Air Guns and Rimfire

[PerpetualStudent]

I'll probably ask this over in the rimfire subforum later, obviously the airgunners are a bit biased but so are the rimfire gurus.

What are your thoughts on the rimfire and airgun spheres? Most of the books I've read mention buying a .22lr because it's cheap, accurate and has minimal recoil, which lets you learn how to shoot without developing flinch and other bad habits. Then you can also take small game. The prepper circles are also fond of the rimfire because a shot to the head is deadly even for large animals and you can carry a lot of it. Mostly though, the arguments are that you can learn to shoot and take small game. Then with the difficulty of sourcing .22 the last several years, I've been wondering more and more if airguns are the new rimfire. My personal experience is that airgun taught me follow through in a way rimfire didn't (even though I preferred shooting rimfire).


So I was wondering what this subforum's take on it was. Are air rifles replacing .22 rimfires? Or are they always going to be different tools for different jobs?

[Jr.]

I enjoy shooting air rifles in the back yard. Great for learning trigger control, as the ones I have are cheap. Helped me work on flinch and breathing techniques. However 22lr is my first choice for all small game and teaching my kiddos with the offering of the cricket, rascal, and such.

My favorite thing about the pellet rifle is I can use it to control critters in my back yard without causing a fuss. And yard bunnies taste pretty good.

[gpidaho]

I sold all but one of my 22rf and bought several air rifles and pistols. a couple of the air rifles are working out well for plinking and SMALL vermin but the less expensive air guns are a waste of money for anything beyond being a child's toy. Gp

[NavyVet1959]

If you're willing to experiment a bit, there's some alternative .22 rimfire loadings using the nailgun power shot loads. Even when I could not find .22LR locally, I was able to find these power loads. And if you are willing to buy a really large quantity, you can buy them from overseas.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...re-alternative

For things like birds, it's a simple matter of loading one of the power loads in a break-action or bolt-action .22LR, ramming a wad down the barrel, pouring a few pellets in, and then another wad over the top of the pellets. There might be an issue with the rifling causing a donut pattern in the shot, but there are some older smoothbore .22LRs out there. I think they were called "garden guns".

[JimB..]

I like my .22 airgun, but it was far more expensive than an equally capable .22lr rifle.

[NavyVet1959]

The main advantage of air guns is that although they are not truly silent, the sound that they do make is not normally associated by other people with guns, so even if you are in a city / town where firing an air gun is technically illegal, people don't recognize the sound, so you can usually get away with it.

I have a loading for a .357 mag case that I use for close-in pests. I use it in a longer barrel .357 mag revolver. It consists of a grain or two of some fast powder, a 1-1.5" square wad of paper towel rammed down over the powder, and then fill the rest of the cartridge with spent primers. I top it off with a bit of wax pressed into the top to hold everything together. It will kill rodents at 10 ft or so, but it's not going to have good ballistics at any sort of range.

[jh45gun]

22lr is far from cheap anymore. Why so many are using air guns again. 22 lr is still near the 45 dollar a brick range while a 500 tin of Crosman hollow point 22 pellets are 6 to 8 dollars a tin. A higher powered 22 pellet gun will kill larger animals with brain shots if you had to rely on it to do so at closer ranges. I just watched a video of a guy shooting one of those oval 5 pound hams at 100 yards with a 25 cal air rifle. Fps was around 850. Those pellets completely went through the ham standing upright. I have no doubt at closer ranges a 22 cal pellet rifle would penetrate a deer skull easy. In fact people have done it with deer heads off a dead deer. Videos online of killing smaller pigs with a 22 break barrel gun and they drop right there. I completely have switched to air guns I have one 22 LR rifle left. I sold a rifle and pistol to fund my 223/556 guns I can reload for.

[GhostHawk]

IMO the lines are being blurred.


I have had a Sheridan Bluestreak almost the exact same amount of time I have had my Ruger 10/22. Both are good, both filled needs for decades. The Ruger is retired, I have .22lr ammo but I save it for my Ruger Mk III pistols. I have a variety of centerfire rifle and pistol rounds that are easy to reload, in the same cost range as .22lr, and have a lot more bang for the buck.

I did recently buy a Hatsan 135 QE Vortex. Turkish walnut, this is rightfully a .22 magnum air rifle. 9 lbs, full sized, and it will shoot Crossman Premier HollowPoints weighing 14.3 grains to 1000 feet per second with energy in the 25 to 30 foot pounds range.

This blurs the line between air rifle and .22lr powderburner.

And this is not the top end, their are new entry level precharged pnuematic air rifles that can deliever that kind of speed and power by using compressed air as the power source.

The Hatsan takes 40, 50 lbs of force to cock, it takes technique and muscle.
I like it because there is no cord, no airline, no connection to anything else, nothing else to pay for. In a SHTF scenario that hatsan can put meat in the pot as long as I have pellets. And I have 5,000 pellets, and a buckshot mold in .22 that makes .22 round balls that is more accurate in the hatsan than the pellets.

That means as long as I have a little lead I can eat.

And that is why they pried me lose from 300 of my dollars. Hatsan is currently wearing a Bushnell Banner found at the pawn shop, and talked down to 15$. On a good day at 20 feet 5 shots is one ragged hole you can cover with a dime, easily. Bad days are still minute of squirrel and bunny head, just no bragging allowed.

To me, this is an exciting time to be an airgunner. Anyone interested I strongly encourage you to google search "Gateway to airguns", good community, loads of information, lots of helpful people.

Much like this place.

Ohh and as an FYI, even the little Crossman 1322 pump up pellet pistol is more than strong enough and accurate enough to kill a squirrel. Buy the combo kit and get the shoulder stock, safety glasses, ammo pouch and ammo for 75$ on Amazon or Pyramyd air.

Dang cheap way to get into airguns, and fun. And it too will put 5 into one ragged hole at 20 feet with some practice.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I agree that an air rifle has great advantages for practice and for small game. The spring-powered ones teach a more consistent hold than a rimfire, and they can give ample practice for anyone who only gets occasional trips out of an urban environment. st entirely l

But their killing power is very limited, restricting them to ranges close enough to permit very precise bullet placement on game. It seems to be a new unwritten law that it is OK to claim anything if gets you trending or even viral on Youtube. I know of at least two cases of people living happily - well, relatively - with high-power rifle bullets, fired from long range, still lodged against the back of the skull. Sir Desmond Morton, Churchills chief intelligence adviser, returned to military service with a bullet actually lodged in his heart, and kept it for more than two thirds of his eighty year lifespan. Even a brain shot may occasionally bring an animal down as if poleaxed, but other times fail for lack of a wider crushing and devitalising power than an old lady with a knitting needle can inflict. For reasonsextensively documented by military surgeons and American medical examiners,there are thresholds of velocity and energy beneath which wounding effect declines disproportionately.

A couple of decades ago the British government, probably wanting excuses to tell some tiresome campaigners to clear off, asked for submissions on a proposed reduction in the energy threshold for air rifles to be controlled by licencing. In a spirit of scientific enquiry I did some cadaver testing, but for lack of a better cadaver had to use a supermarket leg of pork. A 12 ft./lb. .177 air rifle produced a penetration of1½in., and as the leading authorities would predict, this was reduced to about¾in. by a plastic membrane which I estimate to resemble the surprisingelasticity of skin. Tissues beyond the diameter of the pellet were entirelyundamaged, in striking contrast to anything pierced by even a FMJ high velocity bullet. I also calculated that when two people stand four feet apart, about a five thousandth of the area into which a random negligent discharge may fall is composed of eyeball.

[JimB..]

I guess that I need to look at some of the newer air guns. I have an Air Force talon that is plenty powerful, but also very heavy and without suppression very loud. The noise is more likely to be mistaken for a pneumatic nailer than a bullet.

[PerpetualStudent]

The PCP and hand pump is very attractive to me as far a trainer/small game role, and that you can use it in your basement is a huge plus. A thousand rounds spaced out 20 at a time, on a weekly basis beats the carp out of going through a brick in 4 sessions at the range. And with range fees (even low ones) I feel like I have to stay and shoot more to get the value out of it.

I think the big thing that's holding me back from saying to new shooters "I know it sounds lame but get a PCP instead of a .22" is the lack of semi-auto in handguns. The new benjamin wildfire may be the long gun answer to that but handguns you're still limited to springers or the multi and single stroke pneumatics for single shot but if you want repeats, you're firmly in CO2 territory. I saw one product sold in Europe that let you use High Pressure Air (paintball level) in a container the size of the small CO2 canisters. That really intrigued me. I think if they manage to crack semi-auto in a handgun that's normal sized...I'll sell my .22 and and transfer to airguns.

It'd be a higher cost initially but to SWAG it, say 150 for the semi-auto long gun, 200 for the hand pump, 500 for the precision gun, 300 for the hypothetical pistol, and another 300 for a hunting gun gives for a total of $1450 . You're not that much heavier than a rimfire setup with a semi-auto (300), a precision gun (400), and a pistol (400) gives a total of $1100. If you figure 50 dollars for 500 rounds of ammo, You'd break even in a little over 3500 rounds.

[MT Chambers]

I have a AATX200 in .177, a Daystate Huntsman in .22, A HK97 in .22, an AA510 in .25, and a Daystate Wolverine in .303. I enjoy them all and actually prefer to shoot them over my .22 rfs. They are quiet, super accurate, less expensive to shoot, all but the Wolverine have much less killing power then a .22rf. Accuracy comes and goes with my .22 rf. and is very dependent on the ammo used.

[GhostHawk]

Ballisticsinscotland sir, one thing you need to remember. Air rifles over here are not licensed, nor limited to 12 foot pounds sir.

That Hatsan is more than sufficient to take game like Jack Rabbits, Coons, opposum, squirrel etc out to 50 yards and beyond. Most likely would ruin a coyotes day also if he was silly enough to get that close to you.

I will give the UK credit though, because of their limits they really focused on being able to put every shot exactly where it needed to be for a quick human kill. That accuracy crossed over here some while back. And with more power behind it is quite effective, if not quite as far as a .22lr would be.

But then over 50 yards I'm likely going to reach for a centerfire solution unless I feel like I have a very good chance of sneaking closer.

14 grain projectile leaving muzzle at 1000 fps with 25-30 foot pounds of energy is I suspect more than enough to kill a person quite dead with a well placed shot.

With big bore airguns in 25, 30, 357, 45 and bigger, and much larger bullets/pellets, the energy just goes up. Deer would be no problem to such as those at all. But they would probably have to be in the 75 yards and closer range.

Best of all they are quiet, easy to set up a safe backyard or basement range. So one can keep his shooting eye in shape year round.

[MT Chambers]

I don't even watch British clips on airguns, it is not relevant here! Like in most of Europe our airguns are not dumbed down to 12 fpe. Throttling down the wolverine to that level would prolly mean only a couple hundred feet per second. Airguns will continue to get more popular, maybe to the detriment of the .22rf.

[jh45gun]

The British have been at the air gun game for years because of necessity not choice. They seem to get a bit haughty when it comes to air guns and suppressed air guns. They keep forgetting our air guns are more powerful. It is kinda ironic the remarks above about killing power since in a way the Brits have proved even a low powered air gun kills small game nicely.

[Walkingwolf]

I have and use both, but if one can only afford one, I would go with the 22lr. Quiet loads for 22lr are not much louder than a air rifle, and still get the job done. For around the yard I keep my 22lr loaded with quiet loads.

[ebner glocken]

I loved my .22s for many years and never gave airguns a second look until post Sandy Hook. We're all aware of ammo availability after that, this made me give airguns a second look. I bought a cheap umerux surge springer and put around 7000 pellets through it and seen they could kill a starling at 70 yards on a calm day if I did my part. Thirty to fifty yards wasn't an issue on a calm day, once again if I did my part.

Then I decided to get a bit more involved. I purchased a 550 cid SCBA tank, a shoebox compressor, and a hatsan bt65 in .22. The beginning investment seemed a bit steep but it was a new world of what airguns are capable of. With a lot of reading and a little tuning it's no longer a replacement for a .22 LR but a hobby of it's own. This rifle can shoot groups at fifty yards that can easily be covered with a dime and quite deadly on any starling I can dope. I lost track of how many birds have been dropped or how many rounds fired but feel confident the investment was worth it.

Fast forward to a year ago I bought one of these and now I can't remember the last time I got out my 41 S&W. You can shoot all day for little money or noise. Conclusion for me is that the .22 LR is not replaced but it's niche has been greatly reduced.

http://www.pyramydair.com/s/m/Crosma...ir_Pistol/2469

Ebner

[Black Beard]

Airguns are better for cheap target shooting and close range small animal control. .22LR is better than everything else.

[jh45gun]

A powerful 22 cal pellet gun will do it cheaper and quieter than a 22LR. I have found Pellet guns to be more accurate than the average 22 also. Mostly because of being subsonic. As far as a 22 with CCI Quiets go you better have a stock pile then. When ammo was scarce it was harder to find then hens teeth. Pellets on the other hand were available in abundance.

[Multigunner]

Next molds I buy will be for .22 and .177 pellets. Gang molds preferably.
If my guns will handle lead round ball accurately I'll stock up on sacks of these as well.

The early pump up rifles used round ball almost exclusively, and for decades only RB could be used with repeating air or CO2 guns. Some used a disc of felt glued to the ball to act as a gas seal, something easily done at home.

It would be nice if some one were to design a updated version of the combination air or cartridge .22 like the ancient Quakenbush No.5 which used a removable breech block to convert from a spring piston air rifle to a .22 rimfire rifle. If done well it could be best of both worlds.