target rifle vs sniper rifle

[TC]

penpusher, I will try to get more information on the MOD's proposal.
As of now SPG and NSG uses Heckler and Koch PSG1 rifles.
No infantry unit carries sniper rifles as standard procedure during normal operation. I know this for sure as I have spent some time on the LOC. However I have seen Dragunovs seized from militants being kept with a unit or two. But then I have also seen seized AKRs being used during search and destroy missions in Kashmir....

IOF already makes three versions of the Insas. While one of them is used as a squad automatic weapon. ( It has a tripod, a long barrel and, I am not too sure bout this, a high capacit y magazine.) The other model has a piccatiny type rail for mounting scopes or red dot sights. I wont be surprised if they might try to turn this into somting of a sniper...
Will check.

Cheers
TC

[TC]

Thank you grumpy for clearing the cloud over the origin of a word.

Thank you Mehul.....

Your valuable inputs really enlighten ignorant people like me.

Happy sniping !!!

TC

[Ranjeet Singh]

Did someone else also see the History channel yesterday (28th) at 8:30 PM IST. They were showing some documentary on spiners and "the fear of long distance shots" by ememies.

In fact I started watching it from 8:45, they were some showing SWAT Police snipers shooting to disarm in fact they showed the shot as well and a general discussion on Police, and Military snipers.

Hope they repeat it sometime.

Thanks
Ranjeet

[mehulkamdar]

TC,

Glad to know that you enjoyed the discussion. As far as ignorance is concerned, every single one of us is ignorant about vastly more than we know. The problem comes when some - and this is not a reference to anyone in particular - try to fob myth or a lack of knowledge off as expertise.

Ranjeet,

if you could read German try googling for Lutz Moeller and his discussion site. A very small portion of it is in English but the man has been designing some very interesting streamlined bullets which have fared very well at the annual sniper contest in Birobidzahn, Russia. Lutz's site has some very interesting discussions about sniping among the hundreds of daily discussions on virtualy every subject related to rifles, ballistics and related subjects.

Cheers!

[TC]

Thanks Mehul. Just opened the page on a nokia E61. Just a test. Working fine. So long. TC

[Sujay]

As far as ignorance is concerned, every single one of us is ignorant about vastly more than we know.

That prompts me ask the question troubling me !

Why do people shoot birds with shotguns and not 0.22 LR or .17 HMR or 0.22 WMR etc ?? Is it as simple as over penetration ?

John,

Did you mean large calibre rifles when you say " nothing will left of the bird if shot with a rifle " ? And also , dosen't multiple slugs of shotguns also damage the bird extensively ?

[Ranjeet Singh]

Ranjeet,
if you could read German try googling for Lutz Moeller and his discussion site. A very small portion of it is in English but the man has been designing some very interesting streamlined bullets which have fared very well at the annual sniper contest in Birobidzahn, Russia. Lutz's site has some very interesting discussions about sniping among the hundreds of daily discussions on virtualy every subject related to rifles, ballistics and related subjects.
Cheers!

Thanks for the link, Loads of articles there..would make very informative reading, and will imporve my Deutsch as well

Regards
Ranjeet

[TC]

Sujay, I am no expert on shotguns. I personally take more interest in handguns and all other types of civilian and military small arms.
But from personal experience I can say it is impossible (unless you are Clint Eastwood in a spagetti western) to hit a small flying target with a single projectile. For that you need a volley of small projectiles.

Yes it is possible to hit any bird with a .22 or any of the calibers yoiu have mentioned.... for that matter even with an air rifle pellet within killing range.. but only if they are perched.

I have personally shot birds with both shotguns and rifles. You can make the difference...There is not much damage if a big bird is hit with a standard velocity or subsonic .22 LR. But its not so with smaller birds like snipes where we all started. Thats why in my very first post on this topic I said I thought the so called snipers of the British era used .22s. Because Aquilas and Floberts were not available those days.

So long

TC

[Sujay]

Tanmay,

In plain words you are saying that it is easy that is why shotguns are used. Multiple projectiles....some are sure to hit . If so, using single projectiles definitely makes it more challenging and sporting too.

The last shooting of birds I have seen is about 25 years ago in a small town called Dehri On Sone in Bihar. A gun dealer who was our primary source of picnics always shot them with .22 LR. Flying birds shot from the banks of Indrapuri Dam and collected by village boys from the water for about 25 paise per bird. We although were always asked to use the airguns in field which alyways produced only a loud smack and the birds flying away. If he could do it regularly , why can't others ?

[mehulkamdar]

TC/Ranjeet,

Glad you liked the LM link. The man is one of the world's top ballisticians and I only wish there were some way of converting his huge site and the articles there into English. I can manage with German though my Deutsch is not as fluent as my English or Feench are and I keep going there from time to time when I have some free time to check up on the latest there.

Sujay,

You have the answer yourself and TC's response is a further strengthening of your own point. Overpenetration is a danger as is meat destruction. The late Col Jeff Cooper used to demonstrate shooting clay pigeons with a 376 Steyr rifle to show off while other shooters would be using their favourite Berettas or Parazzis but that would not be a safe practice in a public hunting area. I am sure that with practice it could be done as you point out. Whether it would be worth it considering how little meat there is on a bird makes the choice final.

TC,

The Floberts were available in the 1890s and down. There were alsso garden shotguns in bores as skmall as 32, 36 and even 40 and some of the miniature bores are made for garden vermin destruction in Italy these days as well. I had some old 22 cal shot with me in India which was made long before Independence and I gave it away to friends who had 22 rifles many years ago before I left India the first time. These days it would be illegal to do that even to a license holder, I guess...

[Grumpy]

In the UK the convention is that birds are shot on the wing - to shoot a sitting bird is considered unsporting. To shoot a bird in the air you need a shotgun. Ignore all the Annie Oakley type crap about shooting flying targets with a rifle......and, it has to be said, a lot of those trick shots were achieved using shot cartridges anyway.
Military calibres going back to the mid-19th Century and earlier were at least .55" diameter......imagine shooting a Snipe - a bird that is little larger than a Thrush - with a ball that size ! There would be little left other than a cloud of feathers.
Prior to the introduction of the .22 rf, Rook rifles were used to shoot Rooks ( a type of Crow ) and Crows generally whilst they were perched in trees. These were low velocity rounds of ,250" - .300" calibre. As Crows were ( are ) regarded as vermin the conventions on wing shooting didn`t apply. .22 lr rifles, because of the ammunition being far cheaper to purchase and generally more accurate took over from the Rook rifles very rapidly.
There is no reason that birds can`t be shot with a small calibre rifle such as a .22 lr. The .17 HMR isn`t a good choice for birds as, being very thin skinned, the bullets do a lot of meat damage. The 17 gr V-Max bullet in particular makes a real mess - even on Rabbits. The 20 gr XTP is much better. In Scandinavia Grouse and similar sized birds are shot with rifles.

[TC]

Mehul, thanks again. As far as availability of Floberts in Indian gun shops arund the 1890s I checked with a couple of shops (more than 100 years old) and went through their catalogs. Seemed the old hunters, mostly Sahibs, preffered the small/odd bore shotguns for small birds. From the sales promos it seemed the 410 it seemed was very popular in the 40s. There used to be a 40 bore shotgun in my family. I heard it was used by one of my great grand uncles to collect moths and butterflies for scientiric study.

Cheers

TC

[TC]

Grumpy, I agree with Abhijeet on one point. The forum should have a status higher than Guru. Thanks for the quick reply. I know the Rook rifle. A retired station master from my district had one. He had let me shot it once in his backyard. The rifle had a octagonal barrel, single shot break open with exposed hammer. Cant remember the make. It was very light thats all I can recollect.

Sujay, the gun dealer you are referring to must be a magician. Are you sure he used .22 LR on flying birds ?

Here is a story of a STRICTLY 22s hunt that a group of friends had organised. We are all die hard fans of the rimfire and were mainly going for rabbits. But the cunning fellows kept out of sight.
Its here that for the first time in my life I tried to shoot flying ducks with .22s. I was carrying a Browing semi atomatic loaded with Peters hi velocity. As the birds came to a distance of 80/100 metres or so I opened fire, keeping the flightpath within my sights. They were flying towards me against the wind !! I emptied the magazine (eight shots) in about five seconds. I could manage to down just one out of 10 /11 birds. AND I THINK THAT WAS PURE LUCK !!!!

The same day I shot a wild dove seated on a tree (Sorry Grumpy there were seven and we had vowed to eat what we hunt) with a single shot BSA from a distance of 100 metres. The sun was alomost down so it was not an easy shot. BUT THIS WAS NOT LUCK.

Hope I can rest my case on this point.

Cheers

TC

[Sujay]

Sujay, the gun dealer you are referring to must be a magician. Are you sure he used .22 LR on flying birds ?

Strange you mention the word "magician" because he indeed was a magician also ! Black magic with assorted young girls in the tantrik method etc. which ultimately resulted in our parents restricting our meetings. I left my home town at the age of 24 with the last news that his store was sealed for misappropriation of ammo.

He did use the .22 LR and mostly a kneeling position. I have witnessed more feats by him similar to the shooting of flying birds.In that age, I considered them just a matter of practice and to be true, his patient movements and methods sometimes irritated me ! ( why isn't he pressing the trigger ?)

I am pleased that one of my long standing doubts has been answered in this thread

[Grumpy]

There are a few conventions in British shooting - another one is not to turn up at a driven Pheasant shoot with a semi-auto shotgun.......not if you want to be invited back anyway !
Funnily enough, I too have taken a flying duck with a .22lr - a one-off shot - and nobody was more surprised than I when the bird tumbled down ! I`ve also tried it with Woodpigeons - no chance !
My first shotgun was a .22 Webley garden gun when I was in my early teens - absolutely useless thing. Probably had an effective range of no more than 10 yards. `Garden gun` is an apt description.........providing you have a very small garden. Wouldn`t be useful on anything more than a very small bird as the Number 11 or 12 `dust` shot loses energy at a phenomenal rate.....not that it had much to start with !
Sujay, you think that one is bound to hit a bird with a shotgun ? Try it sometime. If shotguns guaranteed a 100 % `kill` rate there would be no sport in clay shooting.
TC, not only were Flobert type cartridges not available in the era you were talking about, .22 rfs weren`t either. The .22 Short was introduced around 1857, .22 Long c.1871 and the .22 Long Rifle c.1884 however .22 rfs did not become popular until the advent of smokeless powders - small bores and black powder are not compatible as fouling is appallingly bad and immediate - the reason that even today BP rifles are .50 cal and up.
As far as general usage is concerned .22 rf rifles became popular post 1900.