brno hornet

[Plastikosmd]

This time a hornet, set trigger. Old weaver k10. Shot it today for first time. What a cool little gun

[Old Jim]

Very nice light rifle. Pretty well made too.

I've owned a couple of Hornets thru the years, Ruger rifles. Not very accurate either !

[Plastikosmd]

I held about 1" at 100. Scope is for hunting not target work, so that wasn't much help. Can't wait to reload for it

[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.

[Plastikosmd]

Wow, great history

Maybe that was what this was in its old life...

[bruce moulds]

yes, a blast from the past.
thank you for the memories.
we found that imr 4227 made the hornet sing.
it was good because as well as being an optimum burning rate, you could produce consistent charges with a powder thrower.
this was pretty handy for volume shooting.
when rabbit numbers were good we used to shoot up to 600 per night.
the rifle of choice was the brno model 2 rimfire, and it was not uncommon to shoot or wear one out.
myra sport store in broken hill used to rebarrel them.
at that time brno was considered in usa to come from the evil empire and was not popular there.
another experiment I tried for foxes was the 17/222 mag Ackley.
the idea was to drive the bullet so fast it would blow up and give good skins.
this was good in theory, but in practice it did not work, destroying skins with regularity.
in the beginning the only 17 bullets were some custom ones from America, 20 gn, 22.5 gn, and 25 gn.
there was also a 28 gn soft point, but it had too much penetration.
then came hornady, and then Remington.
these bullets at the time varied in hardness from lot to lot, and you used the best one you could get for the job.
a couple of years ago I had 5 lb of 4227 left and discovered it had gone off. it went on the lawn as fertilizer.
I still have about 1000 mixed hornady and rem 17 cal bullets
keep safe,
bruce..