Airguns 101: Part I

I got up this morning at 4, ran to the airport and jumped on a plane heading to the inaugural Shooting Sports Showcase in Alabama. We boarded and it quickly became apparent that something was wrong. One and a half hours later they deboarded and herded us into a long line for rebooking. Five hours later I’m back home where I started.

The plan was to meet the publisher of Ammoland Shooting Sports News, Fredy Riehl, who is a good buddy of mine, in Atlanta. From there we’d run over to Alabama a day early. There’s a park where you can shoot howitzer cannons and drive tanks. Scratch that item from the agenda.

Oh well, I got to go home and be with Katy one more day. I was going to write my article for the next week on the four-hour flight, so I’ll also get that done while at home. I set down to plan what topic to cover and suddenly it hit me. I’ve never written an airgun article for the ISJ! Wow, how did I let that one slip by me? I’m big-time into airguns. Tested airguns for a lot of the major airgun companies, been on prostaff with one of the major ones, hunted big game with the big Umarex .50 cal. Hammer etc. etc. So I’d like to encourage you to check out some of the modern airguns.

I won’t be able to do airguns justice in one small article so I’m going to do a four-part series to pique your interest. (That is unless some other hot topic pops up in the meantime, like whistle pigs attacking school kids at their bus stop, in which case I’ll have to do my civic duty and write about that).

So with all of the above said, let’s get started on airguns. If you’re like me, I got a BB gun when I was 6 years old, a pellet gun at 9 years old, a shotgun at 10 years old and then a .22 at 12 years old. I think I started deer hunting at 9 to 10 years old. So by the time I reached this level I left my airguns in the dust never to be shot again.

Decades later, I started hearing rumblings about the modern break barrel air rifles. Then my brother-in-law had me shoot his new break barrel air rifle. For the life of me I could not understand why a grown man would digress and go back to airguns.

Finally I thought well, I might as well check them out. I’m always scrambling for new topics. Airguns should be good for one. Little did I know how deep I would end up in them.

Shortly thereafter I was at the Professional Outdoor Media Association Convention in Missouri. At the Media Day at the Range event, I met with Winchester. She showed me the ins and outs of a break barrel and before long I had one in my hot little hands.

But upon shooting it, I was sadly disappointed. I could only get a 1 ½-inch group at 15 yards. I had a buddy on the SWAT team shoot it. He only got a 1 ¼-inch group. That’d never work. With airguns you’re hunting small animals with small kill zones. I called Winchester and they said yea, we expect a 1 ½-inch group at 13 yards.

Why I didn’t give up on airguns right then I’ll never know, but I persevered. Before long I got invited to the 1st GAMO Squirrel Master Classic and tested out a pile of airguns but still wasn’t convinced any of them were accurate.

Then I got put on prostaff with Crosman and obtained an accurate airgun. The whole process took me probably five or six years to make the decision that I wanted to be an airgunner. So you don’t run out and buy an airgun and become disillusioned like I did. I want to write this series on articles so we can speed up your learning curve and so you don’t go through the same frustrations that I did.

Let’s start off with the first item: Which caliber should you buy? At the first SMC event, they gave us .177s to hunt with. The next year they supplied us with .22s. I noticed it took 40 percent fewer shots with a .22 than it did with the .177s to get a squirrel out of the tree. I was sold on .22s.

I was fat, dumb and happy with my .22 for years until I got a Umarex .25-caliber Gauntlet. I’d seen .25 pellets for sale, but why get into them? Then I’d need to have a supply of .177, .22 and .25 pellets.

With the Umarex .25-caliber Gauntlet I noticed as much of an improvement inn efficiencies as there was in a .22 as compared to a .177. There is just as much of an improvement in jumping up from a .22 to a .25.

Moral to the story: Don’t buy a .177. I’d recommend getting a .22 since pellet availability is better than a .25. Heck, you can probably even buy .22 pellets here in Idaho at your wife’s hairdresser shop! (But if you get into hunting small game with airguns, I’d suggest buying the Umarex .25 cal. Gauntlet).

Well, we are officially out of room. Tune in next week for more on airguns.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.

Post Author: By Tom Claycomb

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *