Help me pick my first Air Rifle since being a kid in the woods (first post)

"125sniper"Major . I think the Hatsan company makes a great gun . I really like the Dominator 200s for around 290.00 dollars They changed the gun last year .It did shoot 22 cals at around 590 fps and now its gets around 800 pfs and .177 is now at 1,000 pfs . Its not over powered like the 125 sniper or some of the other guns they have ....

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Either you have never shot a Feinwerkbau 300S, or have completely lost your marbles if you do. I'd rather spend $600 on a FWB (or any other german rifle) then $10 on that Turkish junk. You can be one of the few lucky people who got a decent Hatsie, but most of them are ripe for the good old round archive as soon as you open the box. But the major made his choice, and a wise one at that too.  

Yeah it's kinda like comparing a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader to the warted lunch lady at your middle school ....Don't deny it , you remember her hair netted ass

"JoeWayneRhea"Yeah it's kinda like comparing a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader to the warted lunch lady at your middle school ....Don't deny it , you remember her hair netted ass

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LOL, there’s one for comparison.
But yeah, that about sums it up bro.  ​

I must have got a good Hatsan I have had no trouble out of it . I have not heard any bad thing about the guns made by Hatsan in the last few years they must have changed things there . I think they are making some good pcp's and gas ram guns also .They must have stepped up there game because now Its the most gun you can get for your money ,so maybe your talking about guns made by them more than 5 years ago or so .
I think I use to shoot the Feinwerkbau 300 on the shooting team back in the mid 80's at my college . We used it for 10 meter shooting . I think it was shooting at 500 or so fps just enough power to get it to 10 meters accurately so its good for inside or outside close range shooting , I don't think it even has enough power to knock over a field target so your kind of limited to its use.,and definitely not any good for any kind of small game ,maybe a snake or rat but thats about it . That's why I was telling him to get a gun around 1,000 fps in .177 ,fixed barrel type air rifle so it could be used for hunting , target practice a maybe even field target . I should have read the next page before I commented I didn't see where he got a gun already . But no doubt for 10 meter shooting the 300 is a great gun and I have always wanted one . 

No, seriously @Sniper125, I mean no disrespect, but.... I repair or perform maintenance on airguns and firearms for friends, and at the gun club. I've even owned a Hatsan (85 sniper gasram) a long time ago, and although they look pretty much okay on the outside, on the inside you can see the difference in craftsmanship between the typical British Air Arms/BSA or German Weihrauch/FWB/Diana rifles, and the Turkish stuff. Inside a Hatsan, it's burrs and tool marks all over the place. Nothing is polished, and if you open one up, fresh out of the box, you will even find metal splinters inside the gun that where left behind from the machining process. The quality of the barrels is terrible (take a bore scope and look at the rifling for instance, again, burrs and tool marks). Even the quality of the metal (hardness) parts isn't up to standards. They're fun, but won't last you a life time, while my 40-year old FWB still shoots like it just came out of the factory and has pushed out well over half a million pellets out of it's barrel.

The FWB rifle on the other hand, is smooth and polished, even the parts that don't need to be smooth and are out of sight shine like a mirror. But then again, we're comparing a sub-$300 plinking airgun with a match rifle that won many Olympic matches and costed well over $2000 back in it's day, so the comparison isn't a honest one in every respect.

Jonnes I think that's where you and I both see the difference .You tear down a top quality airgun whether its PCP or Springer and you kinda get to look under the Big Top and see what's really going on .

Yep, always look there where the magic happens and you see why some guns shoot better than others.

I have said it many times ...Real quality production has a certain " feel " I work in our companies QC department so its something I look for without even noticing now . Close a break barrel from a European rifle and it doesn't shut , it locks like a vault door. Cheaper manufacturing can't make those type of tolerances and still make their price point . Quality is money , how much quality are you willing to pay for . Its true in most things ,in guns and optics it FOR SURE is

True Joe, in the end you get what you pay for. I have yet to see a Hatsan that has been owned for more than 10 (well, make that 5) years by one owner, while the Germans are passed on from generation to generation.

Again I think your talking about guns made before they changed their parts and up dated things like the super quite suppressors the match trigger and added the Lothar Walther barrels to this gun, I'm not sure what barrel they are using now on their other guns but I will try to find out . Its not even the same gun as it was just a few years ago maybe not even last year . This gun as you can see in the review with a 10 shot grouping of 12 mm at 30 yards . Give this a read . http://www.pressreader.com/uk/air-gunner/20160101/281509340100774  copy and paste this link for some reason if you click on it its adding a few thing on the end and its not going to the right page . I think the guns made by Hatsan in the last year or so will last a person a life time if they do regular lubing maintenance. I think people are going to start finding out that domanator 200 will compete with the tx 200 for half the price and it comes with a adjustable cheek rest and a expendable butt plate's . The tx 200 uses the same Lothar walther barrel as the Hatsan . 

That article screams advertorial. But good that you refer to it, because have you looked closely at the first picture in the middle of that article? That detailed picture of the suppressor and cocking lever? That EXACTLY illustrates what I'm trying to tell you. Cheap plastic that looks rough on the edges, brass, tool marks on the cocking lever? Come on! On a Weihrauch for instance, it's shiny high-grade metal. Brass is soft, so is plastic, and it will wear and eventually break over time. To show you what I mean, the above picture is that specific Hatsan you're talking about, the bottom one is that of a HW97. See the difference? No plastic, no brass, just hard polished steel! And that's just the business end of the rifle.



Coming back to the TX200, that uses the MATCH grade LW barrels, they make barrels in different grades. A LW match grade barrel alone will set you back almost $200. And last but not least, calling something a match trigger is easy, have you (I'll ask you again) ever shot a Feinwerkbau, or a non-match Diana with a T06 trigger which is undoubtedly the best non-match trigger out there for air rifles? The T06 doesn't even come close to a true match trigger like the one used in the Feinwerkbau, let alone those Hatsan triggers.

Yes, the Dominator is half the price of am Air Arms TX200, but for a reason. A lot of reasons actually. And yes, I've seen and handled the latest generation Hatsies, they're a bit better, but still incomparable to the German air rifles or the Air Arms underlevers and without any doubt incomparable with true match rifles like the FWB300S. Any (honest) gunsmith or dealer will tell you the same thing. It's like comparing a Chevy Aveo to an Audi A8.