I am an EDgun fan. I have been hooked for some time. I am also somewhat of a tinkerer which may explain part of my fondness of the EDgun design philosophy. It is designed for ease of servicing.
I picked up a .177 STD R5M Matador because I wanted a gun for a specific purpose. I wanted to set up for all sorts of indoor (barns, chicken houses, attics, crawl spaces...) On getting the rifle it is obvious that this rifle was not necessarily designed for low power. By that what I mean is the rifle is in harmony with tunes above 17 FtLb. I went as low as 70 Bar on the reg and it still wanted to send the 10.34s above 860 fps. To get a low power tune... sub 12 FtLb... I think one would want to reduce the plenum volume. I would start with a volume reducing nylon bushing (That’s a story for another day)
Since this little .177 seems to lean towards higher energy tunes I thought I’d see what the gun can do. I had read and heard from trusted EDgun enthusiasts that this gun can handle the Beast, the JSB 16.2 grain Beast. They also shared that the gun does really well with the NSA 15.5 grn slug. I have been playing with various tunes and can tell you that this gun adores the slugs at 905 fps (my current tune, not that I’m done
). Here’s the surprise... at this exact tune, the 16.2 grain Beast pellets fly at 933 fps. and they fly well. I know the slugs are flying with exceptional accuracy. The BC of the slugs makes them more preferable over the Beast, but they both do exceptionally well. Both are under 1/2” at 50 yards outside with 3-5 variable winds. I have shot the slugs out to 125 yards for fun and was quite blown away. Still dialing in Strelock and verifying stuff. BC on the slugs may be slightly higher than advertised, but need a little more data. Looks like they will be greater than .07. More on that later after more data. The gun remains very quiet; not like my previous 18 FtLb tune, but exceptionally quiet.
The slugs’ hollow point does open up. This explains the exceptional terminal performance on pests.
Below is a picture of my new found obsession and a slug that was shot into water from 4 feet away and retrieved. The typical pesting range trajectory is quite flat.
I picked up a .177 STD R5M Matador because I wanted a gun for a specific purpose. I wanted to set up for all sorts of indoor (barns, chicken houses, attics, crawl spaces...) On getting the rifle it is obvious that this rifle was not necessarily designed for low power. By that what I mean is the rifle is in harmony with tunes above 17 FtLb. I went as low as 70 Bar on the reg and it still wanted to send the 10.34s above 860 fps. To get a low power tune... sub 12 FtLb... I think one would want to reduce the plenum volume. I would start with a volume reducing nylon bushing (That’s a story for another day)
Since this little .177 seems to lean towards higher energy tunes I thought I’d see what the gun can do. I had read and heard from trusted EDgun enthusiasts that this gun can handle the Beast, the JSB 16.2 grain Beast. They also shared that the gun does really well with the NSA 15.5 grn slug. I have been playing with various tunes and can tell you that this gun adores the slugs at 905 fps (my current tune, not that I’m done

The slugs’ hollow point does open up. This explains the exceptional terminal performance on pests.
Below is a picture of my new found obsession and a slug that was shot into water from 4 feet away and retrieved. The typical pesting range trajectory is quite flat.