My foster parents had unusual names: Mother's Name was Sheridan, My Fathers Name was Benjamin.
At age 8 they put me to work, pumping, loading and plinking my way through my childhood boredom.
I spent nearly "nothing" on anything airgun related. Neither, my Sheridan nor my Benjamin had anything but simple iron sights. I was lethal to 35 yards, dead, and i mean, dead on and freestanding at that. Fast forward
I joined the Navy at age 17 and passed my airguns on to my little brothers who didn't share my enthusiasm.
I never saw or even thought about an airgun again until i was 32ish, when a rat problem occurred in my Hawaii home after they burned the cane fields.
Thus I went looking for a new airgun. The internet had just gotten wings and low and behold I found the Beeman website, still in CA! Of course i had to have the biggest and baddest and most powerful airgun they offered so I bought myself an .22 R1 and it was a beast to cock, even with my Specwar trained arms.
I eliminated all the rats and then moved on to eliminating several packs of feral dogs that roamed at night and to some degree terrorized the neighborhood... long before thermal or any night vision was around you could still land a solid kill shot from a perch if you knew when and where the dogs pathways were.
Not long afterwards, the feral dog problem had been eliminated also. I left Hawaii in 1985 and sold my Beeman R1 hesitantly before i left. Big mistake.
25 years later, boredom that i felt at age 8 started to settle in again and like before i started looking for a new toy..... oh hell! The internet was awash with this new fangle thing called a PCP! Scopes had gone bonkers with this and that features including thermal and N.V. There were other accessories like, bipods, tripods, and the choice of pellets and calibers was just nuts.... not to mention the FPE had skyrocketed !!!
That was 3-4 years ago - no more springers for me - I wanted the fastest and most powerful and the most accurate (this means trouble awaits).
My first PCP was an HW110...Way too cool even with just a red dot!
Then it was a pistol, an HW44 DAMN! AWESOME....
Wanted more power so I bought one of those Air force Carbine single shot things shooting .25 DAMN!
The hole opened and i fell in.... and the internet made the hole bigger and bigger everyday. That's when i found Airgun Warriors and other Websites that had other Unicorns to mingle with! And, they were happy to share their same madness for airguns with me.
Each PCP i bought lead to the next PCP, and the next scope, all with promises of greater power and greater accuracy...
little did i know, that thousands of dollars later a simple springer, in a devotee's hands was every bit as accurate (to a debate-able point).
I've spent thousands in the last two years, buying the latest and the best and in a nut shell here is what I've learned after attending a few field target events.
It's the shooter, a well trained shooter, who practices, frequently and does lots of standing and kneeling shots, that truly hits the bullseye.
I'll save you all some time and money. Pick just one gun, any gun you like, with a good scope that ranges parallax down to 10 yards. and shoot and shoot and shoot. Forget about spending a lot of money on the latest and greatest gizmo... just shoot. Because over the course of the last three days, my $2800.00 gun with it's $1800.00 scope got their pricey asses kicked because of a simple fact.... it's the shooter! so beware of the guy who owns one gun and knows it well!
And for goodness sakes, attend some Field Target and Bench rest events; get out and meet some of the finest friendliest and most helpful people ever. CHAMPIONS - ALL OF THEM!
I just returned from the Cajun Classic in Baton Rouge and had the time of my life coming in DEAD LAST - actually i feel like i came in first place because of the people i met!
See ya out there.
I now return you to the classifieds on this forum and the death scroll from which we can never end..... HA!
