Western Airguns Western Mordax Venom, first impressions, and eventual ongoing review.

Last winter I got a hankering for another semiauto pcp airgun. I was kind of leaning towards buying a pistol and that would have been a Huben GK1 V3, except I contacted two dealers and one called back once and answered my questions but when I called to order it a few months later, even after another two calls, he didn't return a call back to me. Okay???
The other I messaged here on AGN and no reply back.
Alrighty then, maybe some day I'll try to get one again, but maybe not, and not from them.

For some reason I didn't find out about the Western Mordax until this spring, somehow I had missed it's small size thinking of their bigger pcp's which I wasn't interested in?? So I looked into it.
Removeable 15 shot mags, check.
Small enough to be used as a pistol, check.
Pic rail on top for easy optics mounting, check.
But not a great shot count so I held off ordering one and wasn't sure what I'd do at that point.

Enter the Mordax Venom with 300cc bottle that just became available, and with higher shot count, so now it became much more appealing to me! I had to have one so I talked to Lauren of AOA and got one ordered. She had it shipped out as soon as it was ready to and it was at my door two days later via UPS.

Pistol, or Pifle, how is this Mordax to be described??, so I'll just leave that to the opinions of others?? However I'll be using it as a pistol and a pifle - both ways.
I've had a lot of PB pistols, BIG heavy ones and sometimes long too, so shooting a Mordax as a pistol is fine with me and thus accepted it's large size in pistol form. It is what it is, right. I found out it doesn't fit in my pocket well, lol, who'd a thought, no biggy because I have the right tool for that job already for duties should it ever be needed.
What I haven't had much of is SBR-ish guns this small, airgun or PB, so that'l be fun to try out with the Venom.

Onto my first impressions.
Mine is a 22 caliber since it'll be used for plinking more than hunting and little desire to bump up the power but might go down in power some later on.
I just opened the box.

Wow nice case! IMHO It's aspects like this that greatly improves the ownership experience. One less thing to have to buy, also a backpack, or normal carry for keeping the nice gun inside from getting scratched up, out of the weather, or you name it, and with lot's storage. I'm already envisioning going on long E-MTB rides with it while seeing, then havesting, tree squirrels in the fall as I'm riding along. Have to get the Wifey to make some soup which I found out can be delicious.
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AOA must have made sure the Venom was in good working order since there is the blue tape showing some stats they wrote down. I like it that they put this extra effort in.
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Other than reading the instructions the first things I did were getting a feel of the gun, both with the folding stock deployed as a SBR, then folded as a pistol, then the folder removed. Man this gun is light and light enough to be used as a pistol just fine which was a concern of mine beforehand. So far so good - I like the feel of it. In pistol form most likely will just take the folder off since it's just loosening one screw to take it off. Everything seems high qaulity and there's no play in the folder system as well easy to fold and unfold.

Next installing the Holosun Green Dot/GD. I like larger dots and this one is 8 moa which is great for shooting fast. Eh I'll try it and if it's too big I've got RD's with smaller dots to use too. Not sure I'll put a rifle scope on it but who knows it could also happen.
See how things pan out.
I got lucky because of the fact I have small cheeks and I can put my face on the stock and see straight down the GD perfectly.

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Well at this point there's what could be considered bad news, and it is that I'm waiting to shoot the Venom until late next week while on my annual camping trip up north in Wyoming, so I'll get back on this thread around that time to share the news.

Though a VERY positive thumbs up so far! I hope it shoots as good as it looks and feels!!!
 
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Really good news and really bad news!

The good - Man I love shooting this Venom! I got a quick zero at 30Y using the Holosun with the 8 moa green dot sight and one group was an inch or so which is hard to do without a fine dot or reticle. Then I set up 15 of my mid size to larger steel knockover plates on the ground which were of various sizes from 1.5" to 4" going out from 10Y to 30Y, smaller ones were closer, larger as distance increased, and shot them offhand fast but trying for precision vs all out speed. This was just what I wanted the Venom for and it was a success. Also there were no malfunctions until....

The bad - I'll just spit it out and honestly I don't know how I managed to do what I did since I knew better but I overfilled the gun because I was looking at the regulator gauge "not moving" instead of the bottle gauge which messed something up causing the guns magazine to quit advancing properly. So I sadly just put the gun back in the case. It's only supposed to be filled it to 300 bar max and I filled to to 311 bar.
I think I'll stop around 290 bar after I get it back repaired. Lesson learned the hard way, darn it!

My plan was to put my March 1-10 on the Venom to see how precise it is and will do this later.
Was also going to take the folder off and shoot it as a pistol.

Sorry for the bad news so I'll revisit this thread in a couple more weeks with hopefully more good news.

Thankfully I had brought four other airguns to shoot so I enjoyed them. Also had such a great time with my family camping 12 yards off the Greys river, with near perfect temperatures, and got to know my 2 year old grandson a lot better.

My son bought a drone so maybe I can get him to take some footage of me doing some shooting with the Venom which would be fun to watch.

The thing I found the most interesting is the place we go to to camp is one of the prettiest I've seen and for most of the 5 days we were there we had it all to ourselves?!
Thanks Lord for your grace, mercy, kindness and such a fun time, in spite of my mistakes.

This is what it looks like there.
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Nice review and I'm glad you like it, but I highly doubt your mag advancement issue has anything to do with the slight over fill of the gun . . . and what a beautiful spot!

I don't have a Mordax, but I do have a Sidewinder and Huben K1 (both in .22) and both had mag advancement issues for different reasons. The Sidewinder was an early mechanical failure of the mechanism after about 1000 shots, and it took a new part that AoA sent me to fix it (the Huben was a spring that went weak after over 15K shots).

The mag advancement mechanism only sees regulated pressure, and a slight overfill would not lead to any unusual spike in the pressure that it sees. I think you need to look elsewhere for the cause. Don't forget that the ~11 bar you overfilled is well within the pressure swings the gun could see from temperature changes, and it would have been designed to accommodate that . . .

When my Sidewinder went bad, it started failing to advance on occasion, and slowly got worse. I fgured it might be a lube issue, so I blew out all the lube I could with compressed air, lubed it with a light silicone oil and blew all that out to flush it, and then with Krytox oil. It worked fine then for a few mags but then went back to failing to advance. I reached out to AoA and they walked me through a few things that did not change anything then recommended the part swap. That cured it, and it is still good two years later (although it does not get shot as much as the Huben).

Good luck with it, but I'd reach out to AoA, or wherever you bought it . . . .
 
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Thanks for your advice Alan.

You'd know more than I about this kind of thing. I can't wait to get it fixed and when the warranty is up I'd like to learn how to work on it.

In the instructions it states not to fill over 300 bar or the gun can be damaged and since this was my first fill I'm fairly certain the problem was my fault this time.

I hope this Venom turns out more reliable than my Skout EVO is. I guess I'm getting used to airgun problems because of the EVO, problems I didn't cause.