After a winter of storms and frosts, I took the Magtech 7002 semi auto .22 to check out the warren this week. My last visit in November was after an attempt to fill in the burrows and flatten the land with a heavy tractor, the deep burrows making the land dangerous for grazing animals.

Passing through the gate I could see movement in the distance. It was rabbits chasing around well out of range of the Magtech and I kicked myself for leaving the CZ452 HMR in the gun cabinet. The CZ is a heavyweight compared with the Magtech, which is the ideal rifle for walking round, but with no cover, the rabbits were making themselves scarce once I came into view. The name of the game today was to reconnoitre the warren for new burrows and I did not have to walk far to discover the first of several.

This one even had very recent footprints exiting and entering the new burrow. Twenty yards further on there was another. The rabbits had been busy.

From this vantage point, I could see rabbits moving from the high ground of the warren, to the tree lined ditch further down the field. Once again well in range of the CZ HMR, but the Magtech was set on a 30 yard zero for shooting around the farm buildings.

I decided to set up a target to reset the Magtech zero to 50 yards, which would give me a better chance on the warren today. I walked to the far end of the field, which is bordered by a hedge line and set up a paper target fifty yards away, walking back to the rifle which I rested on my shooting bag for prone shots. A group of three covered a 25 mm diameter 50 mm below the bull, demonstrating the drop over the extra 20 yards of the 42 grain Winchester .22 subsonic bullet. I adjusted the scope turret, until a five shot group was placed around the bull, good enough to cleanly dispatch a rabbit at that range.

While lying there reloading the ten shot magazine, a rabbit popped up twenty yards to the left of the target and I quickly fitted the ten shot magazine back into the rifle, flicking the lever back to shift a bullet into the breech. The rabbit  trotted a few yards, then sat up. The cross hairs were on and I aimed for the upper chest, squeezing the trigger and feeling the recoil, as the rabbit backflipped and lay still. Got it! A clean dispatch at sixty yards.

Rabbit casserole this week.

No more came out and I walked back to the centre of the warren, with an oak tree behind me to break up my outline on the horizon. With the Magtech on my shooting tripod, I could cover much of the warren and waited for something to show.

Apart from a couple of rabbits along the far tree line, nothing stirred  and soon the cold north wind persuaded me to call it a day. Next time I will bring the HMR on a warmer afternoon. Even rabbits don’t like the cold.