Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So last night I put a picture on Facebook of something I thought looked pretty cool.
And from the feedback I've got so far it seems that you guys think it's pretty cool too.
But rather than keep you in suspense and make you wait 'till I've taken it out, I thought
I'd give you a bit of a sneak preview. And here it is.
This is the Haenel RS8 Sniper Rifle. So I call my friends at Viking Arms who supply
all of the rifles and shotguns for Team Wild, and said look I'm going hunting in the Welsh
Mountains with Owen Beardsmore of Cervus for Welsh Billy Goat.
I need a long range hunting rifle, they said, No problem, we'll get something straight over
to you. Now I was expecting a Ruger M77 and 300 Win
Mag or maybe a new RX Helix and 30-06. I didn't expect to see this. Now this doesn't
look like your typical average sporting rifle. Firstly it's enormous. It's black, it's striking,
it's got cool accessory rails all over it and at 5.6 kilos it's a bit too heavy for
me to lug up the mountains. But fortunately I'm a big strapping lad so
I'm gonna give it a quick go. Now the coolest thing about this, is that
it's absolutely covered in cool features. The sort of thing you need really a) to look
cool and b) to shoot accurately at long distances. So why don't we have a quick look at some
of the things that make this such as special rifle.
Starting at the business end, that is a flash suppressor. And it's also screw cut to hold
a moderator. And it's attached to a 24 inch, cold hammer forged fully floating steel match
quality barrel. Now on the RS8 both the receiver and the barrel are full steel and screwed
together so there's no loss of accuracy through heat transfer and expansion of metals.
Now if you look underneath there you can see just how fully floating it is.
Now this has a three sided accessory rail, pictinny accessory rail, on the bottom there
you can see a Harris Bi-pod. Not got anything to put really either side, but I might find
myself a torch and a laser just because they look cool.
Now as you can see the sling is attached there through flush cups and I'm gonna need all
of that webbing there to carry this beast up the mountain with me. So you can see, there's
a glass fibre for-end. Moving through into an alloy chassis, to which the steel receiver
is bolted. As you can see on the top of the receiver
there is a pictinny rail machined in and that bolt there you can see on the inside has a
6 lug fastening. Now the bolt handle itself has a very short 60 degree rotation. And you
can see behind it there's a three position safety catch. Moving down you can see there's
a ten shot magazine, and a fully adjustable match quality trigger.
Now that glass fibre pistol grip is replaceable and is a little bit small for my hands so
I'm gonna get something a little bigger. And into the rear, stock which is an alloy
chasis which a fully adjustable, tool free adjustable, cheek piece. And into the shoulder
stop, the butt at the back there which has a hand grip and a rear butt spike there to
give you three points of contact on the ground. As you can see the butt pad is adjustable
without any tools. Now on top of this I had a number of different
choices as to what scope I was going to use. And I've opted for this, the awesome, March
8-80x56 tactical scope. Now there's no real use for this in the hunting world, because
the minimum magnification is 8, but I've used it, because it's cool and I've got one. I
was going to put my 4-16x50 Diavari FL but I thought if you have something that looks
this beautiful you need to have something equally unreasonable on top of it. So there
you have it, the RS8 Sniper Rifle with March 8-80x56 ready to do some damage in Wales.
So there you have it, probably the most spectacular looking but completely impractical hunting
rifle set up on the planet. But it does look sexy.
So the next stage is to take it over to my good pal Andrew Venables, and we'll take the
steel plate challenge. Now he'll get me shooting more consistently over 3, 4 and 500 yards with
this. I'll probably also speak to my good pal Mike
Norris and see if he can develop a special load, specifically designed for this barrel.
That means when I am shooting consistently the groups will be nice and tight.
Now I'm out with Owen Beardsmore of Cervus UK in around a week to 10 days time up in Wales so fingers
crossed everything will be ready by then. In the meantime if you want more information
about the RS8 Sniper Rifle visit vikingarms.co.uk and for more information about March Scopes,
visit marchscopes.co.uk but the hunt will be screened on an upcoming episode of Team
Wild TV so keep 'em posted. And also, wish me luck.