brno hornet

[bruce moulds]

your rifle causes me to reminisce (spelling?)
back in the 1970s/1980s, I shot foxes for skins.
we used to get $30.00 for a good skin until the greenies started throwing paint on famous people wearing fox fur which killed the deal almost over night.
spotlighting all night and skinning and pegging in the morning was the norm, then sleep.
you used to smell like a fox as it was almost impossible to wash off fox smell.
cartridges needed to kill a fox cleanly, yet do no damage to the pelt.
the hornet was such a round, some people even loading them with 22 mag jacketed bullets.
the 222 rem had to be loaded back to get good skins.
about the only 2 hornet rifles available were the savage and the delightful little brno with its mini mauser action.
as time went by, some started rebarrelling their brno hornets to 17 Ackley hornet, which was perfect for the job .
a friend of mine tried a 14 hornet and it was good too.
scopes needed to be quality to see in the dark.
the 2 best at the time were the 8x56 kahles and the 10x leupold.
both were optically good. the kehles had a bigger objective, but the leupold had a finer reticle.
the kahles moved its reticle to zero and the leupy moved the image.
best shots on a fox depended on where they were facing
the very best was up the nose. the exploding bullet entered the brainpan, smashing the cranium into 20 cent coin sized bits and a perfect skin.
when that was too hard, the base of the neck into the chest was good if the fox was not angled.
if slightly angled but facing, the nearside shoulder would help to stop the bullet exiting and ruining a pelt.
of course facing away there was an obvious target.
damaging the stomach lining and contents made skinning quite unpleasant, and was avoided.
old memories die hard.
keep safe,
bruce.