Trying Daisy .177 hollowpoint pellets....with update

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qball

qball

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Apr 13, 2020
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CA, United States
With great excitement I got the box of daisy hollow point pellets I ordered. Hoping to find another cheap pellets that shoot well enough plus the hollow point on it looks bigger than crosman hollow points. first impression after opening the tin is wow they look great! Very few visible defects, no cast Mark like crosman pellets and very shiny. They look shinier, cleaner and smoother than crosman pellets. 


I shot a bunch through my Challenger and noticed chambering force varies between the pellets which is a sign of inconsistent size. At 20 yards they groups well most of the time but definitely when I get the pellet that takes more force to chamber they are most likely to be a flier either high or low. Didn’t want to give up I lubed them just like I lived my CPHP. Once they dried and the wind died down a little I shot them back to back, 1 mag each. Sadly the daisy pellets do have more critical deviation and I can feel the difference when chambering some of the daisy pellets in my crown also. 


this is 34 yards with my crown shooting them at around 650FPS with 1-3 MPH wind. The left e targets are CPHP and right is daisy. On the bottom right target I was able to put 4 into a single hole but tons of flyers. 
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then this is from the challenger shooting 550FPS @20 yards. The lower right target has around 10 shots into a single hole but 2 bad flyers. No idea what happened to the top target they just decided to go into 2 groups. 
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Will try my 1701T at around 700FPS to see if they like higher speed but due to the size variation I’m not sure if higher speed will make any difference. So far I’ma little bummed because they LOL so awesome!! Oh and they are so cheap, guess you get what you pay for. 😅



think they are good enough for plinking and pesting at or under 20-25 yards. 





EDIT/UPDATE:

Then an epiphany came to me today! These pellets has really thin center that can be pushed out with just a tooth pick and then I realized both my challenger and 1720 have pin style probe. The PP700 has no probe and all FX guns have tube styled probe so I'm thinking the pin probe probably deformed the center and not seating the pellet consistently. Also I'm sure the challenger has pushed the center through a few times because there are a few times pellets fell well short of the target box. It's starting to make sense!!!! I'm slow learner. 



In short these pellets don't like pin style probe!!! And seem to be a bit more tune fuzzy compared to crosman pellets but I was able to get 3 of my guns that don't have pin style probe to shoot them well. More testing is needed but it appears these pellets have great potential, I just need squirrel volunteers. 😂



edit 2:

final thought: good cheap pellets at 800FPS for guns that don’t have pin probe shooting to 30 yard! 




 
FWIW, I got good results with them from a choked LW barrel...groups roughly half the size that I get with Crosman hollow points. However that was the only barrel that grouped them well enough to meet my standard for pest control.

Conversely, the .22 hollow points have grouped well in several guns and they actually mushroom when they strike flesh, even at modest velocities.




 
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Your update got me to wondering. I hadn't shot them since the initial see what guns like 'em shortly after they arrived. So I got them out today and shot a couple of groups to see:



Yep, the LW barrel does seem to do pretty well with them. These two groups were about 1/2" and 3/8" at 30 yards.

I do detect some differences when chambering them. Not a lot but it's there. By comparison, this barrel really likes the RWS Supermag wadcutters which enter the rifling pretty snug when I close the bolt. The Daisy pellets never exceed that degree of snugness, rather it's that some of them I can barely feel as they enter the rifling. My guess is that's why the choked LW barrel handles them well and other barrels I tried didn't fare so well.
 
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Your update got me to wondering. I hadn't shot them since the initial see what guns like 'em shortly after they arrived. So I got them out today and shot a couple of groups to see:



Yep, the LW barrel does seem to do pretty well with them. These two groups were about 1/2" and 3/8" at 30 yards.

I do detect some differences when chambering them. Not a lot but it's there. By comparison, this barrel really likes the RWS Supermag wadcutters which enter the rifling pretty snug when I close the bolt. The Daisy pellets never exceed that degree of snugness, rather it's that some of them I can barely feel as they enter the rifling. My guess is that's why the choked LW barrel handles them well and other barrels I tried didn't fare so well.
Click to expand...



Both of My 1720 and challenger have LW choked barrels and they shoot them well at times and terrible at times, one thing sore sure is they are inconsistent after 1000 pellets, I’m half way through the third tin. 


which gun shoots them well? Glad you found 1 gun that shoots them well. 
 
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I've been buying a lot of pellets recently and looking at who makes which pellets. Winchester and Daisy are made in Spain by Gamo. One thing I have noticed with Gamo pellets is that they're inconsistent in size.

I was using their silent cat pellets in an unchoked break barrel. The ones that I needed a little pressure to push in the breech would shoot true. I soon figured out that the ones that were looser would give me fliers. 

The Crossman domes, while being much more consistent were the same. The occasional looser ones would be fliers. 

I suppose it shouldn't make too much difference with a choked barrel as, in theory, they should all exit the barrel the same size.
 
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Well, I’m on my fourth tin and this tim seems to much better. Go figure, consistently inconsistency even between tins, maybe I should save that tin and start another tin hahaha.



HOWEVER!!! I found something about these pellets I have never seen on any other pellets!! I pick a few 1 inch sized apples off my tree because the bugs got to them so I figure I’ll shoot them for fun. Shot them with the daisy pellets and the smacking sound is definitely louder which isn’t a huge surprise given how big the hollowpoint is. Retrieved the pellets and the front of the pellets didn’t seem to expand much, a little for sure but not huge. THEN I noticed something very peculiar!!! It looks like the center of the pellet got knocked out! So I tried a few more pellets and they have their center knocked out even as low speed of 670fps!!!! WOW!!!! Very interesting! So on pests these things would be tube cutters!!!🤔

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definitely not a fluke!!! They are all hollow!

B1B21C6A-C8A6-4C6A-AF69-5E26259DC53B.1623209796.jpeg


Will try again with a new tin tomorroW but I really want to try this pellet with a vital shot on a squirrel!!! 
 
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I watched a YouTube video over the weekend of someone shooting pellets into ballistic gel. One of the pellets were these hollow points and I noticed the same phenomenon.

They must be made really thin in the hollow.
Click to expand...


wonder if it’s by design, I’m still really curious on the effect of it on a squirrel. In theory this will creat more resistance and transfer more energy while making a mess inside. Squirrel spaghetti? LOL 
 
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Good observation. I just took a dental pick and it passed through with minimal effort. My guess is the web is perhaps only 0.010" or so thick and the alloy is fairly soft so I can see how it would give way on impact. The accuracy is there so I'll have to try them out on pests soon.

BTW, a couple of days ago I went ahead and ordered some more of the .22 hollow points. For 10 tins, they came out to about ~$8 per 500ct tin with shipping and tax included. Kind of a gamble because you just never know if a new batch will perform like the previous one but I've thrown away far more on Crosman pellets over the last few years, naievely thinking maybe they would get their quality back up to an acceptable level.

https://www.daisy.com/product/daisy-22-caliber-precisionmax-hollow-point-pellets-500-count/

The ones I have on the shelf will pound out an aspirin-sized bull at 30 yards. Pure poison on gray squirrels at the pecan orchard.


 
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There are no hollow point pellets made that are really accurate. The reason is physics, the pellet would have to spiral perfectly on center and the hollow point area must also be on perfect center or they wont fly true! Look carefully at the pellets and you will see the center point is not on a true center same as a pointed pellet will not fly accurate. The truth is many pellets tumble while flying thru the air which makes the problem even worse. One reason the dome shaped pellet is so accurate is that the head design cuases the least amount of deformation of the flight path or the most forgiving shape. Flat head pellets offer some of those same benefits as a dome,, however the flat head slows them down considerably at distances beyond 30 yds making them less attractive to long range shooting. Most hollow and pointed pellets are sales gimmics for the new shooter or at best short range pest control.
 
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Found 2 guns that have been shooting the daisy 177 HP pellets pretty darn accurately. My PP700 and crown with 500mm barrel, my DTC with 380mm barrel doesn’t seem to like these pellets. Another way to put it is my most expensive and least expensive guns like them, nothing in the middle so far! LOL 



A bit weird but could be the tune on the DTC. Can’t wait to try the daisy HP out of my PP700 on a squirrel vital shot!! 
 
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Got bored today while on endless meeting/calls I messed my tune on the DTC a little and BAM!!! It's shooting it quite well now, not testing is needed but think I got 3 guns to shoot them well. 



Still frustrated that my challenger and 1720 are simply terrible with these daisy pellets, switch to crosman pellets and immediately back to pellet on pellet. Then an epiphany came to me! These pellets has really thin center that can be pushed out with just a tooth pick and then I realized both my challenger and 1720 have pin style probe. The PP700 has no probe and all FX guns have tube styled probe so I'm thinking the pin probe probably deformed the center and not seating the pellet consistently. Also I'm sure the challenger has pushed the center through a few times because there are a few times pellets fell well short of the target box. It's starting to make sense!!!! I'm slow learner, only took 1500 pellets. 



These pellets seem to be a bit more tune fuzzy compared to crosman pellets but I was able to get 3 of my guns that don't have pin style probe to shoot them well. More testing is needed but it appears these pellets have great potential, I just need squirrel volunteers. 😂


 
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Couple of updates:



1. BC of these are obviously even worse than the crosman pellets so they like been shot faster in the 800fps range. Pretty accurate out of my FX barrels and pp700 when the speed is higher but I prefer shooting low speed I’ll just shoot them till I ran out. 


2. because of the very low BC it loses speed/energy very quick and need more speed to be capable of taking squirrels, I hit one squirrel yesterday with 8 FPE at the muzzle in the vital and it walked it off like nothing so not even sure it broken it’s skin! So guess I’ll be sticking with hades at 7.5 FPE for all my squirrel shots from now on, tried and true.



final thought: good cheap pellets at 800FPS for guns that don’t have pin style pellet probe shooting under 30 yards! 
 
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A pleasant surprise for Sunday is seeing the Fedex truck pull up with the .22 hollow points I ordered a few days ago.

I had prepared myself for the probable disappointment they wouldn't group this time around and I'd be sitting on 10 tins of chrony fodder. The LW-barreled QB79 is one of the rifles that shot the old ones well so I reached for it to try the new ones.

A bit of fiddling with the turrets to get it zeroed, then 6 shots at 30 yards. The bull is the size of an aspirin.



And relief washes over me in an awesome, awesome way. That will do nicely for squirrels and chipmunks.

Which is good because I have 11 pounds to work through.


 
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