My Wildcat and the Brocock Sniper...after some use!

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Jim81

Member
Nov 2, 2017
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Wa, United States
Haven't been on here for some time now. I have been shooting the Brocock and the Wildcat quite a lot. Some pesting and mostly at targets in my field. I am wondering if what I am experiencing is common. The Wildcat shoots almost the same place every time. As long as I point it at the same spot I can count on it hitting there. The Brocock not so much. I get it spot on and then shoot 10 shots at 50yds. Same me. Same everything except the rifles are different.. There's few shots that are really close to one another and then it starts hitting high, right, left and so on. I am of the opinion that FX just makes a more accurate gun even though it's ridiculously complex and sometimes temperamental. Am i missing something here?

I love the larger air capacity of the Brocock and when pesting off a shooting tripod I think I can hold the Sniper more steady. I don't particularly like the bolt action vs, the lever of the FX but it's livable and I have adapted to it. 

I am getting about 35 shots per air fill with the Wildcat and well into the 80s with the Sniper. First time ever I wished I had the Sniper the other day. At a dairy farm I had the Wildcat down to the regulator and, strangely, had a lot more targets. Usually if I get 15 or 20 good targets I consider that good.

I'd be really interested in your analysis and also what I should look at to get the accuracy of the WIldcat with a large bottle air reservoir. Had and sold the Impact. I don't want to tinker. I just want to shoot. Had the Edgun.. Liked it but the ping right next to my ear every time I shot it was not acceptable. Any suggestions will be well received .Thanks! 
 
The performance you are describing could very well result from a dirty barrel. If a chrono check shows consistent velocities, then it almost has to be a barrel issue. If the barrel components are on good and snug, then I would clean the barrel and try it. It could also be a bad barrel, with which Brocock had issues. The air stripper is threaded on that barrel, and the threading process can alter the bore and choke dimensions. Brocock/Daystate had problems with threaded barrels. The barrel that came on my Red Wolf would not shoot. After a lot of frustration and trouble shooting, the barrel was replaced with one that is not threaded, and it shoots like a laser now. The new barrel uses a bushing that attaches at the muzzle to center the shroud, which attaches with a small grub screw. With that said, many of the threaded barrels shoot just fine. I have a .22 Bantam Sniper with the threaded barrel and it shoots well. 
 
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Thanks for the thoughts and the suggestions. First thing I did was clean the barrel. Haven't chronoed it lately. Have loctited the scope mounts and checked them. The dreamline sounds good but again the shot count is back down to what I already have. Still looking for a solution. Will try loading single pellets rather than magazine.

It's about a year old and I'd hate to have to pay more now to get it sorted out by sending it back. It's been awhile but I think I remember initially being really satisfied with the accuracy.
 
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The single loading suggestion is a good one, isolate as many variables as possible. 



I do have another, perhaps more controversial, thought on the subject: diablo pellets, by all accounts, are more accurate when fired through polygonal barrels with surprisingly slow twist rates. Even Daystate/Brocock acknowledge this, blessing their premium rifles with polygonal barrels and recently at IWA having released their "ART" barrels which are just a fancy acronym for a slow twist rate optimized for slinging stable diablo pellets at longer ranges. 

My point then isn't to give up on the Brocock just yet necessarily, but it might just be the less accurate gun of the two. This could be innate to its design/manufacture, or just the natural variability in barrels. On a calm day with a little luck my FX Crown will shoot a 10 round sub MOA group at 100 yards. None of my land-and-groove Lothar-Walther barrels will touch that. Food for thought. 

As for a bottle gun which has the accuracy of your wildcat, to be completely frank either a bottle Dreamline or a Crown will do that. I can't speak to your tinkering or lack thereof with your Wildcat, however I've not needed to tinker with my Crown at all. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that, just because it is easy to tinker with a Crown it comes requiring it. Not the case. Each comes beautifully set up, and tuned for a specific pellet. *shrug*



Food for thought. 


 
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After somebody mentioned the threaded barrel issue I remembered removing the Donny Fl moderator when I did the initial cleaning and noticed the barrel shroud became loose before the moderator would loosen. Gotta take the moderator off before you clean the barrel. I hand tightened it back and put the moderator back on after cleaning. There was no grub screw or anything I could see to hold the barrel shroud. Since it was only the shroud I was not concerned about barrel misalignment. Maybe that was a mistake on my part. Your thoughts?

I use a straw to line up the barrel for cleaning but I push 80# dacron fishing line down the straw to the breech and then pull a patch back through the barrel. The Dacron line has just enough rigidity that it slides easily to the breech...in case you might want to know of an easy method to get the line into the breech area. No vacuum cleaner suction or anything else. Just gently push and it'll get through.
 
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After somebody mentioned the threaded barrel issue I remembered removing the Donny Fl moderator when I did the initial cleaning and noticed the barrel shroud became loose before the moderator would loosen. Gotta take the moderator off before you clean the barrel. I hand tightened it back and put the moderator back on after cleaning. There was no grub screw or anything I could see to hold the barrel shroud. Since it was only the shroud I was not concerned about barrel misalignment. Maybe that was a mistake on my part. Your thoughts?

I use a straw to line up the barrel for cleaning but I push 80# dacron fishing line down the straw to the breech and then pull a patch back through the barrel. The Dacron line has just enough rigidity that it slides easily to the breech...in case you might want to know of an easy method to get the line into the breech area. No vacuum cleaner suction or anything else. Just gently push and it'll get through.
Click to expand...

The shroud just screws on at the base, so either the moderator or the shroud will loosen first, whichever has less torque on it. Just hold the shroud when you unscrew the moderator. And as for cleaning, yes, a straw works fine, but it's probably easier to just unscrew and remove the shroud. If your rifle shot well in the beginning, then my comment regarding a threading issue is moot, because it would have been a problem from the start. But, it makes me think the problem really is a dirty barrel, and you might have some fouling in there that a pull-through is not going to remove. You can just remove the barrel and give it a good cleaning with a brush (I use nylon) from the breech end, paying special attention to scrubbing the area just forward of the chamber. You might want to remove the breech O ring too, just to prevent damaging it. If not, push your brush in gently past the O ring, and do your back-and-forth scrubbing in front of it. 
 
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called about FX dreamliner with carbon fiber bottle. Only available in picture form on the net. Couple of dealers have no idea when they will get them. The video I saw looked like you could retrofit a dreamliner to accept the carbon fiber bottle with an adapter. The Dreamliner with the carbon fiber bottle sounds like a really good choice for what I do,

In interim Ill take barrel out and scrub it like suggested and see if that makes any difference. Thanks all! 
 
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