I just had this discussion yesterday with a friend, how way back in the day when “adult airguns”(Dr Robert Beeman quote”) made the scene, this small market was targeting the people that wanted more than what a box store gamo pump up could offer. These people were probably already hunters, target shooters, but wanted something that could be accurate enough to hit a peanut at 30 yards, and were willing to pay for the quality that these guns showboated.
Then the market grew and then came thd daystates, the FX’s, and a lot of them were European built, all targeting that same group of people.
The guns were accurate enough for competition so now here comes along events like field target and such. Actual benchrest didn’t happen till years later, and that’s where FX gained in popularity as now they were creating these super super accurate platforms for now an even more specialized group of folks.
Understand that in todays “adult airgun” market, there are plinkers and there are hunters. These folks can do with a lot of the common platforms out there like the FX wildcats, Crowns, and for Daystate the hunstsman groups of guns are ideal for those folks. If a company wants to cater to the benchrest accuracy seeking folks, well then, that’s a whole new specialty. They can’t have the barrel that comes with the common Revere, or the common Impsct. They can’t have the same trigger that these “stock” guns have. The innards have to be better, and a customer wanting to truly dive into this arena will have to pay for it.
Then you have company’s like Skout, that full on developed a gun dedicated for the bench. Same with the panda, and the Thomas guns. Are they good enough to go to your first RMAC with? Sure they are. Are you wanting to outshoot a guy like Thayne that scored a 240? Well, now you’re gonna have to take that platform to an even higher level. Wether it comes from parts modifications, specialized ammo, or hours and hours on end testing(that part is more of me, lol), then that’s what one has to do.
I told this same person I was discussing this with, if today I decided to open up an airgun store, a boutique to cater to the folks with the $$ who want the best of the best, I would divide that store into two departments- one side for the “normal” folks that want the best for plinking and hunting, then a second department for the competitive folks. Same guns in each department, but different innards.
