I heard stories about the hills moving with rabbits in Central Otago, New Zealand and being only 500 miles away I thought I’d take the 17HMR with me and have a look.
The stories were not quite true, and I did have to put some work into it, but got 33 rabbbits in six hours of hunting. The rifle has a good quality moderator/silencer but it still made a pretty big bang and any rabbits within a few hundred yards fled. I had a bi-pod on the gun so I took my time and most shots were head shots at about 100 yards. I supect a better stragery might have been a .22LR with silencer and sub-sonic ammo.
I had a bit of fun at the end of the day on a hill overlooking a field that had been freshly plowed and cultivated to be as smooth as a billiard table. Through the binoculars I could see rabbits about 300 yards away so I set the Nikon scope to 20x and got the bipod setup to be positioned well and steady. At that distance and being on a hill overlooking the field I aimed about 36 inches high and a foot to the left for breeze. I fired about 10 shots at various rabbits and the closest missed by about 2 inches. LOL It sure gave them a fright and theyt took off at full speed once they figured out what was going on.
I enjoyed the shoot and spent the rest of the week driving around Cromwell, Queenstown, Wanaka, Lake Tekapo and other sun scorched (it’s summer here now) alpine places.
