There was an ulterior motive to  visit a local garden this week; it is time to make cider and there was a surplus of Bramley cookers and Cox’s sweet apples, just waiting to be picked. Wet weather and a family holiday had meant no visits by me for a month and the lady owner of the cottage garden was becoming anxious, due to the appearance of rabbits on her lawn again.

Arriving in the late afternoon, I unpacked the Magtech 7022, a .22 semi automatic rimfire rifle, which when firing subsonic ammunition, is quieter than my air rifle. At the entrance to the rear of the garden, I stood to one side and scanned through the scope, searching among the flower beds for movement, spotting the rounded brown shape of a rabbit up between the apple trees at the far end. Too far for a shot to hand, I retreated behind the hedge, getting down onto the ground for a prone shot, using my shooting bag to rest the rifle.

At about 50 yards away, the body of the rabbit was hidden behind a slight rise of the lawn, but the head and ears were visible, ducking it’s head to feed. I was confident of a kill at this range, having zeroed in the rifle on a previous shoot. The cross hairs were placed just to the rear of the eye and the trigger gently squeezed. The rabbit disappeared from view. After a five minute wait, nothing else moved and I got up, only to disturb a rabbit feeding just yards from it’s dead comrade, watching it hop into a dense flower bed ten yards away. I stood and waited. The leaves of a shrub moved, when the rabbit decided that it was now safe. I zeroed the scope down to the minimum 3 mag and scanned beneath the shrub, picking out the back end of my quarry and aimed ahead to where the chest, or head would be. Pop! It jumped and dropped. Two in ten minutes. That would do for now. After a quick walk round, it was time to pick some apples, the lady of the house giving me carte blanche and began filling boxes for the next half hour.

I kept my eye open for rabbits further down the garden and as dusk was falling, caught a glimpse of movement on the far lawn, creeping round to see one now busy feeding down by the lodge.

Backtracking round the garden, using the flower borders for cover, I was able to get down on the right hand side of border in the picture, pushing the gun bag and rifle out from cover, then sliding behind the scope for an easy 30 yard headshot, the rabbit slumping forward on impact. A ten minute wait saw no more intruders and I gathered up my latest prize and continued collecting apples.

The owner’s son was pleased with the result, although I never seem to be there, when there are rabbits all over the lawn. He was also happy that the apples would not go to waste, helping me load them into the van , going off to the greenhouse and coming back with a large bag of grapes, these transformed into 4lb of jam the next day.