Three weeks and yours truly along with my friend Matt Norman and another gent are off to Niihau again. Pig and feral (merino type) sheep culling. Last year we whacked 150 animals in 2 1/2 days of shooting. This year along with the population control I am going to try for a decent tusker. I dont care about body size as long as it has a good set of teeth. This is a tuff choice in a way as it means my overall body count will go down. It will be extra tuff this year as they have had a lot of rain and the vines and undergrowth are really thick according to Geoff Hashimoto. Great place. Hard to describe. Will bring pics on return.

Mike,
be blessed, be safe, and have enough ammo..

i am STILL jealous
jeffe

Jeffe, There is always next year! I am sure we could work something out. I have to call Aleko at Heritage Arms in the morning and see if he has my 2 cases of ammo. The bad news is everything to Hawaii has to be shipped second day air.

Last June Mike and I shot this place together. We enjoyed it enough to book the same place again. Let me try to describe the first sheep shooting scene. This island is 67 square miles, looks more like Namibia than it does Hawaii (it's in the rain shadow of the nearest island). We got up into the hills and Geoff stopped at an overlook of a ruggeed valley. He had us spread out and prepare to shoot. We took shooting positions overlooking the valley. He fired a shot in the air. A few seconds later, small bands of sheep started appearing out of brushy draws 150-200 yards away. Five minutes later we were still shooting.

Lots of fun!

Make sure to post pictures, this sounds really different and exciting!

We just got back from a great hunt/shoot on Niihau again.

Our hosts were great as usual.

The place is totally primitive. You sleep on the beach. Bring in your own water and food. No electricity, no conveniences, no noise.

I shot between 100 and 130 animals in 3 days.
I stopped counting after awhile. Matt and the other Mike each killed around 100 each. I could have increased the body count but spent a day and half crawling up the mountain sides looking for trophy pigs. It was very steep, unstable footing. Lots of loose volcanic rubble everywhere. Lots of mesquite, acacia and that damn lantana that has spread everywhere. Lots of blowdowns. The grass was extremely high this year, between my waist and shoulders. It made the pig shooting a little difficult at times but didnt slow us down much. I took three really good ones. I also took a couple nice rams. I made some very good shots and a few bone head shots as well. Overall Im happy with my shooting. I did take a ram at 500 yards across the valley to the point of the mountain on the other side. Hano wanted to know if I could hit him from there. I said I didn't know but would try. I dont know who was more surprised. The shot dropped him like a ton of bricks. Not bad for a 105grn 243 from an offhand shot.Wish I could shoot like that all the time!

This place is the best shooting school you can do. It isnt a school really but you get lots of practice on snap shooting and offhand shots. Very good practice for Africa. The locals estimated that with all the extra rain this year that there are roughly 10,000 pigs on the island. The locals asked me to head shoot as many sheep as possible for a big party/luau they are going to have. They are very picky about the animals. They won't eat the pigs this time of year at all. They won't eat the sheep if they are shot anywhere other than in the head. Then the sheep have to be fat enough in all the right places. Even I didn't totally understand what their standards were based on.

We did have 2 problems occur that deserve mention. Matt's Steyr in 308 had a total bolt malfunction. That one has me worried as well until we figure out the cause. He had brought a spare mauser in 308, so no harm no foul. The other was an ammo issue. I took 350 rounds and had it shipped over in advance. The RWS stuff performed flawlessly. The speer nitrex shot very well but was too hard. It literally acted like a solid on the smaller pigs. So I had to start trying to headshoot them as well. Not so easy on a running pig. Otherwise, it took two shots to finish them off. I used a total of 200 of the 350 rounds I took but could have used less if I had better bullet performance. I will provide pics soon. I'm just too jet-lagged to mess with it at the moment. Hope Matt and the other Mike will post by then.

Congrats to all of you!! It sounds as though it was a fantastic hunt.

It is nice to have a few minutes to post again after being away for awhile.

Doug

Hello Doug. Did I understand Lew to say you were in Alabama?

Mike,

I was in Georgia during your awards banquet and trust me when I say I would have much rather been in MI. Trapshooting in 105 degrees is not much fun, we had 3 people pass out on us, we really could have used you! I went straight from GA to MO until last night. Glad to be home for a few days.

Doug

Aloha Mike,

Glad to find that you arrived home safely and without incident. I suspect that you still have that silly "after sex" grin having enjoyed the good shooting.

Last year, you and Matt graduated from the shooting school with honors and did even better post graduate work this year.

When Matt determines what happened to the Steyr bolt, I hope that he will share it with the forum since you know that I encountered the same problem.

Geoff

The trigger sear would no longer engage/hold the bolt-firing pin. i.e., it would not "cock". The trigger pull had been set to just under 2.5 pounds. The adjustments were locked with lock-tite and did not back out. The trigger pull has been increased to 3.5 pounds and it works again...for now.

The rifle had been fired ~80 times prior to it developing a problem. I don't know if it was wear on the sear engagement, the heat, the vibrations.... or is there a glitch in the trigger spring configuration?

But a back-up rifle, (a Mark 10 in .308, with a Bell & Carlson stock and a $50 Bushnell scope) worked great. Killed over 75 critters without a hiccup.

Aloha Geoff, Yes I made it back ok but this flight is almost as bad as Africa. What a cattle call. There wasnt an empty seat on any plane I caught. I am somewhat jet lagged but other than that no worse for wear. The package of skulls, jaws, and horns that Leana sent out Monday arrived today. The UPS lady asked my wife what I was getting from Hawaii that was perishable. So, my wife told her. Ellen said the gal got this strange look on her face and said " I dont know why I ask these things." She then looked like she wanted to wash her hands and not touch the box further. LOL! I guess she thought I was getting a care package of goodies to eat from someone. I am glad to hear Matt got the Steyr fixed, but since 2 out of the 3 of us have had a problem I am still concerned. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.



PS I still have that silly grin!

Mahalo