newby to air rifle

Crosman Custom Shop, go for the 2400KT Carbine I am almost ready to put in an order for one myself, you can pick the goodies to put on them. Triggers are said to be OK, but there are many fixes for them out there. Best part, without a rear sight or scope from crosman, you can have one for a shade over $100 Accuracy should be great from what I have read.

The Crosman's are made here in the US, and assembled by a worker about 50 minutes from me. Even their pellets are still made here, unlike daisy (I will NEVER buy daisy pellets or bbs or air guns again!)

For a summer/basement gun, CO2 is fine. However if you want a cooler weather gun, I would go with a springer as well. I have a Daisy 131 break barrel springer (its actually made by Gamo...) that will shoot 1/4" groups with good pellets off a rest at 10m indoors, with open sights!. DARN good for a gun that cost me $50 on clearance 11 years ago. It has taken many a starling out of the back yard, and shoots mid 500s fps over my chrony.

But if your are going to shoot 60 or warmer most of the time, the crosman custom shop co2 carbine would be hard to beat for the money. It is said crosman barrels are pretty good accuracy wise.

Just got this beaut in today from the Crosman Custom shop.
Custom 2300KT in .177 with 10.1 inch barrel.
Mine was considerably more than $100 as I went all out.
Shoots like a charm, adjustable trigger pull and overtravel screw.
Got some zing for a co2 pistol. over 500FPS.

Crosman Custom Shop, go for the 2400KT Carbine

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Got one on order in .22 Caliber. I'll post up a pic and impressions when she gets here.

Hmmm, you did say air rifle?

SCHMIDP4811 said:

I am contemplating getting a target quality air rifle to use in my basement during bad weather to keep my feel for summertime benchrest shooting. It should be .177 caliber, 600-700 fps velocity, good trigger, powered by those small replaceable air cylinders, capable of mounting a scope. Does such an animal exist, what is it and where would I find it?

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Such an animal definitely exists. By 'small replaceable air cylinders' did you mean CO2? There are a variety of CO2 powered rifles, but they may not be the best of the best.

PCP (Pre-charged pneumatics) air rifles normally fill from a SCUBA tank and use high pressure air or oxygen. They are very precision, very accurate and tend to be on the pricey side - a $500 budget might get you started.

Have you considered a 'springer'? They have a self-contained power plant which you cock with a single stroke. They are somewhat less costly than PCPs, other things being equal, and are almost as accurate (the accuracy difference being the much reduced recoil). The disadvantage of springers is that they do recoil. A springer requires some practice to shoot it accurately.

On the plus side, if you can shoot a springer well, then you're way ahead of the game when the weather improves. A well equipped Diana 34 can be had for less than $250. At ranges less than 50 yards, it's probably more accurate than most rimfires. The '34 is often called a 'working gun' but there are fancier models available to consume almost any budget.

BTW, what do you normally shoot in good weather - some other air rifle or a firearm?

I don't know why you want co-2, the little cans won't last long. For what your doing, I'd recomend the older side lever olympic air rifles.

That's my anschutz 250 and my rws 75. If you shoot win 52's & 40x's why not get a airgun that will match the size and weights of what you use. They both have wide flat forends with standard accessory rails built into them that will accept whatever you use on your summer bench guns. They both are setup for scopes and even though their side lever springers, they have built in dampening devices that make them a no recoil scope friendly airgun.

Not the greatest picture, the scoped rifle is the anschutz. I don't know how light the trigger is but don't sneeze. I never bothered to look it up. It's adjustable for lengh of pull, height and pull weight. It's very used friendly and extremely accurate. I'm still debating to call mac-1 and see if he can tune it. She's a shooter but a mac-1 tuned airgun is nothing less the pure accuracy.

The iron sighted airgun is a mac-1 tuned rws 75, it was tuned the month I bought it. It will put the pellets in the same hole shot after shot after shot. It comes with a scope rail already on it, it holds the rear sight. I have the book that came with the airgun. The book says the trigger is adjustable for lengh of pull, height and pull weight of 100g to 400g. I have the trigger down all the way 100g or roughly 3.6oz, again don't sneeze.

I don't know if people really grasp how accurate these olympic airguns had to be. The best way I can put it is that they are designed to do head shots on flies at 10m all day long.
That's a 10m target, the nine ring is roughly .220", the ten ring is a dot. I used a nickel to try to give people an idea of how big the black (four ring) is.

Here's a better picture of the 10/x ring on a 10m target. That dot is what these rifles were made to consistantly hit.

I'm sure you'll find what your looking for. The accuracy of these airguns is extremely impressive.

forrest r said:

I don't know why you want co-2, the little cans won't last long. For what your doing, I'd recomend the older side lever olympic air rifles.

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I get 60 shots @ constant velocity out of the Crosman 12 gram powerlets with the last shot dropping off a tad, then nothing, the pistol lets you know it's done with the co2.

As far as headshots on flies, here's what I've been getting out of the custom 2300KT with the Lothar-Walther match barrel @ 15yds (13.716 meters) offhand with the cheapo Crosman red dot. That will change when I get my Williams rear notch sight ordered and installed.


The 2400KT carbine I have on order I expect the same results, except the carbine will wear some nice glass.

All choices people have given are great choices, hopefully we've all helped with some info for your decision.
Straight Shootin'! :bthumb:

Why switch barrels?

p8ntslinger said:

what do you guys think of the Beeman RS1, RS2 dual caliber series of air rifles? I am looking for an affordable and versatile rifle that I can use for casual fun and a bit of "skwirl" hunting.

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The 'switch barrel' feature is great for the advertising department but will you really use this feature in practice? Why not get a somewhat better .177 or .22 air rifle and live with a single caliber? Either caliber rifle will shoot accurately, and kill skwirls at 30-40 yards. A good air rifle at that range is more accurate than a rimfire.

The pellets for .177s are more readily available and available in more varieties. For >1000 FPS rifles (the 'magnums') there is an argument to be made for the larger .22 caliber pellet, but otherwise the caliber is just not that significant - either size works fine. Caliber .177 air rifles are by far the most popular size.

I've never owned a 'switch barrel' but my guess is that, after the novelty wears off, most people put one or the other barrels on their rifle and leave it.

My first adult air rifle was a .177 Beeman GS700 with a 4x Bushnell scope. No complaints. It launched about 200 squirrels into another realm of existence (which is exactly why I bought it).

After 5 years, I replaced the Beeman with a Diana 34 (~$250 for a combo package) - also in .177. I love it. Sadly, it's taken some of the sport out of squirrel hunting. If I can see the critter, he's mine! As presently set up, my Diana 34 with a 3-9 Leupold scope simply doesn't miss. To use an odd expression from an older RFC thread, it's 'scary accurate'.

Growing up I had a Crossman 7600 pump rifle and shot thousands of rounds with that gun including BBs and pellets till it wore out. Then I started shooting rimfire and shotgun so I pretty much forgot about "bb" guns. Then I bought a chinese underlever pellet rifle on a lark as a gunshow for about $25 or $30. It would shoot rings around that old crossman with a single pull of the underlever and was a good rifle to have for small pests. I still don't shoot pellet guns much but they are nice to have for the type of shooting you mention. I also got a crossman 357 revolver that's pretty accurate for short range indoor shooting. The thing you really have to decide is if you want competitive accuracy and what level of quality??? Used to be spring air rifles were mostly from Spain. Now most are made in China even in the $100+ range. If I were buying something I wanted to shoot a lot and long term then I'd look for made in Spain or made in Germany. If you want to shoot with a scope I'd get an under or side lever pellet rifle. If you want to shoot open sights a barrel cocking rifle will work fine. Barrel cockers can develop a little slope in the joint and the barrel is always moving up and down so the scope may not always be in perfect alignment with the barrel compared with the other systems. If you want to shoot cheap, look for a bb repeater that will allow you to recycle bbs and that just needs one or two pumpe of air. Don't expect top accuracy but lots of shooting fun from a bb gun. The reason CO2 is not my first choice is that you have to buy cartridges making cost close to rimfire, you generally must use the whole cartridge or release the unused CO2 when storing your gun and one other concern would be the fact that CO2 is heavy compared with air and can build up in a basin such as a basement. Ever hear of the canary in the cole mine

rc. said:

Used to be spring air rifles were mostly from Spain. Now most are made in China even in the $100+ range. If I were buying something I wanted to shoot a lot and long term then I'd look for made in Spain or made in Germany.

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Beeman had some of their introductory rifles produced in Spain. As noted above, I was very pleased with mine. The Ruger Air Hawk (Ruger in name only) imported by Umarex is a Chinese clone of the Diana 34 - but there are good reports on it's performance.

The best of the springers are still made in Germany - RWS Diana, FWB, Beeman, Weihrauch to name a few. But German quality does not come cheap. The Diana 34 is one of the least expensive German springers available so there is a large base of users - a definite plus.

rc. said:

If you want to shoot with a scope I'd get an under or side lever pellet rifle. If you want to shoot open sights a barrel cocking rifle will work fine. Barrel cockers can develop a little slope in the joint and the barrel is always moving up and down so the scope may not always be in perfect alignment with the barrel compared with the other systems.

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Break barrel springers are still among the most popular designs of adult air rifles - much more popular than side-cockers. A suitable scope should keep it's zero without problem and the break barrel is quite reliable in returning to the same position each time it's cocked. It might seem otherwise, but the Germans have this problem knocked. Neither my Beeman nor my Diana had 'joint' problems.

The 'issue' is keeping the scope mount from moving around. Springer air rifles tend to have a heavy recoil - and they recoil twice! This can be hard on the scope optics and challenging for the scope mount. The Diana 34 is definitely hard on scope mounts. But that has not detracted from its effectiveness on squirrels.