An obvious question for the shooter aiming to improve by shooting air rifles is: “which rifle do I buy?” The answer can be as simple or as complex as you care to make it. The simple answer is: “any rifle is better than no rifle.” In this vein, the $40 Crossman 760 with a plastic stock that weights about a pound and a half (but is amazingly accurate) will fill the bill. If you ever bought a BB gun for your children, you could use that just fine. Sight alignment, trigger pull, and follow through are some of the most important basics of offhand shooting, and these can be practiced with almost any rifle.
On the other hand, it is possible to drop $500-3,000 on a top-shelf air rifle with an adjustable trigger and stock and a scuba tank to fill the air reservoir. If you have Olympic aspirations, this might be the way for you to go.
In between are the oft-advertised “1000 fps” spring-piston air rifles, mostly sold by Gamo. These are advertised as ‘adult’ air rifles and marketed with the speed and power concepts to the fore. In my opinion, these are the worst choice possible, and I will explain why.
Air rifles come can be decomposed into two main families with important sub-families within each. The two main divisions are determined by how the air is compressed to force the pellet out the barrel. Although all air rifles eventually use compressed gas, the first family we’ll call (for lack of better words) pneumatic or pre-charged compress the gas before the trigger is pulled. The other family, the spring-piston guns, compress the gas by releasing a large coil spring when the trigger is pulled.
As a generalization, I would avoid the spring-piston guns unless you are very familiar with them or you purchase an Olympic-quality one (such as the FWB 300). The cocking stroke compresses a huge coil spring, and pulling the trigger releases this spring to drive a piston down a cylinder, compress the gas, and shoot the pellet. These rifles tend to jump around and recoil because of the big spring. Although they can be ‘tuned’ by those in the know, they tend to need a very light touch–people recommend holding the stock with the lightest pressure possible to allow the gun to recoil in it’s own fashion. Obviously, the practicing high-power shooter can’t make this concession. The lower priced ones such as the Gamo Hunter or Whisper will set you back aroun $200. They have a reputation for jumping around like a wounded snake when you pull the trigger, and accuracy is often miserable.
The other family is quite diverse, and my ‘pneumatic’ terminology is for convenience only. Of the various sub-families, most people are familiar with the multi-pump guns such as the Benjamin 392 and the Crossman 760. The more you pump, the more air you compress, and the faster the pellet shoots, up to a certain point. My little Crossman 760 shoots targets just fine at 3 pumps, and at 8 pumps it will kill a squirrel.
Very similar is the sub-family called Single Stroke Pneumatics (SSP). These rifles require exactly one cocking stroke to compress air into a cylinder. Most have a locking mechanism to prevent you from cocking more than once. Invariable these are 10m match rifles with accurate barrels; they will put pellets in the same hole, time after time. The CMP provides a superb discount on the Daisy 853, and that is the rifle I recommend most people start with. All you need is the rifle, a tin of pellets, and a target, and you are good to shoot anywhere in the universe.
Slightly more expensive are the CO2 powered rifles such as the Daisy 888, RWS 850 Magnum, and the QB78. The Daisy 888 is available at a nice discount from the CMP, and it is small enough to be used by young shooters as well as adults (it has stock spacers to increase the length of pull as a shooter gets larger). Similar to its sister rifle, the 853, this is a one-hole shooter. This is also the rifle that most junior ROTC and 4H rifle clubs use in sporter competition. Of course, I recommend the Daisy 888 if you wish to use a CO2-powered rifle.
A bit cheaper than the Daisy are the QB 78 and 79 (also sold by Archer Airguns as its ‘AR’ series and by Compasseco as ‘Tech Force’ rifles) are Chinese ripoffs of the Crossman 160 line, but can be had with very nice thumbhole and target stocks. Most of them shoot very well, but sometimes there are quality problems, so you had best buy from a value-added house such as Archer or from a ‘tuner’ such as Mike Melick (find him on the web).
Finally, far beyond the needs of the highpower shooter are the air-driven guns called Pre-charged Pneumatics or PCP, sometimes referred to as High Pressure Air or HPA. These use a reservoir of air at 2,000 to 3,000 psi. To fill you will need a scuba tank and of course a place to fill that. There are hand pumps available, but a hand pump capable of generating 3,000 psi will require you to pump about 150 times to get 30 shots. You don’t want to do that. A motorized pump to generate that pressure will cost a couple thousand dollars. Right now these are the most expensive of modern air rifles, but the price is coming down. Crossman recently brought out it’s Discovery and Talon is bringing out a relatively cheap ($400) 10m rifle.
To my way of thinking, PCP or HPA offer no improvement for us over CO2 guns. The only knock on CO2 power is that it doesn’t work well at cold temperatures (say, below 50-60 degrees). Since I only shoot these rifles inside, that is not an issue for me.
In shooting a CO2 powered airgun you will increase the fun factor as well as the price of shooting. It is nice not having to cock the rifle for each shot, but you have some more equipment to buy. The most expensive way to shoot is to use the typical 12 gram CO2 cartridges–the ones you’re familiar with from your youth. The QB 78 will take two of these and get about 40 shots. The cartridges cost about 50 cents each and are kind of a pain to replace in the gun. Slightly better is to use the ‘Airsource’ 88 gram cartrdiges which cost about $15 at WalMart and get you maybe 300 shots. The RWS 850 Magnum uses these. Both the QB series and the RWS 850 can be converted to use paintball tanks by purchasing some adapters for $20-50. Paintball tanks can be filled at a paintball store for a dollar or two and will get you 200-300 shots.
The very cheapest way (that requires the greatest up-front investment) is to get your own bulk-fill system including a 20 or 55 pound CO2 tank. In fact, if you purchase the Daisy 888, this is what you must do if you want to avoid running to the paintball store every week. The fill aparatus (a hose with a couple of valves) costs about $50, and a tank with CO2 will cost you anywhere from $55 to $150 depending on how resourceful you are in finding a deal.
As daunting as this expense sounds, once you have made the inital investment and are set up, you will thank yourself for the convenience. I know. I shot for 3 years pumping the Daisy 853 for each shot, and then switched to the Daisy 888 this year. If I had not experienced it myself, I wouldn’t believe that one single pump of the rifle could be so annoying and tiring, but it is. Previously a practice session would be maybe 20-25 shots, pumping for each one, and I’d be done for the day once I’d finished. I was happy, but I felt like I’d done some work. Now I have to stop myself at about 35 shots because I’m losing concentration and the target is all torn up, but I’m still not tired (this is bullseye targets, using the shooting coat). And I’ll shoot a couple times a day on weekends. It is addicting.
So that’s my analysis. Any rifle will do. But the Daisy 853 and 88 as well as the varioius CO2 powered rifles really kick it up a notch by giving you a rifle capable of shooting one hole groups at 10m. With accuracy like that and such cheap ammunition, there is no excuse not to practice.
Questions or comments? Shoot me an email.
Bill Corcoran 5/11/2008 williamcorcoran@missouristate.edu