Beginner Hunting Rifle

The only brand of Iv'e owned so far is crosman/benjamin so far I am not supper impressed with the quality. Overall they have okay construction and fair accuracy. I just got the Benjamin NPS and had to replace the scope but it hits hard and with a new scope on it is pretty accurate. By the way what caliber is your gun? Best of luck.

Benji Trail XL 1100...have been on the fence about getting one for awhile. While I have no first hand experience with that model, I do have a bit with other Crosman/Benjamin springers. The Nitro Piston has spoiled me for anything else. I love the fact that you can cock it in the morning, and walk the woods all day without ever taking a shot, and there's no steel coil spring to stress. Crosman triggers are crap, but if you're careful, you can improve them significantly (and in the case of my Trail, a new trigger group is only 10 bucks if I ruin it). Build quality isn't the best, but if you're willing to dig into them you can make it a very nice gun. Lastly, Crosman/Benjamin guns are pretty easy to get parts for, and their customer service is top notch. 

http://youtu.be/W2Y24YS6fEw
check this link for a fairly in depth review of this gun. Kenny also tears it down and rebuilds it in another vid on his channel.

Accuracy: depends mostly on the shooter. When I'm "on," my Trail shoots very tight groups (sometimes but not often sub 1/2 inch) at thirty yards. Some guns have bad barrels, all have bad triggers, and often the bundled scope is junk (yours came with a 3-9x40 with adjustable objective, I believe, which I kinda like). Your gun is notorious for recoil, but you can probably overcome any difficulties from recoil with practice. Also due to it's near obscene power, you may find lighter weight pellets (12-14gr or so) to group a bit sloppy at longer distances (30 plus yards). Shooting good quality, heavier lead will often calm that down, and you gun should have enough power for a lot of the heavy stuff.

Power: Crosman uses "hobby pellets" (light weight, alloy pellets that most shooters find very inaccurate) to establish their max velocity. They claim 1100 FPS for your rifle. In the video above, Kenny gets from the low 700s FPS to the high 800s FPS with lead pellets (some were heavy). Anyway, as springers go, power should be the least of your concerns with this gun.

Over all quality: hard to say. It seems like some of these guns are carefully assembled, and others are just thrown together. Hopefully yours is one of the "good ones." If not, Crosman customer service and guys on this and other forums can help. Best of luck!

I've only 2 year experience with air guns, but this might help. I started with a Crosman Nitro Venom .22. It was a great introduction, and I think better than a budget springer; I learned how to shoot with this gun, from no prior experience at all. But, for both both springers and gas pistons you need to develop good technique, especially artillery hold, for accuracy. This forces you to develop skills and that's really good, but most shooters will never reach a level of accuracy that a PCP offers. I had that gun for about 9 months, and during that period started to learn more about air rifles, helped in no small part by some of Ted's videos.

After the Venom I decided to get a PCP, and instead of taking the entry route, probably a Marauder, I made a serious $ investment in a Daystate Regal XL, 30 ft lbs from AOA. Its available also in 40 ft lbs, but some reviews said this is too hot for a .22 pellet. The big issue with switching to a PCP is you need air. If you are fit, there are hand pumps, but for older folk like me, an SCBA tank (aka carbon fiber tank) is the way to go; unfortunately, that's more $. Overall, it was night and day, and I'm glad I made the switch; amazing accuracy; very quiet (with a moderator); classy walnut stock, etc, and unfortunately the cost of a better scope to take advantage of the guns accuracy. 

Finally, don't forget that your shooting experience will be determined also by the scope you use. My Crosman Nitro Venom came as a bundle with a scope; the latter was just plain bad, and I very quickly swapped it out for a Leapers UTG Bug Buster, which was a great scope for this rifle, with an amazing adjustable parallax range from 5 yards to infinity. I'm offering this scope for free to anyone willing to pay postage.

Regal us, i sent you a pm regarding this scope. Thank you!

I replied via google - the return address was airgun nation. Let me know if you get message - scope is yours if you want it.

The NP XL is a bad choice as a 1st Hunting rifle IMO.

I had the gun and I liked it but it's a hard gun to master, if you really want that kind of power go for a Discovery

My old Ratting gun was a Gamo Bone Collector. I gave it to my son a while ago. Depending on the pellet you can get up to 900 FPS... even the .22 heavy's he gets 650ish which is plenty for Rats and is really accurate up to 45-50 yards.
Really depends on what you want to do with it.