Good Shooting
 

I reckon a group like this would have seen some good marksmen shooting from the machine. I remember Smokin Dan the DPI officer when working in the Cape. I saw him shoot 14 head of cattle once in a line working from the tail, all single shots, heart lung shots. He only had to put a finisher in 2. And then there is that guy Lindsay in Halls Creek, he's a head shot specialist on Donkeys. Of course no one was shooting back for our operations.
And Dick the manager of Moola Bulla in WA, he would land his Cessna 180 anywhere after the muster, jump in the machine and go back shooting any Donkeys we had seen. Best day was about 600.

Well, I would be the opposite of that.

In a flood out west in 1983, I came across a pack of feral pigs in knee-deep water. I was carrying a .38 revolver loaded with wad-cutters (light, blunt, target practice rounds).

I hovered beside the chosen pig, (the biggest one and most likely to be hit) and of course it was running away from me. Cyclic between the knees, put the first round up its @rse to make it turn around, then four or five more wad-cutters put enough holes in it so it filled with water and sank.

Not as efficient as the fella beside me with a Ruger Mini 14. His rounds were going straight through the pigs, so took some side cutters and nipped off the bullet tips. After that, each round blew a pile of guts out the other side and instant kill.

Goat shooting one day i watched a guy get out of a 500 and walk upto a two goats that where huddled up under an old log and let rip with a semi auto shotgun using buckshot!! he was only about 2 feet away from them!! needless to say we made him walk back as he was coverd in s :mad: t!!! if only i had a camera!!:ok:

Yup, it's great sport shooting animals from a helicopter - for no good reason that I can see based on the posts so far.

I say, give some lifer criminals sniper rifles and/or RPGs, set them loose, and see how brave y'all are.

Dave Blevins

Who said anything about sport, or bravery? We're talking about pest control, and being able to hit a specific target from a vibrating, moving platform.

For about 15 years, about 1980 to1995 we had a Brucilosis and Tuberculosis Eradication campaign (BTEC) here in Aus where I think about 190,000 feral cattle were shot from Helicopters. There is also a huge feral donkey problem in north western Australia. I have heard of sought after Government contracts where up to 40,000 donkeys were shot each year. I think that it not so big nowadays.

Why is it that there is always someone commenting on things that they know nothing about ??????????(blave)

Goats used to be a massive problem out West, not now though. Govt. couldn't beat them so they opened the market for the sale of feral goats, getting good prices too.

Good shooting Tex.:ok:

Blade Root,

You're correct - being in the US, I know little about those sort of eradication efforts, but the first few posts said nothing about that context of location and/or the problem at hand - only about shooting living things from a helicopter and how "hard" that is. As you may surmise I am no fan of killing animals for sport, and that's how the opening posts read to me.

I think that if you took some average person off the street that knows nothing of such things and let them read those posts, they'd be horrified too.

I will try harder to keep an open mind now that you have ?enlightened? me. Just keep that bloody thing pointed away from me.

dB.

And for those who would like to try there hand at it...

http://www.adventuresnz.co.nz/hunting.html

A good page with a brief history on commercial helicopter hunting operations in New Zealand:

http://www.geocities.com/nedu537/helihunt/

A good DVD to get hold of is "The Last Great Adventure" which tells the story of commercial deer recovery in NZ with some great footage of the live capture of animals for the US Parks Service.

http://www.videosouth.com/wares.html#

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a3/...adventure2.jpg

....still one of my favorite photo's.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ds/HeliElk.jpg


Edit by Heliport

Picture by: Tony Overman
A staff photojournalist for The Olympian, published in Olympia, Washington State
Vice President National Press Photographers Association

Big Russ
Think I must know you!
Was at Moola Bulla 2 months ago and saw only 2 donkeys the whole time. So somebody's done a good job!
Many years ago I had a shooter use a full auto SKK out of my 300 shooting brumbies. That was brutal. Very quick and effective on the brumbies. Too bad about the spent shells flying into the blades though.......

The photograph above is fantastic... Anyone know the story behind it or any other details?

I agree. Great picture.

It was taken by Tony Overman, a staff photojournalist for The Olympian, published in Olympia, Washington State.

I don't know where or when. It was posted in our 'Rotorheads Around the World' collection some time ago.

Click here for some more amazing pics.

Hmm, looks like a herd of young elk. Far right one looks like it is about to be shot in the ass with a dart (that little white streak about 5 feet away). Probably tranqulizer, elk aren't plentiful enough anywhere in North America (N-registration, US 206) to cull.

Lowlevldevl


I think I must know you too!!

I may have done a stint at MB my self........

The DPI shooters used to run these camps that would go for a couple of weeks. There would usually be 4 or 5 machines on the job. Lots of Barramundi fishing and party time. (sensibly conducted of course). There were usually a few extra shooters to carry in rotation. Some were excellent shots, some not so good. I remember one officer i carried north of Mt. Isa, he was such a crook shot from the machine i ended up putting him on the ground and driving the feral cattle to him, fortunately there were only a few to be destroyed. On the big shooting camps in the early days and depending on the area up to 3000 head in one campout were destroyed. Some of the DPI officers would get sores on their shoulders from the constant firing. I heard one story that the Tennant Creek DPP one year bought more 308 rounds than the Australian army.

Bigruss

I'm thinking we know each other from "way back".

For those unfamiliar with the period of time mentioned by bigruss and just to add my 2 bob's worth about the feral animal culls - the main concern was simply that the top end of Australia had a major problem with animals that had been introduced by European settlement.

After roads were extablished and the advent of motor vehicles, animals such as Camels, donkeys, buffalo, horses were let loose and then started to build big feral populations.

I was involved in a lot of the control shoots thru the eighties and the government was trying to reduce the feral herd size due the fear of Foot and mouth and other such problems coming in thru illegal boat immigrants.

I flew the 12E and 47G 3B1 and just looked up some of my logs and noted an average day consisted of 3 X 3 + hour sorties.

We shot about 25K donkeys per 4 or 5 weeks with the best being 548 in a total sortie flight time of 1.75 hrs.

The good white shooters averaged about 3.5 rounds per animal while an aboriginal shooter I teamed with for a few years averaged 1.5.

It sounds like a turkey shoot - but far from it as the animals were running full tit, often down wind, the nachine was floating in and out of transition, the flight path was usually with the nose offset about 45 degrees (for the shooter to aim forward), usually it was very rough, rocky, sandstone hills strewn with bush. Temp averaged about 35 - 40 C, humidity above 85% after October, always a wind, unbearable glare reflecting back thru the bubble, dust etc.

We slept on the ground, serviced our own machines, refulled out of drums and probably averaged about 150 - 200 hrs a month.

An interesting job! I respect those other Aussie pilots in a big way who were involved as to survive they had to work bloody hard.

Hi TC
We know each other alright. Haven't caught up with you for some years now. I am still at it. I am going away for about a week shortly. I thought you would have been on the Donkey work.
cheers

Donkeys.......
 

Have just got back from using our 44 (and a good old astro at that) shooting donkeys and brumbys out of Gregory National park (North West NT). Main Parks shooter is Pat Karmody...best shot i have ever seen. The man has a 1% miss rate, puts three in each beast to make sure, and it looks like it was only shot with one most of the time.... Was gone for 9 days, shot 7000 donkeys and 3000 brumbys, in 50 hours of flying. Also using a 22 with a second shooter, and brought in a third 22 for one day to help clean up a big mob. Still many a drum of avgas out in that scrub. I look forward to the day when i evenutally get to use a bowser...., and maybe sleep somewhere other than the ground :) Also glad they have a sock on the gun to catch spent shells. Have had a shell down the shirt before...and I'm not that keen to try that one again..... shooter thought the blades were falling off the way we were going....:} Temp was about 37-39 degrees everyday, good strong winds too. why don't they want to run into wind???

Those figures are just amazing, and serve to remind everyone of the extent of the problem we have in Australia with introduced species that reproduce unchecked, with no natural predators, in vast expanses of uninhabited land.

Good on you guys, and pass on my (our) thanks to the shooters as well. I look forward to helping out one day, either shooting or flying.

...don't you love the internet?
I sent an email to the photographer. He wrote straight back and has kindly allowed me to post it.

Thanks for your kind words about my helicopter elk photo.
Here's the background:
The Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife were rounding up a large herd of elk that had overgrown their farmland valley, and transplanting them to a national forest near Mount Rainier.
The helicopter pilot is Jess Hagerman, a former Vietnam combat pilot who later flew rescue missions in the Mount St. Helens volcano eruption in 1980. He apparently has worked a lot with the wildlife agent who is hanging out the doorway, and they have perfected their technique at shooting elk.
I was amazed that a helicopter could do the things these guys were doing...sideways, backwards, almost upside down at times...it was amazing to watch.
When I was editing my photos later I discovered that I had caught the tranquilizer dart flying through the air in several of my shots. That was the icing on the cake...something I never could have anticipated.
I've heard from a helicopter pilot in the United Kingdom that there was talk about my photo being a Photoshop composite...not a real photo. I assure you, it's a real photo.
The picture won 1st Place in the National Press Photographers Association's Best of Photojournalism competition in 2003...as well as a slew of other awards.
It's certainly one of the best photos I have ever taken...and one of my all-time favorites.
By the way, I'm auctioning off a 12" X 20" print of the photo next weekend at a photojournalism workshop in Eugene, Oregon. We'll see how popular the photo is with other photographers...let's hope it's as popular as it is with the helicopter crowd.

Thanks for your interest,

Tony Overman
Vice President
National Press Photographers Association

Thank you!

Regards,
Kopter

Are you talking about Australians now, or are we still on the subject of 4 legged animals?:O :O

H.

Need more than that
 

It would definately take more than just our 44 and an SLR for that problem. Maybe two. :} There are a few places that i could think of that it would benefit....... but enough of that.
Its alright Hemac...we never forget where we come from.....just glad we never have to go back.... :D Sometimes you wonder who got the raw end of the deal......the convicts or you guys......:p
I know where I'd rather be.
And its not there.

:eek: ;)

Why don't we take this thread a bit further for the benefit of any newbie pilots who may want to think about sortie preparation.

Utilising the the empty weight of an R22 that you R familiar with (name the model as well) and using the following parameters:

Pilot = 80 Kg (empty) + helmet + jeans + longsleeve cotton shirt + Gloves + boots = 88Kg

DPI shooter = 90 Kg + headset + jeans + shirt + Boots + 2 x SLR Rifles + 500 Rounds amo = 110Kg

2 x 5 litre water bottles

5 Litres oil in engine

1013Mb

800 AMSL

40oC

85% humidity

Reserve fuel required = 20 mins

How many Litres of Avgas can U carry and can U hover OGE at 20 Ft AGL no wind condition?

At 33 Litres/hr - what is endurance (with reserve)

Then do it again with a 90 Kg pilot to see the criticality of extra weight in an R22 and its relationship to fuel load.

Last - but not least - what should the MR auto Revs be at 50 kts stabilised IAS in the above 2 conditions.

Got U thinking? If so - you will be a safer pilot.

[terminal sad g*t alert]
:ok: tcamiga, good idea to get people thinking.

However, using your figures and given the following:

- weight of 7.62mm x 51mm round = 550 grains, or a tad under 39.64 gms

therefore weight of 500 rounds = 19.82 kgs (does seem a bit heavy - anyone got 500 rounds plus some scales?)

= 0.18 kgs for headset, jeans, boots and 2 of the lightest SLRs ever produced, eh?
[/terminal sad g*t alert]

The DPI guys must have got bigger in the last year or three. Be buggered if any of them were even close to 80kg! More likely 90-100. Hence the reason we now use the 44 for most of it, and most of the time the pilot of the 22 is the skinniest bloke we can find. (If you want good job security, about 65-70kgs is a good weight.... :O ) What you also have to take into the calculations above, albeit not a measurable quantity as such, is that every single machine has a different strength engine...especially some of our older mustering machine. When the engine is near the end of its life, the whole of which of it has been mustering in the heat and the dust, they just don't pull as much. We have 14 R22's, and know the characteristics of each. Its important to be very familiar with each machine when you are spending so much time on the boundary of the envelope. Never get comfortable, or cocky. Cos then you get dead fast. Some of our R22's are over 10,000 hours on the airframe...... and whilst they get rebuilt every couple of years..about 2 and a half on average for 2200 hours..... they still have their little idiosyncrases (sp??) Like wiring harnesses that mean that you need a soldering iron and electrical tape to start and shut down each time..... but it does make you a better pilot. Learn the machine, then learn how to fly. I have no problem with the slave system that i had to go through simply for all the knowledge i now have about the machines which comes in useful when you are stuck out on the flat, 300km from the homestead. Anyway...sorry for drifting off thread..its still early in the day.....:D

i've seen a video that is a few years old,ie. from the great venison days in NZ, where a guy had his left knee jammed against the collective and the cylic trimmed into his leg in a 500D model hovering and holding an AR15,223 rifile and hit 9 out of 10 beer cans on the bank!!! i would have to say that it was bloody impresive to see!!:ok:

7.62 155gr ammo weighs just under 25g per round. I can just get 200 in my hold baggage within the 5kg limit.

Sven

I know a loadmaster who was able to group 200 7.62 rounds into an area of about 30 x 45 cm from a door gun at night on NVG. :confused:

He dropped his ammo box out of the door while trying to reload!!

:O

box of 200 rounds 7.62mm in a box linked for machine gun = 12.5 lbs if memory serves me correctly ( about 20 years ago now )