There’s a place in Italy called Maniago which is to the Italians what Sheffield is to Britain. It has a long and proud history of making cutlery and is home to Fox Cutlery, a company founded in 1977.

If you have to control vermin in low light conditions, then Jim Royce has the scope for you

Not only am I loving the hunting medium hereafter known as static lamping, I’m already involved in a crusade to bring it to the masses. Well, sort of. I had a read-through of what I’ve written so far on the subject of static lamping, and it seemed to me that I’d over-enthused a tad about the Idleback chair, and specifically the essential blessings it brings to the method.

My new favourite handgun sport of Iron Plate Action Shooting (IPAS) is shot with CO2 powered replicas of fullbore pistols from around the world. These pistols fire .177 lead pellets which splatter when they hit the plates, ensuring no danger of rebounding ammunition hurting anybody. Some people have asked if we could accept airsoft guns that fire 6mm plastic balls and the IPAS organisation is having discussions to see if there is a workable solution that would welcome and include all the folks who own such pistols. This aroused my interest in trying a 6mm pistol just at the time Highland Outdoors showed me some new guns from KWC, a Taiwanese giant that makes guns for some very famous brands. Highland’s sister company in South Africa has been selling these for some time and reported just how amazingly reliable they are. They sell around 4000 a month, and seldom, if ever, see one returned. This gave the UK operation all the encouragement they needed to add them to their catalogue. They selected two models, the 2022 and the 24/7, both of which can be supplied in 4.5mm steel BB or 6mm plastic ball firing options. The steel BB version is set at 2.5 Joules and the 6mm at 1.6 Joules, meaning plenty of power for paper punching or plinking.

I’d always wondered why people - especially young men – bought a car like a VW Golf and then festooned it with aftermarket kit. I met one such chap called Wayne or Kevin or something like that (not that I’m stereotyping), when I worked for a car magazine. He’d bought a new Renault Clio and spent another £35,000 ‘pimping it up’. I was aghast at the expense. Who in their right mind would spend that sort of money on an ordinary car when they could have bought a Porsche? Well, I’ve done something similar with my Air Arms S410. My justification being that in these straitened times it’s cheaper to invest in the rifle I already own and enhance its performance, rather than buy a new PCP.

Sometimes, I think life is made more complicated than it needs to be. I’m all for clever things that do a better job, but sometimes I really need to keep things as simple as possible and just get on with the job.

We’re back with our latest competition: PIPAS! This is an acronym for Paper Instead of Plate Action Shooting.

Steve Harper’s a hero of mine on several levels, and, truth be told, I’m a tiny bit envious of him. Make that hugely envious, and for good reason. You see, Steve is one of those priceless, gifted people who somehow combines the opposing talents of slightly mad scientist, and laid-back, seriously cool guy. It’s a fine state if you can do it, and no one I know does it better than Steve Harper.

This month sees Team Wild tackling an age-old pest and probably our most sought-after quarry, the rabbit; the Latin for which, is ‘Oryctolagus cuniculus’ so Wildy informs me, and I’m pretty sure he must have Googled that one! We’ve been carrying out pest control in its various forms for many years including pigeon, crow, fox and deer, to name but a few. However, the rabbit stays on our quarry list all year round.

Bushnell tends to be a pretty steady kind of company, sticking with well proven models rather than jumping from one new idea to another, so I was a little surprised to receive the first of their new and shiny E Series models. This new range is in fact the old 3200 and 4200 models combined with some tasty upgrades in terms of coatings and internal gas. I guess I should have known that a leopard doesn’t change its spots. ‘Evolution not revolution’ is more Bushnell’s style.