Month: February 2006

Eric Henderson and Jim Chapman head out with big bore air rifles in search of BIG BOARS I’d wanted to set up a pig hunting trip with Eric Henderson for quite awhile, and earlier attempts had fallen through. So when I found out that business would take me to Dallas, I gave him a call and we planned to hook up for a hunt. After clearing my meetings out of the way, the gear was loaded into my rental car and I drove over to EricÂ’s house. Phoning ahead, Eric said the plan was for Mark Bolson, Eric and I to connect up at his house then head over to the huge Bass Pro Shop out near DFW to eat, shop, and talk airguns. We had a good time getting to know each other; and after hanging out at this hunters dream store we called it a night and headed off to prepare for the (early) morning start. I said my goodbyes to Mark, as his schedule was not going to permit his joining in. I do hope on my next trip down that way heÂ’s able to make the hunt, as in the short time I’d gotten to know him I had the feeling he’d be a great guy to hunt with. I left a wake up call for 4:00 am (that hurts to even say!!!) and was packed up and at EricÂ’s house before 5:00. We loaded up in his new truck (and I have to tell youRead More →

South Texas Night Hunt It was going to be my last hunt of the season, a return to South Texas for a quarry that had foiled me on three hunts to date. This animal is not uncommon, it is not overly intelligent or hard to hunt, many people roll out and bag one early in the first attempt, but for some reason the southwestern deserts little porcinoid javalina continued to elude me. I’d have been surprised and not gotten off a shot, I’ve had equipment failure, and I’ve just plain struck out ….. so this time I was determined. I booked a hunt through Pete Reyes on his property about 80 miles south of San Antonio, with the plan to hunt Javalina with my .308 cnterfire and bring a selection of airguns for coyote, bobcat, raccoons, hogs and whatever small stuff came my way. I would have liked to hunt the javalina with an airgun, but as it is a game animal airguns are expressly forbotten. It is somewhat ironic that I can legally take a 300 lb hog with my .45 airgun, but not a 50 lb peccary. However, Texas is one of the truly hunter friendly states so I won’t complain! I will leave this part of the story by saying, I am still after my javalina and believe that when I finally bag one it will be one of the most expensive trophies on my wall! But the portion of my hunt I want to tell hereRead More →

Jim, Eric, and Derrick travel down to Texas Hill Country for a ram hunt at the Wildlife Ranch, and to tape footage for the Bigbore Airgun Adventure video series. After our last big bore hunting trip in North Texas, Eric Henderson and I had agreed to set up another hunt in the not too distant future. The phone rang a couple weeks later and it was Eric saying that heÂ’d found a new ranch to hunt down in the Texas Hill Country south of Dallas, with several species of exotic ram. It sounded like fun and we set a date to coincide with my next trip to Dallas. Eric told me that there was another hunter that wanted to join us, a sixteen year old named Derrick that post on the yellow forum under the handle of Stealth, and what did I think of him coming along? I said that it was fine by me, so the arrangements were made to hunt as a trio. Eric picked me up at the hotel on Friday morning and we headed over to the huge bass pro shop to pick up my license and do some window shopping before getting on the road. The cost of a five day exotic game license is $45.00, so I paid my dues and was set to go. Our next stop was to swing by DerrickÂ’s house, meet his folks, get his gear loaded up, and depart for our journey south. The ranch we were going toRead More →

This brief article was intended for publication in AI before their recently announced closure. As you may know if you’ve read my earlier articles or book, I travel quite a bit to hunt. This is not as easy as it once was … following are some hints and advice on how to get from point A to point B with minimal angst when travel plans call for air transport. I take my rifles with me quite frequently when traveling. This is of course, pretty easy when taking off on a road trip; throw them into the cargo space and hit the road. The complexity increases though when I’m going to fly to my destination. In the good old days, pre 9/11, I did not bother to declare my airguns when checking my bags and never encountered any problems. But recently the rules have changed; and air arms are now viewed in the same light as traveling with firearms. But before getting on to the topic of checking in at the counter, let’s take a quick look at how I pack the guns in the first place. An observation made in passing is that people can get nervous when they see a guy walking through an airport or hotel lobby carrying a rifle case. You can get by with this in Utah or Colorado during deer and elk season, it’s an altogether different story when you’re walking through the lobby of the Hyatt in San Francisco or Chicago attired in aRead More →

On a recent trip over to South Africa, I had the opportunity to spend the downtime when not big game hunting, wandering the bush and working areas of a huge sheep ranch with a collection of airguns to get in some pest control shooting. The two primary guns used were a BSA Superten in .22, and a Quackenbush Exile in .25. In the BSA a number of pellets were used, including the Predator Polymer Tips, RWS SuperDomes, Beeman Kodiaks, and Crow magnums. In the .25 I used RWS SuperDomes and Field Trophy roundnose and pointed pellets. We performed a lot of bench testing with these pellets before hitting the field, and all were known to be accurate out of the guns being used. Both guns had silencers, which are legal on airguns in South Africa . These were a very effective piece of equipment in the field, allowing multiple shots before spooking other animals in the region. The animals identified as pest that I was asked to remove on sight included a variety of starlings, crows and ravens, a several species of pigeons, hares, springhares, hyrax, and if possible, any jackal I came across. We shot the pigeons around the animal feeders where they would literally fill the sky at times, coming in and eating vast quantities of feed. This was fun shooting,,, sitting beside a big tree and waiting for the doves to land first. We didn’t shoot these, but after a few minutes the pigeons would land, andRead More →