellet
went a few centimetres too high and just went right over his head.
That shows your margin for error is really, really small.
But that's why I enjoy hunting like this you know,
when you miss a few times you learn, each miss you learn
you learn what you have to do
to get your shots right.
So it's a great learning experience
and it's a lot fun.
you can't go wrong.
It takes awhile for another dassie presents itself
but in these situations, patience is key.
I may have missed the last one, but this guy is not so lucky.
The Ultimate Sporting Extra is so accurate and so powerful that even 80 metre shot like this
is really just a piece of cake.
The difficult is predicting how gravity and the wind will affect the pellet in flight.
In this case I get it spot on, aiming half a mill lower than I did before.
Dassie hunting is awesome because it really tests your knowledge of ballistics and your understanding
of long-range shooting. It's almost impossible to estimate the distances
because all the rocks look the same
one rock can be 10 metres away from another and you'll never actually be
able to tell that. So, what I do is I followed very specific method when I
hunt these animals. The very first thing I do when I spot a dassie
is take out the range finder and range the animal. In this case all of them are more or less about 80
metres away. What I do then is take my phone out, I have a ballistic app
I measure the incline angle and I then input both inclined angle and the distance,
it gives me
a number in minutes of angle of how I need to adjust, in this case it's 9.25 minute
of angle for an 80 metre shot at a 25 degree incline. I put the data in turn to 9.25 minutes of angle
I aimed dead on, held of a little bit for the wind from the right, about half a mill
It's been a great success so far.
I keep scanning the rocks for movement
There are so many different caves on this cliff side, that a dassie disappear in one spot
and then reappear on the other side of the cliff seconds later.
You really need to stay alert.
I don't waste any time when the next one presents itself.
Again it's a perfect headshot and that really is a testament to the accuracy in the power of this gun.
He roles off the cliff and I realize that the toughest part of the day still to come.
I've got to collect all of these afterwards.
The winds blowing hard, it's get a bit out of control.
Just as I'm about to pack up the wind suddenly dies down and two dassies appear out of nowhere.
The first goes straight down and I just just make out enough of the second one to place a shot right on the head.
I take my time and pull the trigger.
I was about to call it quiets as the wind was getting too strong
I just thought, lets just wait 10 more minutes and see what happens and we'll call it quiets.
I was about to actually get up and leave
I saw a little bit of movement,
there was a dassie that was almost the exact same colour as the rock
I hadn't notice before,
and about a mill
to the right and the wind just happened to stop right now
took my shot and nailed him. there was another one and it kind of went back into the cave
I waited for him to show a little bit of his head,
took another shot and he dropped and he rolled down the cliff.
It's so cool and I'm loving this.
We'll probably will call it quits now because I think we've got enough for one day.
The wind is slowly but surely picking up
even though it's kind of quieten down for now, I know i's going to pick up again, so let's go collect those dassies.
Right, before we head home we're going to collect all the dassies, we've got quite a climb ahead of us
that cliffs about 50-60 metres high
and some of those dassies have fallen off the cliff.
They'll be difficult to find, but we'll find as many as we can. We'll take them home
any animal go to waste.
So, lets go collect them up.
It's a tedious climb and it takes quite a while to get up.
Eventually we find a way to reach the top and search begins.
This is a big dassie, this is properly a normal size
animal, right over here.
It's like a small male,
This one is big though, this one is huge.
It's really, really big.
You see there, blood coming out of the ears, perfect head shot.
This one, I'm not quite sure where I hit this one but he's dead. Oh there you, go just below the ear.
Good headshot, that's two down, I'll leave them on this rock here, go fetch the rest and come back for these.
After about half an hour of scrabbling about we have all the animals and it's time to head home.
It's been an absolutely fantastic afternoon
ethical humane hunting is something that I stand.
So to be able to take such clean shots from distances like this is just great.
And I can only thank the equipment for that.
Your gun has to be able to hit the kill zone every time
and the Ultimate Sporter delivered today as always.
It's just another day in paradise and I know I can go to bed tonight with another smile on my face.