I finally bought an air rifle. It’s a Beeman Grizzly X2 with both .177 and .22 caliber barrels. (Note: I paid much less than the price in the link.) I chose it because I wanted a BB gun, and also a .22 pellet gun. There’s only one problem though…
It’s not a BB gun. Pellets only. I’d been wondering how it held the BB when you put it in. Now I know. Good thing I didn’t get the large bottle of BBs. Oh, well. I wanted a ‘grown up’ air rifle anyway. I can always get a Crosman 760 like I had decades ago.
Since I was in the mood, I ordered a Crosman 1322. I still have dad’s, taken apart in a baggie somewhere, but it doesn’t hold air.
I went over to my link and read the reviews. I found this amusing:
I didn’t know that’s how you fix leaks. And I think unsafe people should be shot before safe people.
That got a chuckle out of me.
I had seen the Ruger, and it looked good. I have two 10-22s, a Mini-14, a Mk. II, a Single-Six, and a Blackhawk, so I was tempted. But the Beeman comes with two barrels, and I wanted the option. It looks like I made a good choice for my first grown-up air gun. (I keep wanting to call it a ‘pneumo’, after hearing the term on Battlestar Galactica when I was a teen.)
I’ve cocked it once, and it is heavier than I expected. Not like pumping the Crosman 760 or 1322, and certainly not like cocking a Daisy lever-action or Colt .45 look-alike. Pretty loud too, when I fired the empty chamber. I still haven’t shot it, as I haven’t had a chance to get pellets yet. The one place that had pellets, a hardware store, closed some time ago after the owner died. I’ll have to go into Bellingham to get some. And it’s still a bit brisk and wet for plinking. I’ll have to survey the back yard to figure out the best direction to shoot, and come up with an appropriate back-stop.
I wonder how many squirrels it will take for a nice pair of fur gloves? (Just kidding. The SO would have my hide! And I don’t shoot animals, anyway.)
Now I need to find a new magazine and the charger for my HK MP5 airsoft…
I wish I had seen this before. I just bought one last week but admittedly went the easy route and simply bought the best one available at my local Gander Mountain, a GAMMO .177 w/ 4X32 scope and 1250 fps. It was around $170. Gotta admit it’s awfully easy and fun to use. The lightweight aluminum pellets it came with shoot loud but the heavier lead ones I added are much quieter. I’d say there’s about a 2" difference between the two at 40 yards.
BTW, I think these ship with a light layer of grease in the barrel. I ran some #9 through and then fired a couple of Q-Tips out and the accuracy improved greatly.
(I don’t know how accurate the Q-Tips are yet. I’l let you know after I next see Inigo Montoya.)
Maybe they’ve changed the design since my Beeman R1 spring-piston, but I thought that it was a really bad idea to dry-fire a spring-piston air rifle. (Scroll down to this):
What does your owner’s manual say about it, Johnny? Sounds like you’ll have a lot of fun with it when you get some pellets. I still like shooting mine.
The manual may not tell how to swap out the barrels, but it does say not to use oils and cleaners made for firearms on the rifle. It says something about using their own brand (of course) silicone-based lubricants.
It says nothing about using Q-Tips as projectiles, though I doubt they’d fit the .177 barrel anyway.
I’ll check again, but I don’t remember reading anything about it. Of course I won’t make a habit of it. I don’t dry-fire guns that say it won’t harm them. But I wanted to see how it cocked. I don’t think once hurt it any.
After buying several airguns in the last couple years I switched to shooting .22 CB rimfires from a long barreled .22 rifle. As quiet as most air guns with more power and accuracy. I shoot them in my basement sometimes, using bags of kitty litter for a backstop. It is more expensive than pellets but to me much more satisfying. The CBs are not much quieter than a standard long rifle round in a handgun however. The key to quiet is the long barrel.
Can I poke my head in here are remind all you “plinkers” to please be very careful where you plink? The zoo where I work has a non-releasable great horned owl that was accidentally hit in the wing by ricocheting pellet. You might think your little pellets are too small or slow to do any damage, but birds have hollow bones and it takes very little force to do serious damage to them.
