A few of my friends and relatives have been freaked out somewhat in the last week. You see I brought myself a new air rifle.
This year I've got a new workmate who has some farmland (she trains horses as a side business/hobby). Now my wife has been nagging at me to get out and work off my 'personal survival ring'. I use to love hunting bunnies and the new workmate said I can go shooting on her land. I can spend hours going over hilly wild country hunting bunnies whereas a gym has no attraction to me at all.
So I decided to get a new gun (I have a low power kamakuza/chinese air rifle and pistol already).
Now with firearm laws in NZ you need a license to own a firearm. Air guns however do not require a license, you merely need to be 18 years old or over.
Me being somewhat busy with work and stuff I couldn't be arsed getting my firearms license. So I started investigating some of the new higher power air rifles. There were some added benefits in lower noise (cow cockies don't like you spooking their stock), cheap ammo etc.
After much research I liked what I saw in the Gamo CFX. An underlever rifle, very accurate, up to 1000fps (yeah I know this is 'optimal'). Eventually I found one on our local ebay equivilant for
Wow am I impressed. I did some tweaking over the weekend, getting the scope lined up etc. I was shooting targets pinned to some standard 1 inch square solid wood garden stakes. To my suprise the rifle was penetrating these stakes fully (as well as the 1 inch fencing... luckily the neighbours weren't home). An air rifle? Penetrating 1 inch of sold wood?
Anyhoo, I started telling friends, relies, workmates about my new toy... many of them are shocked that no license is required, especially given the power AND that there are more powerful (1600fps rifles available) that need no license yet if I wanted to buy a plane old .22 with ~1000fps muzzle velocity I'd need a license. Ironic isn't it
Bunnies here I come
(happy hunting ground is here :
http://maps.google.co.nz/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=-41.082473,175.006982&spn=0.002996,0.004812&z=18 )
