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Next weekend four of us are driving from Germany to Austria for 5 days in the Carnic Alps chasing summer gams!

3 nights in a mountain hut and 2 in the village Gasthaus.

A great excuse to buy a .243 and a pair of Lederhosen

Report to (hopefully) follow ....

Charlie

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Sounds great can't wait to see the pics and hear the report!

Yes please post the results. I always wanted to do one of those hunts.

Yep, a 243 is pretty worthless here.

Legal for roe, fox, badger, racoon, racoon dog and that is it.

Marmots are protected in Germany, and the 243 is not legal for any other cloven hoofed animal beyond roe deer.

The good thing is that 243s are pretty cheap.

https://www.vdb-waffen.de/de/w...echse.html?s=3&o=neu

Dittman's has this. Kind of a pretty kiplauf, I think 6mmx70 would be legal in Austria for chamois even if it wasn't here.

Very difficult to get decent 6x70 ammo. 243 is very close to the ideal chamois round! I will use my 270 Wby this year!

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30-06 for the wives and .243 for the guys. Great excuse to buy a super old MS for the hunt. Thought .300 WM but decided to get the .243. First gams hunt. Looking forward !!

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And on .243s I don't know a German hunter who has not got on in his / her gun safe. As you said roe and small stuff which is 50 % of hunting in Germany. I wouldn't say worthless / useless at all - in fact some very pricy .243s out there !

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quote:

Originally posted by Charlie64:
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And on .243s I don't know a German hunter who has not got on in his / her gun safe. As you said roe and small stuff which is 50 % of hunting in Germany. I wouldn't say worthless / useless at all - in fact some very pricy .243s out there !

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Most of the pechters in the reviers here in the RP don't want you to hunt roe with a non-legal swine caliber.

Were it legal I think the triple two would have be about the best for the Roe. They're not that much bigger than a good sized hare and most are taken carefully from a hochsitz or while sitting in the forest or around the edge of forest and field. Driven game a little different but the 222 would be more than adequate here too.
The 222 is very easy to shoot accurately and relatively quiet.

quote:

Originally posted by Charlie64:
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Next weekend four of us are driving from Germany to Austria for 5 days in the Carnic Alps chasing summer gams!

3 nights in a mountain hut and 2 in the village Gasthaus.

A great excuse to buy a .243 and a pair of Lederhosen

Report to (hopefully) follow ....

Charlie

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Might not be a summer one in the end - bring some warm stuff - it is snowing above 2000m atm...have a good one !

quote:

Originally posted by eagle27:
Were it legal I think the triple two would have be about the best for the Roe. They're not that much bigger than a good sized hare and most are taken carefully from a hochsitz or while sitting in the forest or around the edge of forest and field. Driven game a little different but the 222 would be more than adequate here too.
The 222 is very easy to shoot accurately and relatively quiet.

In Germany it must have 6.5mm diameter and 2000 joules at 100 meters to be legal for chamois, red deer, sika deer, wildboar, fallow deer and mouflon. Reh are legal with 100 joules at 100 meters in any caliber.

Austrians have much more lax laws on chamois.

Charlie,

Looks like rain this weekend. Waidmannsheil for a good hunt.

I'll be doing a rain dance up here and hopefully Thor will send that nasty stuff north to Rheinland Pfalz and keep you dry in the Alps.

Big wonderful Wyoming
I am afraid you were misunderstood.
Here (less than 4 miles in straight line) from the Austrian border it is snowing.
Please try again

I will keep rain dancing through out the week. Hopefully the thunder gods will move the wetness back up north.

This sounds like a fun hunt. If you buy the lederhosen will you learn one of the Bavarian dances where you hop around and slap your thighs? Film will of course be required.

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May have to be long lederhosen !!!

Bill no promises on the ankle slapping but we are off to the Oktoberfest so anything can happen !!!!!

May be a winter gams after all !!

Charlie

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Eagle27 - either you have very stunted roe or giant hare around Nelson !!! Last roe I shot was 19 kgs !! Bit bigger than a hare where I come from. But agree on the .222. Would be a good roe caliber if legal and in the right spot..... Am sure a few roe have dropped to it over the years in Europe.

Cheers

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quote:

Originally posted by Charlie64:
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Eagle27 - either you have very stunted roe or giant hare around Nelson !!! Last roe I shot was 19 kgs !! Bit bigger than a hare where I come from. But agree on the .222. Would be a good roe caliber if legal and in the right spot..... Am sure a few roe have dropped to it over the years in Europe.

Cheers

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Just a little poetic license . We don't have Roe deer in NZ but have hunted them in Germany. Our hares here can be pretty big, you have to be careful when hunting you don't get trampled

I can't recall what cartridges I used on some of the Roe but there was definitely a 6.5x54MS on one buck, a 6.5x55 on a doe and a 7x65R on another doe and yearling then not sure what I was using for a second buck I took. These cartridges all seem overkill for such a relatively small animal that goes down easy compared to the Red deer I have shot most of.

Often too foxes and hares are taken when out hunting Roe so the 222 seems a much more suitable cartridge in these circumstances. Many use the 9.3x62 for Roe, that's a bit like a 7mm Magnum for hare

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That's the thing about hight seat hunting you never know what will come so you either a/ stick to your plan take a roe caliber and hunt roe and small game with say a .243 or b/ go big 9 x and cover everything or c/ take the Drilling and cover everything in 3 different calibers.

Typically when in Germany I'll use a 30-06 or 8x57 double and Anja a 7x65R. Works well and we don't send opportunity foxes to the taxidermy

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quote:

Originally posted by Charlie64:
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That's the thing about hight seat hunting you never know what will come so you either a/ stick to your plan take a roe caliber and hunt roe and small game with say a .243 or b/ go big 9 x and cover everything or c/ take the Drilling and cover everything in 3 different calibers.

Typically when in Germany I'll use a 30-06 or 8x57 double and Anja a 7x65R. Works well and we don't send opportunity foxes to the taxidermy

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Reminds me of one time in the Swabian Alb hunting with a friend and some of his colleagues one of whom apparently wasn’t such a great shot. We headed off to separate areas for an early morning shot on Roe deer, can’t recall the season but don’t think it was for bucks, anyway heard a few shots not far from where I was set up and thought it strange as they were varied in sound and intensity. Got back to the lodge and the not so great shot hunter had a fox. Apparently the fox had come trotting along and when close to the hochsitz our friend bowled it with buckshot charge from his Bockdrilling. On climbing down and approaching the animal it sat up and growled so he beat a hasty retreat back up into the hochsitz and proceeded to give it a couple of rounds from the 22 Hornet barrel. This didn’t achieve much so he gave it another charge of buckshot after which it managed to crawl some distance away from the hochsitz requiring a bullet from the 7x65R barrel to put paid to the tenacious animal. Needless to say the fox was not in great shape skin wise.

There were a few other hunters back at the lodge having the usual after hunt tipple and discussing the proceedings and I made the comment that on hearing all the shots I thought our friend must have been dealing with a charging buffalo. There was great laughter but my friend told me later that although my joke was accepted by all in good nature as I was foreigner, a German would never ever have said such a thing of another hunter, whoops

It was no wonder my German friend and another who I also hunted with while in Germany emigrated to NZ as they just loved the hunting, freedom and lack of structured class system we have here. The hapless hunter did actually come out to NZ too and hunted with me for red deer and chamois but his prowess, or lack of it, hadn’t changed.

quote:

Originally posted by Charlie64:
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That's the thing about hight seat hunting you never know what will come so you either a/ stick to your plan take a roe caliber and hunt roe and small game with say a .243 or b/ go big 9 x and cover everything or c/ take the Drilling and cover everything in 3 different calibers.

Typically when in Germany I'll use a 30-06 or 8x57 double and Anja a 7x65R. Works well and we don't send opportunity foxes to the taxidermy

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Heym has some good prices (because I don't pay VAT) on the bergstutzen rifles. A couple of my fellow Americans have bought 30-06/223 combos.

I would probably pick 9,3x74R and a 6.5x57 if they would let me. I just built one a minute ago and ended up with E2540 my price with a mount.

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What was supposed to be a summer gams hunt has become a winter gams hunt ..... heavy snow above 1.200 m !!!! So far 4 gams and 3 mermel! Having a great time!

Full details to follow.

Charlie

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Report in progress. Testing pic sizes



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