Finding A Better Pellet For Groundhogs

I believe you are very near the limits of what you can humanly dispatch with a 25 or 22 cal pellet gun,
when pursuing game the size of groundhog. The 25 cal is better suited for the task than the 22.
The 30 or a big bore would allow far more flexibility in shot placement and range. And is in my opinion
a much better tool for the job.
With your 25 if you limit yourself to 30 yrds or so and can place the shot just under the ear from the side
of the head, you will have no farther problems. It is when you extend the range or choose some other
placement, the limitations of a pellet will likely as not let ya down. Assuming accuracy is the same
heavier is always better. And if any benefits exist of a 22 over a 25 I am unaware of them.
hope it helps, good luck!

Airgunbill Well the 50% size increase coupled with a softer lead I agree is likely the prob. I must admit I have never once killed a groundhog with a pellet gun.
I base my advice on my experience on a creature of similar size and tenacity , the coon.
MY wild cat 25 at 75 yards will punch through 3/4 plywood shooting the jsb heavys
Predator poly mags will as well and put a deeper dent in the backer board.
But the hands down king of penetration is the ED JIN ( small green tin) at something like
44 grains they are hard to stop. I suspect you will find with the RIGHT pellet your 25 will out preform
the 22 . Good luck , let me know how it goes. 

I have killed a number of groundhogs out to and slightly past 100 yards with 25gr jsb kings with out issue. That particular gun is running 53fpe and has also taken a number of coyotes with head shots out to 50 yards. I will admit that for groundhogs and larger, I much prefer my 70fpe .25 or my 80fpe .30.

Postmortem autopsy should do the trick. Compare the .22 and .25 unless you just can't recover the critter. Do you get complete pass through with either pellet or are they exit less shots. Collect a few dead specimens and set up the shot and check the results. It's very interesting what you are postulating on the diameter and it would be interesting to see if the math matches what occurs in the field. 

I believe your thoughts on diameter are correct Bill. I have a .22 shooting 25gr monsters at 48fpe and my one .25 with 25gr kings at 53fpe. Though as stated above I have not had issue with the .25 killing groundhogs, my .22 at close to equal fpe does penetrate deeper than my .25.

Same held true with another one of my .25's versus .30. I had the .30 set to the same 70 fpe as the .25 and the .25 penetrate deeper than the .30. My experiments were not very scientific, but I concluded that if fpe is equal or close to equal, the smaller diameter pellet will penetrate deeper. Not talking alot, but if memory serves correct, maybe .25"-.50" at 30 yards into modeling clay.

Most .25's I am seeing top out around 40 to 50 foot pounds. My Condor will do about 100 foot pounds with a cast 52 grain soft lead projectile. The trick is having room to load a longer and heavier projectile which most magazine fed air guns can't do because of the limited gap the magazine fits in. 100 foot pounds will dispatch much larger animals than 50 foot pounds as well as having much more downrange energy retention.

Thurmond

My best guess is that you have a much higher sectional density with your heavy for caliber 22. If you run a 25 at the same speed with a similar sectional density it should kill equally or better than the 22.

Soft lead is your problem.It was for me too.Instead of air arms it was JSB 25.39.I switched to benjamin domes hard lead alloy,27.8 grains,and buddy let me tell ya'.Night and day difference.Critters drop with the Benji domes! And,my .25 Mrods shoot them a VERY close second in accuracy to the JSB 25.39.

I will second the Benjamin domes. They are harder lead and very accurate out of my armada. There is a lot to take into account when hunting. Benjamin domes or copper coated pellets are an option. Copper coated are 33 percent harder than lead pellets. I have shot vht coated pellets and bullets that showed less expansion and deeper penetration out of the same gun as lead. A .25 pellet is roughly 14 percent larger than a .22. A .25 of the same weight and speed will slow faster due to the increased surface area and larger “diablo tail”. Add that to a soft lead pellet and you have less penetration. Not only more drag through air but in your target(game). 

Here are two woodchucks I killed with my Compact the first weekend I owned it. I only shoot 25gr JSBs thru it. Shot placement is key with any caliber airgun. I have taken more woodchucks with my .177 mauraders out to 80 yards by far. The two .25 cal kills were 90 and 114 yards. My compact WC spits the 25gr JSBs at 890fps. I would love to see what my RW HP does on chucks with the 25gr JSB Redesigned. Same weight and faster should prove lethal past 100 yards. 

I second that notion.the domes work great.but I've taken out so many ground hogs with the heavies.up to a 100 yds.my mrod is pushg the heavies at 865 per second.thats 55 ft pds.do it all the time alex

I have killed over 50 groundhogs using my Airforce Talondor .25 with the JSB MKII from 30 - 90 yards. Most of them were headshots (all but 2). I am getting 850fps and it just slams them. DRT, just muscle flinching. This gun will do 1.5 inch 5 shot groups at 100 yards. The MKII is accurate and devastating at all of these yardages. I don't shoot anything but the MKII. Proven killer in my gun. My buddy shoots the same gun and pellets, last spring he killed a 23 pound gobbler at 25 yards in 1 shot. He has also killed around 50 groundhogs with his. We have a contract with a local University , local city government and 3 farmers to eradicate all groundhogs. The combination works great for us.

I have taken about a dozen rockchucks here in MT with my daystate .25 and an mrod also in .25. For the people who dont know what a rockchuck is its a yellow bellied marmot. The average rockchuck is probably the same size as the average groundhog we also know theres some real porkers out there but all in all very close to each other. I have taken rockchucks from 30 yds out to 80 yds. The Mrod was shooting 40 fpe at the muzzle with JSB Kings. I took a rockchuck with a head shot at 80 yds and the JSB King penetrated completely thru the skull with the pellet stopping just under his skin on the far side of the skull right at his cheek bone.I dug that pellet out and kept it I do have a pic of the chuck and pellet if anyone is interested. My Daystate was tuned as high as 60 fpe with JSB King Heavy mark 2 and every chuck I have shot with it has been a complete pass thru. Most of the chucks shot with the Daystate have been 30 - 40 yds. I have some of those chuck kills on video I just havnt had time to make another video for my youtube channel but one day I will get it done

I dont think your problem is FPE or pellets since I have had great results with the exact same pellet and power level out to 80 yds. AirgunBill if you look at your penetration chart for the the JSB King Heavy it outperformed almost every pellet. There were only two that penetrated farther and they penetrated less the .700 more than the King Heavy. Thats not enough difference on a head shot to lose a chuck. The King Heavy out performed the benji dome pellet that some posters said perform better on game due to being harder. Well if they are having good results with the benji the JSB Kings should be even better since it out penetrated the benji dome in your own test 

Beware of blindly using the penetration test table. FPE at the Target is what counts and the different pellets have different ballistic coefficients vastly changing the real FPE at the Target. The Grizzlies I believe on the best ballistic coefficient of nearly .07 where has the MK2 s are around .04.

Beware of blindly using the penetration test table. FPE at the Target is what counts and the different pellets have different ballistic coefficients vastly changing the real FPE at the Target. The Grizzlies I believe on the best ballistic coefficient of nearly .07 where has the MK2 s are around .04.

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I dont blindly use penetration tests with media I use actual field results and the JSB king and king heavies over penetrate animals up to the size of woodchucks with head shots if they are running 40 fpe or more at the muzzle. Every single chuck I have killed had complete penetration of the skull with JSB Kings and King heavies from 30 yds to 80 yds with muzzle energies that ranged from 40 fpe to 55 fpe. I have no doubt any of the pellets in the list will easily kill a chuck with a head shot out to 80 yds and further.

Killing animals with airguns takes everything to be done right in order to have a quick humane kill. Sometimes I think people forget how critical shot placement is with airguns as the power output has been increased. I am not saying airgunbill has made bad shot placements. Pellets deflect as he has said when they contact bone or the hard veins of wings. So you can make a perfect shot and have it deflect just a little and end up with a bad hit. Its not the pellet failing or the shooter making a bad shot its just murphies law coming into play and theres not much you can do about a deflected shot.

I had a JSB King heavy mk2 hit a ground squirrel with close to 40 fpe and it deflected. The ground squirrel needed a follow up shot to dispatch it. The pellet even with that much energy on that size of an animal deflected when it made contact with the ground squirrels skull. It should have plowed right thru no problem but everything happened just right for a deflection. I actually have it on video and if I didnt have the video I would be thinking the shot placement was bad when it was good and just deflected.

So what I am trying to say is the JSB Kings and King heavies work just fine as do any of the other pellets listed in this thread for taking chucks. You wont find a better pellet since they all will penetrate the skull for a clean kill. If you have more confidence in the harder pellet then by all means use it. I know the more confidence you have in your equipment and shooting ability the better you are going to perform in the field and that just increases your odds of having everything go right. The best thing you can do after the kill is a dissection of the shot and the wound channel to see how the pellet traveled thru the animal and if it hit where it was suppose to and if it actually damaged the vitals with the path it took after making contact. It will take a very small change in the pellets path to go from what should have been a quick clean kill into a messy ordeal that needs a quick follow up shot to end the animals suffering. 

JSB pellets work for me and have never let me down with sub par penetration. JSB are the most accurate pellet in my rifles so thats what I will use. I wont give up .5 accuracy with the softer JSB to a harder pellet that gives me twice the size in groups that JSB get. Accuracy is King with pellet rifles and thats what I stay with since a harder pellet that misses its mark is totally useless. If the scenario was flipped and the grizzlies or any of the other pellets listed were the most accurate I would be using them instead.