I noticed that a pair of crows would alight on a particular blue gum tree each morning, along the road that bordered our farm on one side. My rifle was always close at hand and many a crow croaked his last croak from those trees.Ĭrows were also creatures of habit. Our home was surrounded by tall pines, and every so often, usually just as the sun started to warm things up, a crow would perch on the top of one of the tallest pines and announce his presence to the world. This was so frustrating that I once downed one on the wing with the scoped rifle! I developed strategies to outwit them. However, as soon I ventured forth with my Vixen, the crows would take wing and leave in a hurry. If not, they would taunt you as you went about your business, yelling crow insults at you from the very top of one of the many fir or blue gum trees in the vicinity. However, they were also very cunning and quite able to discern whether you had a rifle with you or not. About that time I declared war on the crows.Ĭrows were the only real varmint available to us in any numbers in that part of the world. The scope complemented the rifles trim lines. Saving furiously, I was able to mount a Weaver V4.5 (it was on sale) in a set of brand new Sako mounts on my pride and joy. I couldn’t afford a scope right away so my first few outings were done with the iron sights. Needless to say, as soon as I turned 16, the legal age required to own a rifle, I purchased an identical rifle with 3 boxes of Sako brand ammo at Kings in Durban with most of my life’s savings….about R140 (the SA Rand at the time was worth about a dollar). And when we weren’t shooting birds and game, we were whacking rocks on distant hillsides, just to marvel at the almost instantaneous smack of the bullet on stone. Guinea Fowl fell to that little rifle, sometimes two in a single shot the Christmas (Spurwing) goose was made in Finland doves and pigeons were in mortal danger and more often that not cut in half by the speeding bullets we disbursed in their direction Mynah birds were vaporized with regularity hares ran all the faster as bullets kicked up dust at their heels and the local Duikers and Reedbuck fell to the 60 grain reloads we concocted for the purpose. The dairy and stud farms in the area were our stomping grounds. The two of us were fortunate to be spending our teenage years living in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountain range, in what was then the Province of Natal, Republic of South Africa. The fact that he had a reloading bench equipped with the latest RCBS equipment was the icing on the cake. That rifle belonged to a friend a couple of years my senior, and he instantly became my BEST friend. And I would polish it frequently with brass polish, making it gleam like a jewel. I made a key chain from a fired cartridge with a fresh bullet. The cartridges had a magical quality…I carried one in my pocket and at any opportunity, I would take it out and admire it. To a youngster whose whole rifle experience consisted of punching targets with a Martini 22 LR, the 222 cartridge seemed very large its muzzle blast tremendous and its “reach out and whack something” capability stupendous. Madison Avenue could not have conjured up a more seductive combination of wood, steel, brass and copper.
The first centerfire rifle that I fired was a Sako Vixen chambered for the 222 Remington cartridge. The 222 Remington - Falling in Love Again
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