"markT"Bob, what made you switch from SL to Wildcat?
Mark,
Here's how it went:
I wanted a larger caliber only because the farmer asked me if I would shoot the skunks and raccoons, as well as woodchucks. I figured I would use my AR-15 for the woodchucks, but use an air rifle for the closer shots on the smaller animals. After deciding on a .25 caliber instead of .30, I figured I'd go for a Streamline 25 in Synthetic since my Streamline 22 Synthetic has been such a good rifle. I ordered the 22 through Utah Airguns so naturally I went back to them for the 25.
When I placed the online order, there was nothing that indicated they were not in stock. I got a call from UA later this same day and they told me they sold the last one before my order came in and apologized for the website not reflecting the shortage. They offered me to wait for the Synthetic to come back in stock or just cancel the order and maybe choose something else. And here's the thing about me, when I want something, I generally want it now. So I wasn't going to wait for a Synthetic Streamline 25, instead I asked about the Wildcat MKII.
So after talking with Trevor for a bit, asking questions and such about the WC, I decided to go with one of those, but he told me they were out of stock as well. But he told me that they had two Streamline 25's in Laminate if I wanted one of those. Being I love the looks of the laminated stocks, I figured I would use the 22 whenever I needed to get down and dirty so as to not worry about scuffing up the synthetic stock, and keep the laminate 25 for hunting and not use it for the dirty work around the farms. So that's how I ended up with the Streamline 25 Laminate.
So jumping ahead to how that turned into a Wildcat. After the problem with the broken stock, Trevor from UA told me I could try it out with my synthetic 22 stock to see if it worked fine and they would just send me a new Laminate stock for it. Well, it held air just fine overnight and shot a nice group at 7 yards, but further shooting it the next day at longer distances revealed some issues. If it's possible for the regulator or some other internals to have received some shock damage when the stock was broken, I believe that is what happened. The rifle seemed to shoot at different power levels from low to high all on it's own. There were times when I shot maybe 5 to 10 shots from the same spot under the same conditions all back-to-back, and some shots were super quiet and felt like duds while others were very loud and felt like magnums. And there were shots that felt just right. It seemed that 50% of the shots were not right. To sum it up, the Str25 had a POI shift of about 6 inches vertically at 50 yards, which was enough evidence to me that it was shooting at different levels of power/velocity. And the shot count was only 31 on high power from a full charge, well below what it should get before falling off the regulator. And lastly, the manometer was not reading correctly.
Sorry guys, I'm on the PC with a real keyboard so that explains the lengthy reply....LOL!!
So after all this, I knew that the Str25 would go back to UA. But through this experience, I just didn't feel that I would be comfortable with a direct replacement, even though my Str22 has been perfect, I just didn't want another one. When asked if I could choose a different model and either pay the difference if more expensive or do a straight swap if the same price, UA told me that I could. What I really wanted was a Bobcat, but I already pushed my funding limits by going with the higher priced laminate Streamline, so being the WC MKII was the same price and they were now in stock, I decided to go with one of those.
