Great thread BlackDiesel ... one that got me thinking and now I'm convinced, no need for me to mess with slugs. Thanks!
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Debate - I'm going to convince you it's worthless shooting slugs out of a PCP
- Thread starter blackdiesel
- Start date
You BD are WRONG!
Because I like to. I hunt pigeon, doves, squirrel, sparrows and starlings. The pellets pass through over 75% of the time. When I shoot a ground squirrel you hear the pop, and the GS slinks down. BUT with a slug, you do not get a pop, it is more of a WHOPP! And sometimes, the squirrel, and or pigeon/dove is shoved back violently. Starlings take it HARD. Sparrows explode.
A .22 lr? NOPE. No can do. I am in California. NO SILENCERS, PERIOD. I can turn down my Career 707 .22 and shoot it in the back yard. It will not pass through the block wall. A neighbor heard me shoot my .177 in the back yard. He asked if I was shooting a pellet gun? That can be a BIG NO NO in Cali.
Shoot your .22 and have fun, I have parked mine. The pellet gun is safer(does not travel as far). I shoot around cows. And if I have a hankerin` to shoot any further that is what the 17hmr or .223 is for. I am having fun with my airguns. the wife unit just shakes her head.
Honey, have you seem where I put those slugs? Ahh- you have those things in the house?
Because I like to. I hunt pigeon, doves, squirrel, sparrows and starlings. The pellets pass through over 75% of the time. When I shoot a ground squirrel you hear the pop, and the GS slinks down. BUT with a slug, you do not get a pop, it is more of a WHOPP! And sometimes, the squirrel, and or pigeon/dove is shoved back violently. Starlings take it HARD. Sparrows explode.
A .22 lr? NOPE. No can do. I am in California. NO SILENCERS, PERIOD. I can turn down my Career 707 .22 and shoot it in the back yard. It will not pass through the block wall. A neighbor heard me shoot my .177 in the back yard. He asked if I was shooting a pellet gun? That can be a BIG NO NO in Cali.
Shoot your .22 and have fun, I have parked mine. The pellet gun is safer(does not travel as far). I shoot around cows. And if I have a hankerin` to shoot any further that is what the 17hmr or .223 is for. I am having fun with my airguns. the wife unit just shakes her head.
Honey, have you seem where I put those slugs? Ahh- you have those things in the house?
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Maybe I am just tired from work but what are you even saying? At first you say blackdiesel is wrong but then you sound like you are agreeing with him. I believe you are saying exactly what blackdiesel is saying. Which is it? Since emotion doesnt come across in text I am not saying this in a smug way I am asking for clarification in case I mis read or mis understood what you said in the post.
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Soft cast or swaged AG slugs can expand something nasty in raccoon sized game and drop them where they stand. Before I ever got into PCPs I was a dedicated varmint and predator hunter with rimfires. I abandoned the .22LR a long time ago because it just didn't have the juice to cleanly take coons on lung shots consistently. I moved up to a .22 magnum shooting flimsy bullets and I started dropping coons where they stood on lung shots. When I started coon hunting with my .25 Marauder, it actually killed better on pellet lung shots than a .22LR shooting HPs at supersonic velocity, but didn't drop them right there likethe .22 mag. That changed when I started shooting .25 slugs at 80+fpe. A 45 grain .25 slug at 80fpe will make them do cartwheels and die right there. Its much more dramatic than what a similarly weighted Eungin pellet or a similarly expanding Polymag will do.
Why does a .25 slug kill as good as a .22 magnum at a fraction of the energy, and why does a .25 pellet kill better than a .22LR HP? I believe it has to do with the size of the hole. .25 is bigger than .22, and that seems to make the difference moreso than the dumping of fpe. There are no .25 or .30 rimfires these days. If there were, maybe the killing advantage wouldn't be so different. But as there are no .25 or .30 rimfires anymore, and if I want to have the advantages of a .25 or .30 rimfire, I have to look to PCPs in those calibers shooting slugs.
So what I think PCP slugs are doing is filling a niche that used to exist but no longer does, the niche of .25 and larger rimfires.
Why does a .25 slug kill as good as a .22 magnum at a fraction of the energy, and why does a .25 pellet kill better than a .22LR HP? I believe it has to do with the size of the hole. .25 is bigger than .22, and that seems to make the difference moreso than the dumping of fpe. There are no .25 or .30 rimfires these days. If there were, maybe the killing advantage wouldn't be so different. But as there are no .25 or .30 rimfires anymore, and if I want to have the advantages of a .25 or .30 rimfire, I have to look to PCPs in those calibers shooting slugs.
So what I think PCP slugs are doing is filling a niche that used to exist but no longer does, the niche of .25 and larger rimfires.
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Are you saying that 25 - 30 cal pellets with the same 80 fpe is not enough to humanely kill a raccoon? If you read the posts of people who are intending to use slugs, they will be shooting the same birds, squirrels, rabbits, possums and skunks that pellets can kill just as efficiently.
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No not at all. I regularly lung shoot coons at 40-50fpe with pellets and have shot them harder than that with non-expanding Barracudas (although the Barracudas couldn't make 80fpe out of my old modded Marauder). But coons don't literally drop where they stand from the shock of it like a deer shot with a .270 firearm. They run about 20 yards and die. That's better than a .22LR (I would hardly ever find them with a .22LR) but not as great as a .22 magnum. With the .22 magnum they often collapse without taking another step like firearm shot deer do. Using a 80fpe .25 slug is a lot like shooting them with a .22 magnum. They will die right there, although they might do some cartwheels first.
So what I'm saying is, you can get firearm-like, near-instant kills on non-brain shots with a .25 airgun shooting slugs in a way I haven't seen replicated with pellets, and is probably similar to what the .25 and .30 rimfires of old were capable of. The pellets themselves can kill them just fine on a double lung hit. But they're going to run in a way they very well may not with a slug.
Now there is a flip side to that. I've seen pellet-shot animals thru the lungs stand and stare until they've collapsed in a way I've never seen an animal die from any other kind of projectile. Watched a deer do it with a 81 grain JSB pellet. Totally different kind of death than with a firearm bullet or an arrow or an airgun slug. The slug will either knock them down right there or make them run. A pellet will either make them stand right there and look around like nothing happened, or make them run. So either projectile has a chance of causing them to run or die right there, but the reaction of the animal that dies where shot is much different between the two. The slug can knock them down for the count. The pellet can subtly run them thru without them knowing. These kind of observations have lead me to believe that slugs and pellets kill very differently, with a rigid, non-deforming, pellet killing primarily due to the cutting edge of the pellet's skirt making a surgical cut, while the slug kills by massive ripping when the expansion happens. Its the difference between death my scalpel (the pellet) vs. death by broadsword (the slug).
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