Rifle practice in isolation

With all this self-isolation thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, what rifle practice can I do?

You can keep practising in your garden or indoors down a corridor where safe with an air rifle. This will keep your eye in.

I practice with old spring air rifles to relearn how to hold a rifle correctly and, more importantly, achieve a good trigger pressure and release.

You can use the snap caps made for most cartridges these days and safely practice mounting, aiming and firing the trigger on an empty chamber in your rimfire or centrefire rifle.

It is also a good time to clean your rifles, scopes and leather slings. Strip down as much as you feel confident with and clean off any lurking rust, accumulated debris or unburned powder around bolt faces and trigger units.

While you are at it, check that all the rifle’s screws are tight or torqued up correctly, and the sound moderator is not seized to the end of your barrel. Take the time to learn the trajectory or down-range ballistics of your rifle, so that when you next go shooting you are more prepared to take a shot.

It’s also a good time to reflect on what you need in your shooting collection — kit, guns, clothing, scopes and so on — and have a good clean out.

It can be cathartic to realise what is really important. I have set aside various pieces of kit I seldom use, which hopefully will find a new owner after the crisis. BP

How to spot it and where to find it: You might have to look hard for the wild strawberry, as it tends to nestle amid taller plants and grasses. It likes hedgerows, dry, grassy banks and shady woodland. Look for tiny white five-petalled flowers with golden centres on red stems and glossy leaves with toothed edges and hairy undersides. It flowers from April to July and the berries follow. Interesting facts: While nothing like the huge fruits found in supermarkets, our native wild strawberry is tiny but bursting with intense sweetness. Our forefathers knew the little fruits were good to eat, as archaeological evidence suggests that they have been consumed by humans since the Stone Age. The 19th-century artist William Morris was so charmed by the sight of a thrush swooping to steal a wild strawberry at his summer home, Kelmscott Manor in Gloucestershire, that he immortalised it in his Strawberry Thief pattern. As well as tasty, the tiny fruits are nutritious, as they are rich in iron and potassium. But what we call the fruit is receptacle tissue, and the pips or ‘seeds’ embedded on the outside are the true fruits.

The name ‘strawberry’ is thought to have come from ‘streabariye’, used by a Benedictine monk in 995AD to describe how the plant spreads. NJS

This is an ideal time to clean rifles and assess shooting kit