Agree, but one needs to be diligent in learning the skill, or poorly hit animals pay the price.
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Do 0.177's pop?
- Thread starter gfmiller58
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A lot depends on the speed of the pellet and how much air your gun is wasting, cloud cover and nearby reflective surfaces matter as well.
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You kind of lost me on those last two variables, but yes, tuning efficiency is a definite noise factor.
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Naw man... Sounds like you need to retune your rig.. she's waist air if momma can hear it. Or dial it down to 800-750fps. Still more than enough to take a squirrel with a noggin shot..
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Any reflective surface, including clouds will create more intense/loud sound / rebound as instead of quickly dissipating sound waves as they spread out omnidirectional they are more focused from point of origin.
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All I shoot is .177. I have fired a couple of shots into the air and the gun makes a fairly low-volume pop. Pretty anemic, actually. BUT hit something with it, and the noise goes way up, A shot into a bank of dirt...meh. A shot imto aluminum cans or paper/cardboard, slightly louder, Steel cans, louder.
You get the idea, Betcha most of the bang was from you hitting the squirrel’s noggin. Hmmm, there’s plenty of old dried bones around from natural death, poachers and dumpers....maybe I’ll shoot a couple of those to learn the sound.
The other possibility is that if you shot from under a roof or other sound-reflecting surrounding—or if your wife was standing nearby in such a place—the sound would be perceived as louder.
You get the idea, Betcha most of the bang was from you hitting the squirrel’s noggin. Hmmm, there’s plenty of old dried bones around from natural death, poachers and dumpers....maybe I’ll shoot a couple of those to learn the sound.
The other possibility is that if you shot from under a roof or other sound-reflecting surrounding—or if your wife was standing nearby in such a place—the sound would be perceived as louder.
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To my ears, the sound of the pellet impacting the squirrel varies a lot. At short range, under 20 yards, the sound of the impact and the sound of the gun seem to blend together. Longer range they are separate but exactly what angle the pellet impacts seems to make a difference. The OP's wife may have noticed one because the squirrel was at just the right angle to the pellet. She might not notice the next one.
My 177 shoots H&N 10.6 about 900 fps so similar to the OP's gun. It is quieter both at the muzzle and at impact than my 22 and 25 caliber guns. My neighbors hear it when I am outside shooting but they don't complain. It's legal where I use and if they are inside my guns are plenty quiet enough they don't here them (about 85db). Pellet impact to a paper target is about 85db, I don't think pellets impacting squirrels is much if any louder.
My 177 shoots H&N 10.6 about 900 fps so similar to the OP's gun. It is quieter both at the muzzle and at impact than my 22 and 25 caliber guns. My neighbors hear it when I am outside shooting but they don't complain. It's legal where I use and if they are inside my guns are plenty quiet enough they don't here them (about 85db). Pellet impact to a paper target is about 85db, I don't think pellets impacting squirrels is much if any louder.
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Makes sense that at shorter range the sounds would be perceived as blended, because there is a shorter lag between firing and impact. Also makes sense about what angle the object gets hit.
Then there’s the 800-lb gorilla in the room, so to speak: OP’s wife might have less hearing loss than he does.
Then there’s the 800-lb gorilla in the room, so to speak: OP’s wife might have less hearing loss than he does.
kes
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My .177 PCP rifles all make a pronounced pop when I connect with a critter. I also shoot into duct-seal as a backstop for my targets. Totally different sound! The sound of hitting just the duct-seal backer is more of a slap than a pop. My theory is that there's a pound of duct-seal behind my targets, whereas there's only an ounce or two of flesh on a chipmunk or a squirrel head. The .177 pellets come to a full stop in duct-seal and very little energy is dissapated as sound, compared to a passthrough on squirrel's head, for example, where (this is where I am on shaky ground) the force of the projectile's impact is not completely absorbed (excessive force, hehe), more energy is converted to sound.
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If you have a metal swinging target you might also want to observe and/or measure those impacts. I haven't measured them but to my ear, there is a range of sound produced by the pellet impacting my metal targets too. Some seem much louder than others.
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The “sounds” will have two different sources A) air escaping the muzzle and B) sound of impact. These sounds are different and separated by time and Distance. I seriously doubt that the sound of a pellet slapping soft tissue even comes close to the crack at the end of the barrel - rebounding sound is your muzzle report being reflected back to you and is the more likely thing being heard with any real significant DB’s.
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