Airgun Hunting Anyone?

Airguns apparently are now legal for small game, rabbits, squirrels, etc. Is anyone actually doing it and what are they using or suggesting that is said to meet the requirements? Any air pistols?

I have shot a lot of cottontails, squirrels and blue grouse with my RWS Model 34 back in CO. Works well.

I was just looking at the Texas air gun regulations. Alligators, bighorn sheep, javelina, mule deer, white-tailed deer, pronghorn, and turkey (except eastern turkey) and up require minimum: pre-charged pneumatic air guns must fire a projectile of at least .30 caliber in diameter and at least 150 grains in weight with a minimum muzzle velocity of 800 feet per second or any combination of bullet weight and muzzle velocity that produces muzzle energy of at least 215 foot pounds of energy.
Very interesting.
For the smaller stuff: squirrels, pheasant, quail, and chachalaca may be hunted with air guns that fire a projectile of at least .177 caliber (4.5mm) in diameter producing a muzzle velocity of at least 600 feet per second. That's not asking for much at all.
There is an outfit called JTS based in Katy that has been bringing some quality PCP airguns at outstanding price points to the market recently.

If you can believe what you see on YouTube, the recipe for small game like rabbit and squirrel seems to be the best 25 caliber PCP you can afford pushing heavy for caliber pellets. I think the greatest practical advantage of a PCP gun over a springer is the ability to use a high quality scope without destroying it. Also, night hunting rabbits with a Wraith is quite the thing in England.

Get in touch with cmc if he still comes on here. He does a lot of shooting with air.

Just ordered a PCP Airacuda Standard in .25 from Pyramyd yesterday, and a Vevor compressor from Walmart (because the 4-year warranty is so cheap, and one is needed with the Chinese compressors).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmDDa_2IJw

I shoot a .177 Beeman R9. It’s basically a rebadged Weihrauch HW95 Luxus. A very nice break barrel. put a 4x28 Leupold on mine, it’s a great combo. Last time i took it out I shot a grey squirrel on the run, hard quartering towards me. Through the shoulder out the abdomen and dragged out a piece of intestine on the exit. He had a few hops left in him bit did not go far lol.

The .177 cal gives you a reasonable trajectory and accuracy to make a brain shot to 45 yards or so without holding over, in a spring gun that is not a bear to [censored] or twitchy to shoot. .22 cal is arguably better or worse lol. Advantages and disadvantages.

I have killed armadillos with a break barrel. A cheap one. You don’t need to come off thousands of dollars on a PCP and accesories to hunt with an air rifle.

I took my first cottontail with a daisy quicksilver single pump, and a lead pellet, if that tells you anything. That’s less than 350 fps. Not a instakill but it stopped it.

I have killed everything from snapping turtles to alligator gar when the water was low with just a daisy 880. Yeah, shot placement in brain but it worked. And every species of bird that makes it’s home on lake ray hubbard, growing up. I guess that makes me lake trash and a ex-poacher lol.

But a sweet .25 cal PCP gives you an immense advantage.

There’s nothing a PCP air rifle can do that a powder burner with a silencer can’t do better, quieter and with a ton less hassle to make shoot.

No moss growing on an R9 -- or anything from Weihrauch. I'm hoping to use my HW97K for field target as well as pest problem-solving...

I respectfully disagree

I like and subscribe to your thinking here lol

Until there is a way to fill a 4500psi tank at home without spending a bunch of money on a HPA compressor and make a large bore air rifle that get's more than 5-6 consistent full power shots per fill and can make them quiet, they are a PITA. I've been in both worlds for many years and have no issues calling a spade a spade.

Your problem is trying to fill the role of a high powered rifle with a air rifle. The air rifle fills a different role. A good pcp is the best pest control rifle you could possibly have for use in and around buildings and animals and such. Can be had with a hand pump and decent scope for at or under the cost of just a suppressor, and no ATF or wait time bs. Couple hundred more gets you a airguns only sound moderator to make it click-quiet. Pellets so cheap it can pay for itself in a year compared to a feeding a similarly accurate rimfire. DIY your own customization, tuning, and repair in the back yard. Target practice indoors in bad weather with little more than a box of duct seal, without ear pro, no gunpowder odor in the house. Same goes for squirrel popping and bunny bashing out the kitchen window lol.

love my pcp for shooting birds and targets wish there was a place close that shot competition at 50 and 100 yrds

Probably killed more animals with my Daisy Buck and Crosman Pumpmaster than all the other guns combined. Rabbits were the biggest game, head shots with the Crosman. Later on in high school I got a a Remington branded air rifle, it shot a little faster than the Crosman and had better sights but not sure who actually made it.

I’ve got a 10/22 that will do all that and you can only heaar the bolt sliding. Shooting it inside is a no but other than that it’s superior in every way. No hand pumping, cheap ammo and shoots a ragged hole. The JSB pellets my air rifles like are .06 a pop. CCI SV case prices are about the same.

CCI SV is nowhere near as cheap as the best pellets. Way more than 6 cents a pop. And you have to pass most of your shots in or around a building. You can just forget about picking pigeons off a silo or squirrels in the attic. I can keep going.

I must admit I’m not a fan of pumping or tanks though. That’s why I shoot a fine German breakbarrel

Actually comparing Pyramid Air .22 JSB prices with the bulk ammunition sites, CCI SV is just as cheap. Not a good argument.

No, the .177 JSB are about half the price of .22 LR. My R9 shoots the standard crosman hollowpoint that’s about $11 for 500 at walmart, as good as anything until you stretch the limits of range and wind. I actually put a review on here a couple years back with pictures. That brings my ammo cost down to about 2 cents a round and I still find them on clearance time to time for $6-$9 a tin. That’s what, 1.5 cents? And it is deadly accurate.

Overall I concede, a .22 is more capable than a air rifle. But inside the realm of what a air rifle is for it is unbeatable.

Do you hunt deer with a .22? Probably not. A .30-06 is a lot more capable. But no good to do the job of a rimfire. It’s got a purpose.

I understand your preference for a rimfire. I prefer to shoot a breakbarrel for it’s intended purpose but that PCP is better all the way around, just not my preference. I don’t like pumping, it’s tedious. But that doesnt change the fact that it fills the same role of the breakbarrel better. A rimfire fills a different role.

I don’t think you see what i’m trying to say. Or you just dont want to. You must have really gotten burned on the PCP’s.

Oh and also those 10-11 grain .177 JSB and H&N’s do as good or better in wind than any .22 pellet at this lower level of power.

When you start trying to push an air rifle into the realm of a firearm it becomes less a practical thing snd more just purely for fun and satisfaction. Under 30 foot pounds you can’t touch an air rifle in it’s versatility.

And CB caps just plain suck.

If you REALLY want to compare apples to apples, the cheapest .22 LR I could find on the shelf at Walmart today was Winchester M22 at 6.7 cents per round, but you have to buy 1000 round bulk to have it this cheap.

The cheapest pellets were .22 cal crosman hollowpoints at 1.24 cents per round ($6.24/500).

My preferred off the shelf pellet (.177 crosman hollowpoint) is about 1.5 cents per round ($7.74/500).

CCI SV by comparison was 9.9 cents a round ($4.94/50).

It is absurd to cherry pick some of the highest priced highest quality pellets from the most reliable online airgun retailer, who packs their pellets perfectly to prevent damage, to the cheapest .22 ammo on the internet that probably comes in a bulk pack that looks like a hacky sack by the time it gets here. But the cost of pellets on the shelf still beats it by a mile. But i bought enough damaged .22 online to shop on the shelf, and admittedly enough damaged pellets online to shop Pyramyd or shop the shelf.

But from 25 yards my R9 shoots those cheop crosman hollowpoints into a group hardly bigger than the pellet. You can usually hang a pellet in the hole made by a 5 shot group. And it paid for itself in ammo a long time ago.

So why on Earth would I waste my time and ammo passing most shots with a .22 around livestock and buildings, and passing all the pigeons on the roof, when i can take 99% of those passed shots with my .177 R9 for a little more than a penny apiece. And that .177 pellet smears across that corrugated steel roof like a crayon, never a hole or even a dent at upward angled shots lol. Even a miss or a ricochet has maybe 2 fpe energy remaining when it reaches the ground.

Yeah, that stuff is available all day every day at Walmart. Yet, there's a clown on this forum whose sole role on this site is reposting his Walmart ammo every day, including his 9.3 cent per round .22LR.

I wonder if he is buying any. I only buy the 170 grain winchester 30/30 load (when i can find it) or some .177 crosmsn hollowpoints. I have over 10k rounds of .22 and never use it, because my pellets were a penny a piece and my sweet R9 is so satisfying

You can shoot a house sparrow sitting on the back of a Holstein with a BB gun, can't do that with a rimfire. I do a lot of indoor shooting in my living room with my Crosman 1322 and a box full of rubber mulch.

I have an absolute ball shooting squirrels here at home with a Benjamin break over .22. I'll kill 30, maybe 40 per year. I killed a coyote with it here in my neighborhood.

I like the gas piston’s myself. I just understand their limitations.

luke clayton talks alot about his air rifle expeditions in his colums. (he is an outdoor writer here in texas if you didnt know)

I’ve taken blesbok, zebra, Cape buffalo, dozens of white tails, dozens of hogs, all manner of small game all over this country and South Africa with them. They are getting more powerful and more popular and because of that it’s just a matter of time before they are regulated like firearms. As far as the comment about there’s nothing they can’t do that a firearm can that’s not true, being owned by a felon is one. Half the folks I know that own them are felons.

The Cape buffalo hunt sounds interesting.

It was. The hunt itself was pretty straight forward but afterwards it got pretty hairy. The herd attacked the downed buffalo then surrounded us while trying to load it. There was dogs barking, my wife running for the truck, .416s coming out, people yelling. Good times!!

It certainly sounds like a memorable trip. Sometimes I think we are defined by the events we survive. Then again, buffalo hunting falls into the “adult swim” category, and shouldn’t be expected to be either easy or entirely safe.

I have 4 PCP's that I have acquired over the years. My first was a Crosman 2240 co2 gun. They are so bad, if you got lucky and actually hit a squirrel hanging of your bird feeder on a cold day, the pellet would just bounce off. So that little gun got me hooked on HPA. I bought a high pressure tube, modified the valve ports and bought a 25acp barrel from TJ's and before long that little rifle was stacking slugs and producing 95 FPE.

Once the property behind me was developed and considering the un-reliable nature of the 2240's design, I moved on to the Airforce Condor platform where a few of us tinkers would Trick them out with .257, .308 and .457 caliber custom barrels and valves. A friend won a long range bench rest competition with is custom AirForce Condor and it got the factory's attention. It wasn't long afterward AirForce began designing and manufacturing the AirForce Texan. These days my main hunting airgun is a .308 Texan that has been modified to produce 330 FPE with a 150 gr bullet. I have shot so many hogs with it I rarely take a photo or post an account of my hunt. My largest to date was a 300 pounder shot in Coleman County and most interesting was a Mountain lion on the same lease. So I guess I am a bad person for laughing when I read a post about guys shooting 150 lb deer with a 300 WinMag and wondering if they have enough gun to do the job. lol

I have Two other airguns for pesting around the house. One is a Dana StormRider in .177 that has a built in noise moderator and is quiet enough to be backyard friendly. The other is a custom Hatsan AT-44 PA .25 caliber that has an aftermarket LDC that is absolutely silent and still produces about 45 FPE. It will poke a hole through a SPF 2x4 pretty easy and really does a number on marauding armadillos and acrobatic feeder raiders. So the moral of the story is they are just like any other gun, 1 is never enough.

Texans are good guns but I had a bad experience with their customer service so I have zero interest in messing with them again. For most of big game I shoot the Umarex Air Saber.

That's unfortunate and a rare occurrence. They are one of very few companies that offer a Lifetime Warranty and actually stand behind it. But considering they are such simple devises there isn't much that can go wrong. I noticed Airforce has finally released their Airbow. I heard that it can shoot a 400 grain bolt 400+fps. I think I will be waiting for someone I trust to review it before I go out and spend twice as much as a Air Saber.

I use mine quite often. The old Daisy 880 is not very fast but quite accurate. As these vermin can attest to. This lady wouldn't leave my feeder alone.