So, today we're going to have a look at the gear that I use for small game
hunting with an air gun. Probably one of the most regularly asked questions we
get through social media and through the YouTube channel and actually it's quite
straightforward, in fact everything I normally take out I'm either wearing or
is here in front of you. Of course I've got my trusty Helion XP
Thermal Imager and Vanguard B62 Shooting Stick, but everything else fits into this bag here.
First off we have a Hawke Frontier HDX binoculars in 8x32.
Nice, lightweight, compact, great sight picture through those really good image
quality, great light transmission, but not too heavy. When you're working in and
around trees you don't need huge amount magnification or what you need is a wide
angle field of view and that ability to be able to differentiate between what's
in front of you and what's behind, so top quality pair of binoculars that aren't
gonna weigh you down. In front here in this Air Arms bag some nifty pockets, the
essential Air Arms Diabolo Field. Now, these are .22, 16 grains and perfect for
this type of middle distance shooting. Anything from 20 up until around 50
yards, so great thermal performance on those and fabulous accuracy. I also
have here pellet pouch. I've had this for about 15 years or so, leather clip
fronted pellet pouch on a bit of string there, so I need to take one magazine
with me, 10 shot magazine in the rifle and I tend to reload it as I go, so
that's always quite helpful.Then I have the essential Hawke Endurance LRF 1000
Rangefinder. Now, this is an amazing bit of kit, about half the size of the
previous 900 yard version and this genuinely does go out to 1000
yards in all light conditions, so of course we're not going to need that here.
Mainly I'm gonna be ranging for the squirrels and pigeons and rooks and just
see roughly how far they are, are they 30 yards? Are they 35 yards? Are
they 40 yards? The difference for me with shooting the rifle shooting today is
about half a mil dot to a mil dot. If it's out at 50 yards to knowing your aim
points and knowing your distance is pretty critical. I have my trusty Buck
110 Folding Hunter, this once again has been in my hunting collection for about
20 years. It's got a pointed edge, now for deer stalking I tend to use a drop point
skinner, helps prevent nicking the guts as I'm gralloching, but something like the
Buck 110 Folding Hunter because it's got a point
it's really good for detail work, so when your gralloching squirrels, rabbits
resting pigeons it's very useful to have that additional point on the end there.
Of course along side that this Blade Tech Blaze Orange to put an edge back on.
Of course we're gonna sharpen a knife use a steel and a stone, but this once
you've gone through a few rabbits just to get that edge back on the edge of the
blade this is very useful for that. But, of course they're just accessories,
the real work gets done by this here.
Air rifle of choice at the moment is the Air Arms Galahad rifle.
This is the high-power version, so as you can see
it's the extended length versions, two versions of the carbine and rifle
and the Galahad this has got a soft touch stock on it, which is my
favourite, nice grippy finish to that, even when it gets wet and looks pretty cool
as well. Now, this weighs in about 3.8 kilos, fairly robust rifle, but the point
of balance is just behind the pistol grip here. It allows you to manoeuvre the
rifle without being forward heavy and it's great for taking elevated shots.
Typically around the woods, squirrels, rooks so for me having the
Galahad with that point of aim it's almost straight down onto your hand so,
that's pretty fantastic. this is in .22 caliber and as you can see it
does have the power adjustment on here as well. I have it right the way up at
full power, which is about 30 foot-pounds. So, this with the Diabolo field .22
pellets, I zero at 30 meters and I'm roughly half mil dot low at 40 meters and
roughly half mil dot low at 20 meters and by the time we get out to 50 it's
between 3/4 and a full mil dot, so shoots pretty flat and the great thing about
having the Galahad it's got quite a high position for the scope above the barrel,
which means that for those longer distance shots you don't need quite as
much holdover because you're looking down the back end of the pellets
trajectory as it starts to fall. So, it's a great combination,
it's their first attempt at a bullpup and it's really got cult following now, so
it's got this amazing forward cocking lever here, so you actually cock with
your left hand. Quite interesting, so you hold with your right and cock with your
left. You don't need to remove the rifle from your shoulder as you cycling
rounds. Now, I don't tend to shoot that fast of course, but it's always good if
you've missed your first shot you can see where you went and the animals still
there to take that quick follow up, so without moving your eye away from the
scope. Now of course with Air Arms you get that legendary quality 35 years of
making the very best in precision air guns and the accuracy that comes out of
the Galahad is phenomenal. So, been out on the range this morning at 10 shots
30 metres through the same hole, any variance in terms of
the point of impact was me wobbling back on the bench rather than actually the rifle itself.
So, the rifle version of this at full charge 200 bar will deliver
between 50 and 60 shots pending on your ammunition, so there's more than enough
there to keep you busy for a full day out in the field. In terms of accessories
on that, you can see I've got fitted here a Harris bipod, it is actually quite
short Harris bipod, I don't tend to need one too long just because of the depth
of the rifle itself. Attached to the bottom of the bipod I have a Vanguard
strap. Now, I carry this upside down as a word the muzzle pointing at the ground. I
find that's more comfortable with this rifle, much easier for me to grab the
rifle, pick it up and then address it onto my shooting sticks, which are these
Vanguard B 62's. Now, I use these for everything, going out
deer stalking for Roebuck, big game over in Alaska. I know them pretty well, pretty
affordable and they're very versatile for just about every type of rifle and
scape combination will fit inside this V here. Top of it pivots, so you've got lots
of manoeuvrability in the rifle and of course it just gives you that extra
stability allows you to take shots a little bit further out and you could
with free hand give yourself the opportunity by the shooting off a bipod or a set of sticks.
So, on top of this we've got this pretty amazing Hawke scope.
it's an Air Max compact 30 SF 3-12x40. It is a very compact scope designed
specifically for bullpup rifles and for compact, lightweight, manoeuvrable rifles.
It's about 28 centimetres in length and weighs in about 600 grams, so it really
is small and compact. It's got a fast focus ocular I barrel to make sure that
you got that really crisp reticle, so it's focused perfectly to your eyes.
High torque zoom ring 3 to 12 magnification, of course it's got these ridges to make
sure that it's easy to adjust when you've got gloved hands or cold hands.
It's got that 30 mil monetary of construction that Hawke is famous for, so
credible rigidity and it's very robust it withstands all of the environments
and it's all caliber rated, so if you wanted to use on another rifle, which is
a deer-stalking rifle you could do. This has been designed primarily for air
gunning, but as all Hawke scopes are they're versatile. Moving a little bit
further forward, we have this slide focus adjustment here from 10 meters all
the way up to infinity and there has a 3 inch parallax adjustment here and on the
outside of that the glass set reticle, which has six stages of lumination in
red, so once you've found the setting that's perfect for your ambient light
conditions we can switch it off and they switch it back on again quickly. In terms
of the turrets themselves, these are capped
resettable locking target style turrets. Once you've zeroed the scope there's an allen key
bolt in there you just loosen it off set it back to zero and then as you're going
you can adjust these if you choose to, I typically don't tend to, I tend to pick a
point on the rascal and use that as my aim point, but if you do want to adjust
then then that's there for you. Now, in terms of the Air Max reticle, the spacing
between the dots is true mil-dots and then there are bars halfway between each
of those. That's very useful for me because I know that 20 meters I need to
aim high by half a mil dot and the same again at 40 and then a full mil dot out
to 50. So, it allows you to take all the guesswork out of things and just place
that point of aim exactly where you know it needs to be. So, all in all this scope
and this rifle accommodation really does give you that confidence to take those
shots out to around 40-50 metre. There's perfect in this rifle, it's
carrying enough power to do that, but you need to put the pellet in the right
place. So, I put a lot of time in on the range of these, they seem to be working
out really well and so far I'm happy with their performance.
So, the final piece of technology that have been using whilst out airgun hunting is this.
This is a Pulsar Helion XP50 Thermal Imager. Might look a little bit space-age,
but this really is a game changer. when you're hunting small game in an
environment such as this with all the different colours, textures, depth, shadows
it can sometimes be very difficult to pick out what the outline of a squirrel
is for example, so this as soon as you put the thermal imager on to the
animal it just shines bright red, you can see exactly what's in front of you. Of
course it's a little bit expensive, I do use this also for deer management and for
foxing. It's not the sort of thing I think you buy casually for airgun hunting,
but for sure if you've got one that you use for other purposes then definitely bring it along.
So, this in combination with these binoculars really do help
bring the canopy into clear focus. You can see it there's an animal there and
you can then identify exactly where it is.
My choice for going out certainly during the summer there's the Deerhunter Muflon light. Now, this is in
Realtree Edge. I'm not saying you need camo, of course everybody can choose to
hunt in their own way, but personally for me
breaking up your outline, softening the edges allows you to make more movement,
allows you to make more mistakes. The Realtree Edge camo is the most advanced
camo they've ever made. Lots of detail, lots of depth, so I find it works really
well here in Europe and elsewhere in the UK. It's lightweight, its breathable, but
it's also shower proof, this time of the year gonna be warm, you're going to be
moving around, you're gonna be active, so you need something that's going to be
able to take that sweat and moisture away from you, if there's a shower you
don't want to be ducking under cover you want to be able to continue out in the
woods. Now, it's just a shell outer layer I like to build my insulation layers up
depending on the season. So, what I tend to do is wear a shirt or a base layer
and then layer up on top of it, so whatever keeps you comfortable whatever
suits you were all slightly different. When it comes to footwear I'm wearing
these boots at the moment, I like a little bit of supporting the ankle, not
too much, that's something that's waterproof, lightweight and that you can
kind of feel the ground if you are going to stand on a stick you could feel it's
gonna break or if there's a stone there you know you might turn your ankle. In
forests and woodlands there's a lot of undulations and lots of holes, you know
where rabbits or badgers have been and having that great feel underneath your
feet not making those mistakes and disturbing the environments around you
pretty critical when you're trying to be stealthy and it gets close you can to
chosen quarry. So, there you have it, that's what I use. For those of you that watch a
lot of our videos, you'll know that I don't like taking unnecessary equipment
and I do like to take equipment I know very well. So, my advice to you is have a
really close look at what you take out try and pare it down to the absolute
minimum. If you want to take a rucksack with your sandwiches or your flask in if
you're going for the whole day then do so and if you're out controlling animals
so you're gonna shoot a lot of pigeons or a lot of rabbits then a game bag
might be something you choose to take with you, but just for a stroll around
the woods here, knocking down some critters and doing some pest control
really you don't need that much. The critical thing is knowing your equipment,
putting the time in on the range and being comfortable and confident with
those shots. The better you are on the range, the more likely it is you're gonna
be able to transfer those skills out into the field.
So let me know what you guys think. What do you use out in the field?
What are your essential bits of equipment? Are there any tips that you
can pass on to help me improve my effectiveness? All ideas are gratefully
received, leave the comments below in the comments box. I hope you enjoyed that
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