MY BEST PIECE OF KIT

While my summer months are mainly taken up with competitive shooting, my spare time is spent patrolling our shoots, checking on cover crops, pens and waterways for blockages and so on.

i have one piece of kit that i take with me religiously while i’m doing this: an Anschütz .17hmr rifle.

Our job as custodians of the land is as much conservation based as the shooting itself. During the spring, summer and autumn months the vermin that prey on gamebirds, songbirds and waterfowl are at their most active and also feel less vulnerable while thick cover abounds.

With sharp eyesight and a little fieldcraft – you need to observe how the other birds and animals behave in their environment – vehicles become invisible and this is where the .17 comes into its own.

i have never felt more confident with one single item of equipment than i do with this rifle, which allows me to take advantage of every opportunistic moment.

Shooting a rifle requires a completely different skillset to normal shooting. however, this rifle is flat to more than 100 metres on a still day so is like target practice.

My current model looks slightly worn – it’s the third or fourth generation of the same rifle. i have worn out at least three.

They need tender loving care – and oil! Also, i have as good a telescopic sight as i can afford as clarity when taking the shot is key.

i have the short version of the rifle so that when i am around the shoot it sits in the footwell of the passenger seat of my truck and slides up the inside of the passenger seat with the barrel coming level with the seat-belt clasp.

The wing mirror becomes an excellent rest with my only problem recently being our new cocker spaniel, which licks my ear while i am trying to get a line on something.

Backgrounds are key to any rifle shot and due to the speed and flatness of the rifle it is a safe round, probably the safest of all the calibres in my view, as the bullet will break up on a single blade of grass.

Shots on the horizon and up in the air still cannot be tolerated as bullet fallout is subjective but crows and magpies taking young ducks from the edge of a pond, as they were doing today, all pay the price.

late summer and autumn presents an ideal opportunity to clear up all the naïve rabbits – that is, the “this season’s young” rabbits that are now big enough to be of use to the food chain. When encountering a group of rabbits, i try and start nearest the hedge that they may run to and work out across the field. More often than not, once you have shot the first one the other rabbits will not run past their mates.

The one other use for this excellent piece of kit is in February, when the season has finished, sitting on a hedge line where straw bales have been put in for gamebirds, alongside a maize crop, shooting the rats that come out to feed on the mown cover.

i appreciate a .22 does this job as well but with a .17, and its extra range, you do not have to move as much as with a .22 and, therefore, create less disturbance. Q

George Digweed is a 26-time World Champion clay shot and runs the George Digweed Sporting Agency (georgedigweed.com).