Hi! New guy from Ontario, Canada. Just got back into air gunning after a 30+ year hiatus and am loving it, as well as the quality time with my son who LOVES shooting and hunting.
The Boy and went out to a friends farm on Saturday. We arrived the mid-morning and found very few pigeons about. I supervised a walk-about with his BB gun, and there was some safe shooting but no pigeons were harmed in the sport. LOL. We went into the turkey woods and got one of our blinds setup, then had a visit and went for lunch, then back for another visit. By about 3pm-ish we were still around chatting and noticed the pigeons were now quite active, so we setup in a little shady spot tucked beside an old wooden shed. This gave us a good view of the old silo and a safe backdrop of about 1,000 acres of empty woods. This outing was different, in that I am usually all about letting The Boy plink away. But, Daddy just got a range finder and it turned out my little buddy was quite enthralled with finding the range to everything in site. He seemed content to act as official rangefinder/spotter... and that was fine with me... so we went to work with the .22 Marauder and Daddy on the trigger. I was given constant range information every time a pigeon landed or peeked out (always 29, 30 or 31 yards - for each of the 50-odd readings :lol: ). I worked through 9 shots of Crosman 14.3gr. HP with 2 feather-shave misses before I realized I had to aim 1/2 mildot right. The next 7 shots put 6 pigeons and 1 starling on the ground (well, one on the barn roof but we'll count it). The 5th and 6th pigeons were very satisfying shots, 1 being just a head visible and the last being a head/neck peeking out from the silo to see if we were still there. By then I was dialed right in and felt like I couldn't miss. The 10th Crosman pellet got jammed up when I tried to remove the magazine and see if I had any left, so I had to dump it and decided then to switch and see how the H&N Hunter HP 18.21 gr. would perform as these also shot very well in accuracy testing. Different pellet, slightly different POI and my first shot revealed I now needed a full mildot hold off to the right (could be wind too, as it had started to kick up by then and just yesterday at the range the H&N were hitting slightly right of the Crosman so I should have needed no hold-off at all with them). The next 7 shots accounted for 7 more pigeons, although one was hit too low. It certainly is satisfying to hear the thwack of a solid high chest/low neck hit and see a pigeon just tip over and fall straight down. And it was a ton of fun seeing my buddy so happy every time Daddy got one. He'd say "smoked him!" and then wanted to bumps knuckles - pretty cool.
Comparing the two pellets, it seemed both resulted in a stone dead pigeon with a proper hit so neither seemed to offer any apparent performance advantage under the conditions of today's hunt. The fact that I stocked up on the Crosman's at $10/500 in a local Walmart clear-out makes me happy to say they seem to shoot and perform just as well as any other pellets I have tried (haven't opened my tin of JSB's yet but expect them to be a front runner).
We were picking up pigeons as we went along, and started to notice a lot of cat activity including a glimpse of one big/scraggly looking feline I'd never seen before. Sure enough, on one recovery trip to the back side of the silo we found a bunch of feathers and one missing pigeon. At least I know any "lost" ones will not go to waste. Oh, and one fell in the water trough so it looks a little rough in the pic.
All in all, it was a very enjoyable day. 8)
The Boy and went out to a friends farm on Saturday. We arrived the mid-morning and found very few pigeons about. I supervised a walk-about with his BB gun, and there was some safe shooting but no pigeons were harmed in the sport. LOL. We went into the turkey woods and got one of our blinds setup, then had a visit and went for lunch, then back for another visit. By about 3pm-ish we were still around chatting and noticed the pigeons were now quite active, so we setup in a little shady spot tucked beside an old wooden shed. This gave us a good view of the old silo and a safe backdrop of about 1,000 acres of empty woods. This outing was different, in that I am usually all about letting The Boy plink away. But, Daddy just got a range finder and it turned out my little buddy was quite enthralled with finding the range to everything in site. He seemed content to act as official rangefinder/spotter... and that was fine with me... so we went to work with the .22 Marauder and Daddy on the trigger. I was given constant range information every time a pigeon landed or peeked out (always 29, 30 or 31 yards - for each of the 50-odd readings :lol: ). I worked through 9 shots of Crosman 14.3gr. HP with 2 feather-shave misses before I realized I had to aim 1/2 mildot right. The next 7 shots put 6 pigeons and 1 starling on the ground (well, one on the barn roof but we'll count it). The 5th and 6th pigeons were very satisfying shots, 1 being just a head visible and the last being a head/neck peeking out from the silo to see if we were still there. By then I was dialed right in and felt like I couldn't miss. The 10th Crosman pellet got jammed up when I tried to remove the magazine and see if I had any left, so I had to dump it and decided then to switch and see how the H&N Hunter HP 18.21 gr. would perform as these also shot very well in accuracy testing. Different pellet, slightly different POI and my first shot revealed I now needed a full mildot hold off to the right (could be wind too, as it had started to kick up by then and just yesterday at the range the H&N were hitting slightly right of the Crosman so I should have needed no hold-off at all with them). The next 7 shots accounted for 7 more pigeons, although one was hit too low. It certainly is satisfying to hear the thwack of a solid high chest/low neck hit and see a pigeon just tip over and fall straight down. And it was a ton of fun seeing my buddy so happy every time Daddy got one. He'd say "smoked him!" and then wanted to bumps knuckles - pretty cool.
Comparing the two pellets, it seemed both resulted in a stone dead pigeon with a proper hit so neither seemed to offer any apparent performance advantage under the conditions of today's hunt. The fact that I stocked up on the Crosman's at $10/500 in a local Walmart clear-out makes me happy to say they seem to shoot and perform just as well as any other pellets I have tried (haven't opened my tin of JSB's yet but expect them to be a front runner).
We were picking up pigeons as we went along, and started to notice a lot of cat activity including a glimpse of one big/scraggly looking feline I'd never seen before. Sure enough, on one recovery trip to the back side of the silo we found a bunch of feathers and one missing pigeon. At least I know any "lost" ones will not go to waste. Oh, and one fell in the water trough so it looks a little rough in the pic.
All in all, it was a very enjoyable day. 8)
