I will post some of the photos now as I still have to edit down the full length unedited video they made me submit as part of my application.
Drum roll please..... Wait for it..... 150 yards is now officially the Guinness World Records Longest Air Rifle shot. When I say it out loud - I have to chuckle a bit after spending an entire year shooting golf balls at 300+ yards over and over and over again. 150 yards for the Official Guinness World Record - really?
But there is a story behind this shot so here it goes.... The conditions under which I was required to attempt this shot were stringent and I will tell you this.... I earned all 150 of those yards and if you want a Master Class on micro spectrum / small caliber long range shooting ballistics - let's chat.
I had to forget everything I had learned lobbing pounds and pounds of big bore airgun lead hundreds of yards with high BC projectiles over the last few years. I had to go back to school and re-learn and un-learn quite a few things when it comes to long range airgunning.
Big bore airguns are a totally different beast as compared to .177 at long ranges and I had to go back to the drawing board and re-learn how to effectively shoot and control projectiles that were about the size and weight of the .177 BBs I grew up shooting in my backyard at tin cans at 10 yards with my Crosman Pumpmaster.
Well there is and they approved my application, but they didn't approve my 600 yard AirgunDepot.com Long Ranger golf ball shot or any of my other shots attempted with my big bore airgun. More on that later.
First off, my self made YouTube videos for the Long Ranger Challenge didn't cut it. Guinness required that I have a nationally recognized shooting organization judge this attempt and I could have no personal or professional connection to the judges.
So after quite a bit of Googling and searching for airgun specific shooting associations, I approached Chris Martin from the Southern Michigan Gun Club (SMGC) with this crazy idea. I told him that this all started after I won the AirGunDepot.com Long Ranger Challenge last year and he was fully onboard from the get go! A HUGE thank you to the board of directors of the SMGC for hosting this Guinness World Record attempt.
Chris was the match director of previous American Airgun Field Target (AAFTA) shooting competitions so he was about as legit as it gets for an airgun competition judge. When I got Chris to agree to be a judge he also got his buddy John Ayers to participate as a judge as well. John was also an official judge for the United States Air Rifle Benchrest Association. Conveniently, they were both members of the SMGC and in recent years had launched an effort to build one of the best airgun specific shooting ranges in the United States and they were just a few hours down the road from me in Mattawan, Michigan!
But then they gave me the full list of all the parameters I had to follow. The biggest hurdle for me was that I had to give up my dream of shooting over 1000 yards with my big bore airgun for this record attempt. They made me not only use a .177 caliber pea shooter, but one of the smallest and lightest pellets available for that caliber. They made me use a pellet that is basically only good for a 10 meter pistol shooting competition. Ughhh!
Furthermore - I couldn't use any magnified optics (no scope) and I couldn't use any wind measuring instruments or visual wind indicators during the shot attempt. DOUBLE UGHHH!!!! The target size was only 6.25 inches so that was at least an easy target to hit. I had my head in ballistics calculators for quite a long time and I knew that these parameters they were setting was basically putting me at the total polar opposite end of the ballistics spectrum that I had been accustomed to with my previous long range airgun shooting attempts - larger caliber and much higher ballistic coefficient projectiles was my comfort zone - this small caliber stuff - not so much.
I had proven the long range capability of my AirForce Texan big bore airgun with my 600 yard golf ball shot and 1250 yard gong target shot, but having to shoot open sights with a .177 pellet with a horrible ballistic coefficient was harder than any of the other long range shots I had attempted. For you ballistic geeks like me out there reading this you will get a kick out of this analogy.... This was basically like taking a free throw from a regulation basketball free throw line with a cotton ball in the wind!
When we first starting shooting that morning it was dead still and super HUMID! The smallest swirling and inconsistent wind picked up just enough where it made any further attempts just stupid to try after 150 yards. Part of the requirements of this shot was that I couldn't use any kind of wind indicator markers on the range. It was all hairs on the back of my neck guestimation for windage.
So in the end, I was able to successfully hit the 6.25 inch target at 110, 130, and 150 yards. I was able to hit the 110 yard shot in 6 shots - the 130 yard shot in 2 shots - and the 150 yard shot in 10 shots. The vertical stringing with such a light pellet from an unregulated airgun was pretty bad and even the slightest wind was pushing the pellet by feet - not inches.
If you think I am going to stop at 150 yards - you haven't been paying attention to how addicted I am to pushing things as far as I can. I learned a lot from this shot - some of that I will share, some of it I will not. I will tell you this - unregulated rifles with bell shaped velocity shot curves aren't the greatest when shooting such a small pellet at long distances. That is all I will say for now, but there has been a lot more R&D after I completed this shot.
Hell - the red tape I had to cut through before I pulled the trigger once was harder than the shot itself - HA! Remember - Guinness World Records will only recognize open sights (no scope) and you can only use a .5 grams or less .177 pellet. So go take your shot at this World Record in a monitored and judged setting with nationally recognized judges, impartial witnesses, and a licensed land surveyor to measure the distance to your target and elevation / grade of the shooting range (note in these photos that I had to shoot from an elevated utility trailer to get the required maximum 1:1000 elevation "flat-ness" from shooting location to target. The no wind indicators and NO magnified scope part of this was a fun wrinkle in all of this let me tell ya. UGHHH!
There were a lot of industry supporters that helped me get to this goal I set for myself for the setting the actual Guinness Book of World Records. The airgunner community is super supportive and the friends I have made within this circle is amazing!
First off - thank you to my awesome uncle - Charles (Chuck) Turek who was my video guy, Marksmanship Advisor, and partner through this entire process. We practiced a TON on his property and if you haven't seen his 300+ yard golf ball Long Ranger shot - check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEO0wN9UwMM&t=3s
A HUGE thank you to AirForce Airguns for making one of the most powerful airgun platforms in the world. Even though I had to de-tune the .177 Airforce platform a bit to get the rifle to like this tiny 7.33 grain pellet (it settled in and stopped cork screwing around 850 FPS), I learned a TON about what the AirForce platform can do. These rifles REALLY like the heavier higher BC projectiles made for hunting applications. Make sure to check out my 423 and 600 yard AirgunDepot.com Long Ranger Challenge shots on a golf ball - it makes this 150 yard Guinness World Record almost laughable. View here: https://www.youtube.com/watch…and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch…
To the entire team at Airgun Depot and Pyramyd Air - A HUGE thank you for all your support. The AirGunDepot.com Long Ranger Challenge is what started this crazy journey.
Thank you to Doug Russell at Mad Dog Custom Rifle stocks for making the very best stocks in the airgun industry and the perfect stock for the AirForce Airgun used during this shot.
Thank you to Rick Rehm from shooter1721 for being my Jedi Master of long range airgunning and hours of chatting with me about long range shooting.
A special mention and thank you to Nick Nielsen from NSA, Al Clark from Aeromagnum, and David Williams from Hunter Supply. Thank you for helping feed my big bore airguns with the lead you guys make. Even though I couldn't let the big dog out to play for this shot attempt - the trigger time I got behind my Texan helped me with this shot from the hours and literally pounds of lead I have pushed down range.
Thank you to Thuan Donnyfl Du from DonnyFl for making the very best suppressors in the airgunning world and being a great friend. Your suppressors are so good in fact, Guinness made me attempt this shot without my suppressor attached as they determined that it may help with accuracy too much and give my shot attempt an unfair advantage. So there you go Donny - your products are banned by Guinness World Records. Add that to your list of AWESOME-NESS!
A special thank you to Hawke Optics - even though Guinness World Records didn't let me use a magnified scope, I had a lot of benchrest time behind my Hawke Optics Frontier scope and Endurance ED spotting scope studying what this insanely small pellet was doing at various distances in various wind conditions.
Thank you to Lawrence from Heritage Arms Inc. for helping me achieve these crazy long range airgun shots with his ColdShot picatinny mounts! Even though I wasn't able to use a magnified scope I was able to mount a Heritage Arms ColdShot MOAB base so I could mount the open diopter sites to the rifle since AirForce Airguns don't come with open iron sights. The MOAB allowed me to take up the sight picture I needed to have with such an extreme hold over so I wasn't just guessing at the hold over by aiming at tree tops.
Thank you to B&T Industries / Atlas bipods who provided the support for this Guinness World Record shot (both literally and figuratively)!
Chris Turek - UpNorthAirGunner
Guinness World Record Holder for Longest Air Rifle Shot
Traverse City, Michigan
