MY NZ HUNTER RIFLE BUILD PART ONE: CALIBRE SELECTION
Beginning with the basics like calibre selection, then progressing through the components like stocks, barrels and scopes then assembly, bedding and ultimately some hunting!
One of the eternal questions for hunters is what calibre do I choose? And when starting from scratch that’s one of the very first questions you need to ask yourself.
To begin with you have to decide what class of rifle you’re after. We break them down in to three general categories, the Bushpig, the Superpig and the long range rifle.
THE BUSHPIG
The Bushpig is a short barreled rifle for, as the name suggests, primarily bush hunting. We’d typically shorten the barrel to between 16 and 18 inches, often retain the factory barrel, and work up loads to achieve an effective range of up to 300 to 400 yards with a permanent suppressor. You can go even shorter than this, but you do start to sacrifice range potential. There are even subsonic options in 30 and 338 cal using the specialist subsonic hunting projectiles from Le High that still provide acceptable terminal performance at subsonic impact velocities. You may have even seen the 18”270 we used with an Aimpoint for pig hunting in Season 6, Greg created some extra short-range loads that would not run the risk of over-penetrating in a bail situation and viola, your Bushpig is even more of an all-rounder!
These rifles are built to be light and perhaps most importantly, short, for bashing around in the tight stuff. You’d usually fit a vari power
