A few years ago, I had a varmint problem. I will be vague because what I did was technically not legal. Nevertheless, a few years before that I had purchased an inexpensive Crossman bb/pellet rifle. That rifle did the job. The only complaint that I had was a followup shot took ten additional pumps to get the right pressure.

I have used that rifle for the same purpose several times since. However, I am always extremely leary of doing so because if the first shot doesn’t do the job, there is a wounded animal on the loose and I really don’t want that. I also bought some subsonic 22LR and those were very quiet. I have never used those because I haven’t had the opportunity since I purchased them

A word about urban shooting. This needs to be done with extreme caution. It is illegal to discharge an air rifle (and 22LR for that matter) in the city limits. A person needs to be extremely cautious about where that shot is going if you miss. I don’t worry much about BB’s, they can bounce off hard surfaces and tend to be very inaccurate. But, pellets can penetrate fencing, 3/4 plywood and even be fatal.

I have had my eye on a spring piston pellet gun. With one pump, there is more energy than that ten pump combo rifle. Of course it is also four times as expensive. I recently purchased a Crossman Optimus to do this job (on the left).

One thing to note is these rifles need some break in. You will see in my target the progression of the days. The center target was my first day, then I moved to upper right, lower right, upper left and then finally lower left. I only messed with the scope on the center target. Right now, I am shooting until the groups become consistent, which I think they are after 50 shots. Then I will sight the scope in.

I read that older rifles needed more in the range of hundreds to thousands of pellets to become consistent. I have also read that the break in time has gotten much shorter. I am still function firing right now. I have my pellet trap setup at 10 yards in the basement and I fire a few rounds during the day. It is a nice stress reliever.

This rifle is in 0.177” bore diameter There are 0.22” and 0.25” which are technically much better at pest removal. Remember that energy is mass * velocity * velocity. That means a bigger pellet is going to have more energy at the same velocity. The good news is that smaller pellets are easier to deliver faster. And you can see by the equation that velocity has a much bigger effect on energy than mass.

My decision to go to the 0.177 was to share pellets between the two rifles. I don’t like stocking multiple calibers if I don’t need to. The one downside to the rifle is that it is very loud when it fires. The spring mechanism is unexpectedly noisy. Since air rifles are not firearms, there are many models that have integrated suppressors, mine does not have that and the pellets are firing supersonic anyway which significantly reduces the efficacy of such a device.

End Your Programming Routine: If you read the journals of Lewis and Clark, you would know that they used a pre-charged pneumatic air rifle to kill all kinds of game including bear and elk. Those are making a comeback as well but they require a SCUBA tank to fill the reservoir. I wanted something simpler and less dependent on another input. I am rather enjoying my mid-day marksmanship sessions.