Thread: Greetings!

Hello forum members and all other dignitaries! This seems like a good place to get started again after years of time persuing the 'good life's a mystical city North of here. It suddenly got a lot better when I decided to go rural (or feral?) on the West Coast just before Covid popped in. Life was uneventful for 6 weeks, so I had to keep sane by shooting starlings in the tractor shed with my air rifle, as no weapon were being sold or received easily. That stopped abruptly when I got a flyer that took out the windscreen on the tractor cab.. I could have bought any rifle I wanted for the cost of replacing the bit of glass! After several bouts of self flagellation, I got my mana back and bought a Tikka in stainless, superlight, and in a calibre probably not in keeping with the fine traditions of this forum. To that I added a Leupold4 -12 X50 Firedot scope. Well, that was a few weeks ago now. Since then a mate gave me Toz 16 single shot to butcher the lambs with, as deft knife work isn't the go in NZ I'm told. ( it seemed to work just fine everywhere else in the world where I tried it) But...thankfully, here one can kill anything you like, as long as you don't hurt any feelings along the way, and we all know a good clean shot does't hurt a bit! This Toz 16, forgotten by a nameless hunter some eons back, dwelt in his father's safe and like Snow White, was never recovered. I stripped it down to the knuckles and rust blued my first rifle. After 16 coats of various paint finishes and lacquers, the stock it still sticky after two weeks of hanging over the coal range. I blame that entirely on the turbid weather we are well known for here, not any degree of impatience or hankerings for fatty lamb on my part. It looks beautiful, but like any saucy object of desire, its difficult to let go of! So, it continues to hang just out of reach above the range forever, I fear. I think I will be doing the deftly knife trick for a bit longer, or starve. I had to buy quite a bit of even the smallest commercial quantities of the most noxious products to produce only a few spoonfuls of preparation to initiate the rusting process. So if anyone is looking for some Neider's Formula, I have a few gallons! At the moment the biggest issue I face is finding a suitable place to zero in my scope, as dairy farmers, I am told, can be a bit touchy about what may sound like a small war breaking out on the Kokatahi riverbed. I don't want to spend $200 on an annual membership at the local range, for the sake of 6 rounds to do the job...so any thoughts on that? Now that I have the out of arms length capability covered, I realise that I am surrounded by the thickest bush I have ever seen. There are deer in them thar hills, and I want some of them, so I am starting to see the wisdom in a small arms cache here at HQ. A nice Marlin 30-30 in stainless with a walnut stock, would be perfect I think. I promise not to scope it, and only use it sparingly, and never on sheep! Does anyone have a good used one they are willing to sell to a starving African? It seems sacrilege to scratch up a brand new one, the only one available it seems in NZ, at GC. Well if its true that there is really only one of these available for sale in all the good land of NZ, then they must be 'da bomb', since no one wants to part with theirs! Looking forward to being able to put up some posts of actual hunting sometime soon!