Fun with air

Cost of gasoline getting you down?  The ever increasing cost of ammo and hard to find primers making your hobby less fun?  Can't ever find time to make it to the range if you had gas and or ammo?  Why not shoot air in your back yard.  Pellets are cheap, no primers, no need to travel to the range!

Last weekend Bill F. had a great airgun setup at the club to introduce folks to the fun of air.  The "Pellet Palace" was probably the busiest station at the club.  After sighting in one of the Gamo specials and hitting the mushroom can, I recalled just how much fun air can be.

I had promoted air when I first got to NH but it received a luke warm reception.  After a few un-attended approved NRA matches I decided to pack it in.  I had gone to some considerable effort to have a nice set of resetables shipped from Texas.  John Livingston welded them back together and that was that.

Now, I know of four silhouette shooters who have 10m air rifles.  Heck, a Gamo special from Wally World will work. My first airgun was cheap Chinese copy which was enough to start me off in AAA for my first air silhouette match ever.  I was hooked.

We shoot what is called 1/10th scale animals at four distances.

Chickens 20 yards
Pigs 30 yards
Turkeys 36 yards
Rams 45 yards

I will try to post some targets with something of familiar scale.  They are small but seeing them fall is just a hoot! 

Here is a video, first animal falls at 40 seconds in, I had to run back 45 yards and then shoot.  I was using my Anschutz 2002SSP, JSB Exact pellets and a Bushnell Elite 4200 8-32x.  Scope on a customer riser made by Fenton S of Alba, TX.

All we need a an indoor space with 50 yards.  One club in FL actually had a little door and they opened the door and put the rams outside to make an indoor silhouette league.  One thing that is nice, EASY to set up a match and you just pull a string and the animals pop right back up.

Pioneer Fall Family Fun Day

A little off topic but we did have 100 animals out for club members to shoot at.  Thanks to Doug, Bob and Ron for helping out.  The weather and food was fantastic and I am sure we will do the event again.  It was great to see families out.  Mothers, fathers and their kids.  It is quite interesting for us to see the different perspectives on shooting sports. 

One area that drives me a bit bonkers is the desire to call a firearm a weapon.  A firearm is not a weapon and less used in such a way such as a fist, a baseball bat or a car!  We sure don't refer to our car as a weapon?  Or heaven forbid a baseball bat!!  Soap box away.

It was all good.  Excellent weekend.  Unclear if the silhouette program will grow from it but I think there are many folks who now hold a much higher respect for the lowly price point rimfire rifle.  I will say there were a number of heavy trigger "semi-auto" price point guns that showed up.  I let some use an accurate gun with a light trigger and WOW!  They started to hit what they were aiming at.  Cheap rifles do shooting sports such a dis-service.

The big suprise to me was the huge success of the air rifle demo set up.  I think Bill is still asleep after that long day.  He brought every size of air rifle, BB gun known to man.  Had simple targets and some hard targets.  Every time I was up by the club house there must have been two people at the line shooting.  All walking away with a WOW look on their face.  No noise, no recoil and look at those can's spin!  Next year I should bring my resetable silhouette airgun targets.