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Thread: What game can you take with a air rifle ?

  1. #1
    Boolit Master melloairman's Avatar
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    What game can you take with a air rifle ?


  2. #2
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    I watched that video. I don't hunt anymore, health issues. But I never reveled in killing. I killed animals to have food and I love being in the outdoors. But that thrill of killing to me is well, sick.
    As far as air rifles. I never knew that they were driving bolts with them. Reminds me of the old trick of shooting arrows out of a 410 shotgun.

  3. #3
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    I've hunted squirrels quite a bit with air rifles over the years, mainly when I was a kid and we had a large back yard full of mature pecan trees. They'll do it if you're up to it.

    I find myself getting more reluctant to pull a trigger on anything as I get older too. Been trying to close the deal on my second deer this year with the crossbow and have had opportunities to fill a tag but don't want to just do it. I got bored just before sundown the other night and tried rattling, had at least three, and possibly four little bucks come in and mill around in the thick stuff around my stand looking for whatever it was. Gotta admit, it was fun watching the little guys being so clueless.

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    I'm 100% for hunting to put meat on the table as well as the elimination of rodents, poisonous snakes, and similar. The question is whether the shooter, or me, is dysfunctional -- as, I consider the video showing a murder of one of the remaining beautiful African wild animals, significantly impacted just by habitat reduction and climate change. That the animal did not immediately drop exacerbates my thoughts. Hunt it, cleanly kill it, dress it, and eat it. Or, take a photo or two. Just my two cents...
    geo

  5. #5
    Boolit Master melloairman's Avatar
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    It never surprises me that humans can watch a video and each have such different opinions . For clarity sake . At the end of the video he states that none of the animal went to waist . In all of his videos he states this fact . And his heart was driven by adrenaline of fear of charge from the animal not the thrill of kill IMO from watching several of his videos . He raises white tail deer as well as being a hunter . And from the info I have seen the cape buffalo is not a endangered animal . In his broad cast the animals meat in the US is consumed by his family and given to charity organizations as well . And it is a well known fact that this rifle arrow combo is more powerful that a cross bow . As far as a instant kill goes . That happens about well never unless it is a head shot that takes out the brain . Then the nerves system goes crazy . Marvin

  6. #6
    Boolit Master
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    Wow. That's just hard to fathom. I don't know squat about archery so I have no idea what the weight of that bolt would be, but it was just peaking through the offside having traversed the full length. Talk about getting shot placement right. Incredibly impressive. Thanks for the link.

    In Africa, where I have spent a lot of time, albeit not a lot of it hunting, hunting is the leading source of conservation. Corruption and disregard for the law is endemic, but in jurisdictions where there is a well run PH concession system, there is also good conservation. Where there is no concession hunting or it is poorly run, there is scarcity, extensive "bush meat" market harvesting, and virtually no conservation. Opposition to big game hunting in Africa is equivalent supporting depredation. The Cape Buffalo species is alive and well, not endangered - in large part due to strong conservation and good policing funded by big game hunting.

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    Boolit Master 35 shooter's Avatar
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    Yep, i was amazed at what i found available on the market now when i started researching airguns about a year ago.
    Big bores available that will humanely bring down even big game while firing pellets, bullets, round balls and even arrows...all from the same gun.
    Pretty amazing to me.

    I didn't like the prices of some of them till i considered how much and how often i like to shoot.
    Such a rifle could actually pay for itself eventually, since there are no primers, cases, or powder to buy, and the air to fire it is free!!
    All you really need is a bullet or roundball mould and a source for lead. Oh, and a hand pump for shooting on the cheap lol.

    I've been seriously considering one for a while now. Of course as far as hunting with one(where legal), you would need to stay well within the range limitations of the rifle, much like archery or muzzleloading.

  8. #8
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    I keep looking at .357 cal air guns.
    The fascination is difficult to fathom, I have several molds that cast bullets that look identical to the dollar apiece bullets shown on air gun web sites.

    But I have a .357 magnum rifle, it is possible to use those light bullets and a light enough charge of powder to equal the performance of the air guns.

    Also, if more power is needed than say a 100 grain bullet at 800FPS. Then the 35 whelen sitting in my safe is enough for thumping any beasts around here.

    Dang! that bulldog sure is cool.
    To lazy to chase arrows.
    Clodhopper

  9. #9
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    The performance of this weapon doesn't surprise me. Another is made by Crosman:

    http://www.crosman.com/airbow

    I can't see why it wouldn't be more effective on non-dangerous medium game than a bow or crossbow, which are pretty well accepted nowadays. Perhaps even a modern pistol for anybody but a good shot and extremely cool hand. What matters in hunting isn't the best an individual will sometimes place a shot, but the worst, and it is surely the weapon, of all those, in which performance will deteriorate least under stress.

    One thought is that buffalo ribs are a lot more substantial than deer's, and the kind of broadhead that has a rounded point might stand a better chance of glancing off and entering the chest cavity.

    Cape buffalo? Well, maybe... The one we saw had a bit of time on his feet, which could have been payback time. That is likely with the heart and lung shot with any rifle too. Jeff Cooper said the only sure means of fast immobilisation with a Cape buffalo is breaking the shoulder. There are excellent deer rifles, even rifles successfully used on elephant, that you wouldn't want to rely on for that. At best it comes back to the same problem as in sporting use of lesser air rifles for the smallest game. You have to make sure of a better opportunity, for humane hunting and in this case for survival, than you need with the right cartridge rifle. Buffalo don't generally gore or toss you more than once. But they jump up and down on you until you're different.

    With this weapon used sensibly though, the ethics of shooting it come down to the ethics of hunting at all. The East Cape isn't the back of beyond any more, and there are other uses for the land, if it didn't provide some sort of return. Buffalo would be pretty far back in the queue competing for jobs in petting zoos. What stopped there being la buffalo behind every bush in the old days? Starvation, lions (strictly controlled in that area now) and the rinderpest, which the FAO declared eradicated in 2011. I don't doubt that that buffalo will be eaten by people who will be glad of it, and even poisonous snakes didn't turn into varmints until human preferences and needs came along.

    Still, the best day's hunting I ever had was when a friend brought me to land belonging to a friend of his, whom I didn't know. We have one kind of deer season or another all year, and this was when bucks were permitted but does weren't. Just as the last of the light was going, a deer got up and moved off through bushes in the disused and boggy railway cutting where I was.

    I hadn't seen or heard him passing the wire fence at the top of the cutting. So I stood off-balance for ten minutes in a mud puddle. At last he came back down the slope, and stood for a good half minute about twenty feet from me, plain in the last red rays from the west. But a spray of leaves obscured where his antlers would be, and I couldn't be sure he was male! Even on my friend's land I'd have risked it, for he'd have understood honest error and good cooking, and we have no such thing as game wardens. But I couldn't risk putting him on the spot with an old friend.

    As soon as the deer was out of sight, he made a conspicuously male bark, and I said "You lost, though."

  10. #10
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    Some of the earliest air rifles were .75 caliber and intended for hunting game as large as European wild boar.

    There is a video of a .50 air rifle shattering a concrete block. Impressive shocking power but I still would not consider it a big game rifle, at least when using slugs.
    The Air Bow has some advantages over slug firing air guns. You aren't likely to get as much tissue destruction and severed blood vessels from a slug carrying the same energy level as you will from the wicked razor edged hunting arrow broad heads with blades far wider than the bore diameter. Penetration seems to be far greater as well.

    They banned (more or less) the .22 Steel air gun darts because these were known to cause fatal injuries to humans, penetrating skulls mainly. The air gun darts of today are light weight .177 aluminum and plastic that aren't nearly as dangerous.

    Modern break barrel guns can put a .177 pellet half way through a man's brain if fired at the right spot and angle. I've seen X-rays of suicides that were accomplished with air guns. At least one multiple murder was done using an air pistol, model not identified.
    A survivor of Ravensbruck wrote of a NAZI Non Com executing thousands of prisoners with a 4mm target pistol, a type still used in Europe , much less powerful than even a .22 Short RF, about equal to a low end air rifle in power, but apparently powerful enough for brain shots at close range.

    I'd like to convert a traditional style muzzle loader rifle built from a kit to a PCP rifle with Ferguson type fast thread breach.
    I'm thinking more along the lines of a nominal .36 with micro groove bore. Hollow base .357 bullets would probably work rather well up to White Tail sized game.

  11. #11
    Boolit Master
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    With my very accurate 100+ fp .303 Wolverine I would use brain shots on any game larger than a Prairie dog, larger game may die from a body shot but it wouldn't be painless and is avoidable.

  12. #12
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    There was a unit of Austrian sharpshooters in the Napoleonic Wars armed with airguns, and Napoleon ordered their execution if captured, although I don't know if it actually happened. Soldiers might need to surrender themselves sometime. Some of the early air-rifles, even where there was no question of dodging execution or prosecution, were close copies of muzzle-loading firearms until a spherical air vessel was screwed in place. I don't believe a conversion would be that difficult, except if a conveniently sized pressure vessel had to be made. It ought to be hydrostatically tested to well over working pressure, as aqualung cylinders, including those used for airguns, have to be.

    http://www.waterfrontscuba.com/acata...Servicing.html

    Those 4mm. cartridges, in a rifle, often had a full-length firing-pin and a loading gate close to the muzzle, as they had little or no propellant beyond the extremely momentary impulse of the centrefire primer, and the bullet was likely to come to rest through bore friction. There are records of soldiers living a more or less normal life with a high power rifle bullet lodged in the brain at long range. So I imagine a lot of those Ravensbruck prisoners died of interment or (you might not want to think too much about this) cremation. The record for individual executions is probably held by General Vasily Blokhin, with .25ACP Walthers - 7000 Poles in a month, as well as many back home in the Stalinist purges.

    The brain shot on game is a risky one, and demands greater precision than the heart and lungs. It would be easy to send an animal off with a shattered jaw, and incapable of feeding.

  13. #13
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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle


    The Girandoni air rifle was an airgun designed by Tyrolian inventor Bartholomäus Girandoni circa 1779. The weapon was also known as the Windbüchse ("wind rifle" in German). One of the rifle's more famous associations is its use on the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore and map the western part of North America in the early 1800s.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ballistics in Scotland View Post
    Those 4mm. cartridges, in a rifle, often had a full-length firing-pin and a loading gate close to the muzzle, as they had little or no propellant beyond the extremely momentary impulse of the centrefire primer, and the bullet was likely to come to rest through bore friction. There are records of soldiers living a more or less normal life with a high power rifle bullet lodged in the brain at long range. So I imagine a lot of those Ravensbruck prisoners died of interment or (you might not want to think too much about this) cremation.
    Good guess. As I remember it the process was described as the prisoners being forced to walk through a sort of maze and halted every so often till the lead prisoner found himself alone facing a drop off and a fire pit. The executioner then stepped from an alcove fired one shot into the back of the head and the prisoner dropped without a sound into the pit.
    No count of the number of prisoners killed in this way was kept but the German non com told the author he had used up 30,000 rounds of 4mm cartridges.

    Bullet friction in a long barrel could be a problem but the original 4mm Cort cartridge made since 1842 has a velocity of 280 meters per second in a proper length barrel.

    Interestingly the nominal 4mm guns actually have .177 bores. I would hazard a guess that the 4mm Flobert guns preceded the .177 air rifles and early .177 air rifle barrels probably came from the same manufacturers.

    A air gun conversion of a percussion rifle kit could use a number of smaller sized compressed gas tanks. I can remember breathing gas mixture tanks made for extreme depth scuba diving that were mounted onto regular sized tanks filled with O2, allowing the diver to adjust the gas mixture. There are small sized compact cutting torch tanks and other small high pressure tanks in use.

    I haven't run across a modern equivalent to the ball shaped tank but there may be something of the sort in use somewhere.

    These look promising
    http://www.aeroconsystems.com/plumbi...ss_spheres.htm
    But they are only rated for 400-700 PSI though proofed at 1500 PSI.
    Last edited by Multigunner; 11-18-2017 at 02:18 PM.

  15. #15
    Boolit Master
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    I know the aqualung system, as well as Gagnan and Cousteau's demand valve, benefited from a great increase in the pressure capacity of cylinders available in the 1940s, to 200 atmospheres. 19th century diving apparatus, around the Jules Verne era, had a maximum pressure of about 30 atmospheres, and I can't see why more would have been available to airguns. That is about 440psi,and the smaller of those stainless spheres is said to be good for a service pressure of 700.

    If you were making your own sphere, it would have to be extremely good welding to make two hemispheres safe, unless the steel was very thick, and filled a deep V-joint. But there is no reason why you shouldn't make it pumpkin-shaped, and quite a bit thicker at the waistline. With a wide flat or rebate joint I think brazing or high temperature silver solder ought to be fine, particularly if you could get it in sheet to be sure of filling the join - and provided you could get it tested on the scale mentioned your link or mine.

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    Quote Originally Posted by clodhopper View Post
    I keep looking at .357 cal air guns.
    The fascination is difficult to fathom, I have several molds that cast bullets that look identical to the dollar apiece bullets shown on air gun web sites.

    But I have a .357 magnum rifle, it is possible to use those light bullets and a light enough charge of powder to equal the performance of the air guns.

    Also, if more power is needed than say a 100 grain bullet at 800FPS. Then the 35 whelen sitting in my safe is enough for thumping any beasts around here.

    Dang! that bulldog sure is cool.
    I have a .357/9mm Sam Yang Recluse that I cast both round balls and two... one 105 grain and one 125 grain Lee 9mm pistol molds... and they are very accurate for me... (open sights) and have proven with others and their guns, who tried them, good for hunting out to over 100 yards... Much further than I even shoot with my muzzleloaders... so will they do it... yes.. African Game has fallen to the .357.. and now there are 20MM large bores... no worries... and accuracy wise, in many Airguns, I'd not hesitate to shoot for burgers against almost any high power...

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by melloairman View Post
    A Benjamin Pioneer Airbow can easily kill ANY game animal. So basically, the airbow can take whatever game animal is out there.

  18. #18
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    A co-worker, and I have absolutely no reason to disbelieve him, told me he killed a Texas Whitetail (probably under 100 pounds) with a German-made .177 air rifle. I don't recall, a Diana or similar, standard velocity. A straight-on head shot, very close range.
    An ideal tool? Not at all, but he was a kid, and the situation presented itself. The meat was not wasted.
    Last edited by Rio Grande; 11-26-2017 at 06:32 PM.

  19. #19
    Boolit Grand Master

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    I have been looking at the Air Force Texan with 34" barrel and a operating pressure of 3000 psi it has a 390cc tank as part of the butt stock. 45 caliber and specs claim up to 405 grn bullet at 900-1000fps. That's getting up close to 45-70 BP performance. And above 45 colt carbine performance. In reality there is not much on this conteinent it couldn't take in skilled hands. Rifle weight is 8-9 lbs and supposedly good for 3 shots before starting to drop. I'm seriously considering one

  20. #20
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    One of my coffee drinking buddies hunts Squirrels with a pellet rifle. During the season he will come in with a limit on most mornings. Occasionally he will bring in the odd colored one to show off. He mostly hunts the local pecan groves.

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