Tag: Gamo

November 30, 2023 – What I Have Learned About Adult Air Guns

November 30, 2023 /

Maybe you get tired of me talking about this, I don’t know. What I have to say is that I have been on an adventure over the last couple of years and have learned a whole lot of things. With Christmas time coming, it is a good time to think about the different options for that firearms enthusiast in your life. As an adult, I never thought that I would get into air guns. I thought that I had grown up and that air guns were for kids that couldn’t be trusted with real firearms. I have grown to appreciate the role that they can play in a shooters life.

First, I can shoot an air rifle at home every day. It takes me an hour to drive to my range, that is also an hour back home. Then there is the gathering up stuff and the put away plus the clean-up which takes another several hours. What I am saying is that going to the range is a significant investment in time.

Then there is the cost. Pellets range from $5 for 300 to $12 for 100 and all over in between. This is analogous to range versus premium ammunition. If I was shooting 22lr, it would be about $16 per 100 but I couldn’t do that at home and I would have cleanup as well. What I am saying is that consistent practice with air rifles is extremely approachable compared to firearms.

Let us not forget that air guns are not firearms by the definition of the law. A couple of weeks ago I purchased a new air rifle. I walked up to the shelf, picked up the box and went straight to the cash register. Store policy required purchasers to be 21 but the cashier didn’t even make me show my ID. There is no hours long waiting for background checks and hoping that somebody didn’t make some critical clerical error denying me my 2nd amendment rights. There is no fee for me wanting to exercise my rights and get my ‘mother may I’ approved.

As far as I know, there has never been a run on pellets or implements. Air guns don’t seem to be popular amongst the firearms crowd, probably because they thought like I did. One hundred dollars can literally buy months worth of shooting. But running to the store to reload is not a gamble and stores that have gone woke still carry pellets like the Kroger stores, variety stores and even Walmart. Have I convinced you yet?

What is there to know? I am still looking for that genie in the bottle but I am going to share some tips now. I have experience with three brands and that is Daisy, Crosman and Gamo. There are other brands out there that are popular but these three seem to be the most prevalent around these parts. I have experience with four variations of delivery. That would be the single pump, multi-pump, break action spring pump and the break action gas pump.

I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, but I don’t like variable pumps. For a first air gun or a rarely used, it would be OK. The pumping gets old, quick. Pumping 12 times takes a lot of effort and time. Fine for one shot but ten is a real pain in the butt. Their primary advantages are that they are the quietest, cheapest and they can shoot BBs and pellets.

I am not even sure if you can buy the single pump rifles new other than the Red Ryder. My first one was a Daisy 840. I didn’t realize that this was an advantage until I had a multi-pump. The primary disadvantage is they are very limited in power, but they have all of the advantages of the multi-pump.

My recommendation if you were only going to own one air gun, own a break barrel. They are faster to load and more powerful. But beware, this comes at a price. They cost significantly more and can be loud enough to require hearing protection. I fired my newest rifle twice inside and it cause my ears to ring the rest of the day. It also has recoil, which I was surprised when it happened.

I should also mention that all of my experience is with the 0.177 caliber. I have stuck with this particular caliber because of caliber commonality amongst all of my rifles for one. The other reason is that the larger calibers start to have enough energy to rival real firearms making them impractical (and unsafe) to shoot at home. The other common caliber is 0.22. If you were doing to do a lot of small game hunting or daily pest elimination, the 22 is a better choice than 177.

Picking an air rifle larger than 0.25″ makes the easy to obtain pellet more like a unicorn. Your best bet is buy them online because I have never seen them in local stores. Then again, you are probably not going to find a rifle in stores of larger caliber either.

Looking at the two break barrels that I own, one is a Crosman and the other is a Gamo. To date, I think that the advantage of the build goes to Crosman. All parts are metal and they are an American company. Everything except the powerplant on the Gamo is plastic. I feel like someday, there is gong to be a tab break off or something rendering this pretty expensive item useless. Time will tell.

As far as I have recorded, I have not been able to get the published velocity on any rifle pellet combination. What I can say is that the faster the advertised velocity a rifle can achieve, the louder it will be. Since air guns are not firearms, they are not governed by the same laws. Therefore, many have integrated silencers which do not seem to have any impact on the noise that the powerplant generates. I think that they actually make more noise than my 22lr rifles which seems bizarre to me. I can fire those all day and not feel the effect of noise but the break barrel rifles hurt my ears.

The pump rifles can vary in construction. I have several that actually have tubes rather than rifled barrels. This definitely impacts the accuracy with pellets. I have proven that the number of pumps effects accuracy of BBs in rifled barrels but it seems to have no effect with pellets. This is because there is very little velocity change between between six and 12 pumps, only about 10%. So, consider the purpose of what you are going to do.

End Your Programming Routine: My newest rifle is a super magnum. It has a magazine to fire up to 10 shots at an advertised velocity of 1600 fps. It definitely pushes pellets faster than my spring powered rifle but I am not really happy with how loud it is. I wanted a silenced version because I thought my first rifle was too loud. This is why I am looking for that genie in the bottle. I have a recommendation at this point, but I don’t have any personal experience with it so I will withhold any further information. Email me and I will let you know which one I would choose.

October 27, 2022 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

October 27, 2022 /

Things aren’t always as they seem. I have switched pellets from Gamo to Crossman, most recently to use up a partial container. I sighted in my rifle and then I went on with my day. A couple of days later, I was shooting offhand and I saw that my group was terrible. I had been shooting offhand with the Gamo pellets within a 2 inch group, sometimes even within a quarter.

I am shooting offhand on purpose. This is training for hunting. Sure, if you can have a rest, then it is better, but most deer I have shot have been without any sort of rest. So, this is finding the scope, trigger control and breathing.

At first, I thought it was the pellets, so I shot on a rest again and I was getting quarter sized groups. Then I thought it was possibly my eye sight. The group above had one group (of five) with my glasses off and one group of five with my glasses on. They were not great so I decided to try this experiment again with deliberateness.

This time, whether glasses on or glasses off, the group was all together, so I decided to look deeper. I noticed that the scope had slid all the way back on the rings. When I went to loosen the hex screws, they were already loose.

I have heard that airguns are hell on scopes. Just this week, I also tightened up the metal to the stock. Now, the scope was loose. I am happy to say that things are back where they should be. This is the first ever recoil induced failure I have ever observed.

I am one of those fix it once, right kind of people. So far, I have only just re-set and tightened everything up. But without doing something different, this is going to happen again, so maybe I ought to use some blue Loctite.

End Your Programming Routine: As I said at the beginning, things aren’t always what they seem. I still believe that there is some more variability in the Crossman pellets. They do not seat tightly and my groups are more open than what I have been shooting with the Gamo pellets. That being said, my first clue should have been the adhesive pad backing out from under the scope mount. I didn’t know why that was happening, but now it seems like it was the scope moving.