05-28-2020, 07:05 AM
Thing with top-bird (toppfågel in swedish) is that normaly capercaillie and black grouse are ground living birds. But during winter and snow covered ground, they sit in the tree tops eating pine.
That makes them easy to spot at long ranges, most never take shots over 200 meters and considering you need to ski (using powered vehicles are illegal in hunting) or snow shoes you really need to have good nerves.
The capercaille is big, but you dont want to hit the breast as thats where all the food is. Often people use FMJ or hard match-bullerts (hpbt). Earlier during the fall you can hunt both male and female but then you need to either walk alot or have a dog.
In sweden we have large traditions of using dogs in hunting, and in this situation we use variations of Finnish spitz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Spitz), they find the birds on the ground and push them into the trees, where you then can shoot them with rifle on relatively short distances - 50-75m often.
Toppfågel hunting is considered the most demanding of all the hunting methods in sweden. Both in regards to hunters condition, and in the equipment - accuracy needs to be at most MOA in conditions down to -30 Cels, with first shot.
You seldom get a 2nd shot, but sometimes you can take 10 shots without them moving
Northern parts of sweden is sparsly populated, unless you are on the coastline (top 1/3rd part of sweden) you can have 10s of km of free range for shooting but you need to be carefull nevertheless.
That makes them easy to spot at long ranges, most never take shots over 200 meters and considering you need to ski (using powered vehicles are illegal in hunting) or snow shoes you really need to have good nerves.
The capercaille is big, but you dont want to hit the breast as thats where all the food is. Often people use FMJ or hard match-bullerts (hpbt). Earlier during the fall you can hunt both male and female but then you need to either walk alot or have a dog.
In sweden we have large traditions of using dogs in hunting, and in this situation we use variations of Finnish spitz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Spitz), they find the birds on the ground and push them into the trees, where you then can shoot them with rifle on relatively short distances - 50-75m often.
Toppfågel hunting is considered the most demanding of all the hunting methods in sweden. Both in regards to hunters condition, and in the equipment - accuracy needs to be at most MOA in conditions down to -30 Cels, with first shot.
You seldom get a 2nd shot, but sometimes you can take 10 shots without them moving
Northern parts of sweden is sparsly populated, unless you are on the coastline (top 1/3rd part of sweden) you can have 10s of km of free range for shooting but you need to be carefull nevertheless.