Through the Years

I did my best to hold the weight of the rifle steady in front of me, my elbow sat on my hip, side on in true target shooter style. I remember the 4x magnified crosshair circling around the rabbit’s head as it peered cautiously over the small rise in the bank, a fence post directly behind it.

As the crosshair passed over its head again I squeezed the trigger half in hope and a muffled ‘twang’ momentarily broke the early morning silence, with the rabbit disappearing from view.

There had been a loud ‘thwack’ when I’d fired, which to my inexperienced ears, made me think I might have missed and hit the fence post behind.

I was 14 years old and not supposed to be on the ground I was on, so sitting the rifle on my hip and cocking the rifle’s long barrel before thumbing an ‘Eley Wasp’ pellet into the breach with cold fingers, I quickly moved forward for a look or possibly another hurried opportunity.

To both my surprise and delight there lay my first rabbit, stone dead, the pellet having passed clean through its eye.

I used that rifle for years and learnt a lot about shooting from using it. With long summer days spent sat by the flight pond shooting at dragonflies, lead black fingers could easily guide a tin of 500 pellets through the barrel over a weekend.

I still have that rifle 40 years on hung in my gun room, and I often look at it and compare it to airguns of today and how they have changed to the true precision tools they are now.

These days, most rifles have multi shot capacity, zero recoil and pellet on pellet accuracy you could  only dream of when I was young.

Back then an air rifle was just for kids really, something to shoot at rats with around the farm and never something serious, and you would often be told to “get yourself a shotgun if you wanna shoot stuff, that things no good for doin’ it!”

In fairness, unless you were within about 25-30 yards and had a bit of luck, it was pretty difficult to shoot with any level of precision with the majority of air rifles available then. Yet now the majority of pre-charged rifles will shoot considerably better groups than the best spring powered rifles of yesterday.

The step into pre-charged rifles was certainly the turning point in terms of precision probably with the most notable being the Theoben rifles which set an early benchmark and still maintain a strong following today. One of the first pre-charged rifles I remember seeing, and once owned, was a Saxby & Palmer bolt action rifle. This was a beautiful little hunting style rifle which used a a pre-charged cartridge which also housed a single pellet. Its downfall was it was a faff to load these cartridges up yet it was a joy to shoot and far outshot most spring rifles of the day.

Not only has performance improved over the years, but the difference in power source has allowed for an interesting range of rifle styles from classic wood stocked rifles to tactical AR-15 style rifles too!

FX Airguns have taken this to a whole new level with their DRS rifle. I recently had the pleasure of running two of these rifles for review, one in the stunning looking Hunter wood stocked version and the other in a super ‘tacticool’ AR-15 DRS Tactical version.

I’m very much a fan of tactical style rifles yet I do also still admire the beauty of a true wood stocked hunting rifle and I have to say I honestly couldn’t say which I preferred!

The Hunter seamlessly incorporates the air cylinder into the stock which although giving the rifle quite a heavy appearance, I was pleasantly surprised just how light the rifle actually is in the hand and looses very little of its classic styling.

The tactical version gives a no nonsense appearance with plenty of rails to kit it out with all manner of add ons, and with much of the rifle compatible with Mil-spec upgrades you can really personalise these rifles, which if we’re honest, is one of the best parts of an AR style rifle - they are like Lego but for men!

FX Airguns are probably best known for their flagship ‘Impact’ range of rifles, probably mostly due to the likes of Matt Dubber using them to pull off some truly insane shots at incredible distances that would have been considered impossible 40 years ago with an air rifle.

With such accuracy and power potential, a demand for firearms rated (above 12ftlb of energy here in the UK) has arisen which seems surprising considering the availability of cheaper .22 LR rimfire rifles. 

Nonetheless, FAC air rifles have become popular with airgunners all around the world and for good reason. With the use of high performance ‘slugs’ these air rifles not only equal rimfire performance at closer ranges, but actually out perform them with their consistency when shooting at extended distances!

Rimfire rifles were always designed to be close range (sub 100 yards) small game rifles, and never intended for long range use, and as such at longer range, the precision engineering that controls the air rifles’ shot to shot consistency, allows for more precise bullet drops to be calculated than with the humble .22LR.

One of the key features with these air rifles is that they give you the ability to fine tune the main working parts to gain the best performance with any given ammunition you use it with.

In other words, where home loaders will tailor their ammunition to suit their rifle, in this case you rather tune the rifle to suit the pellet or slug which is an interesting concept!

The sub 12ftlb rifles here in the UK are realistically limited to two main calibres, .22 or .177 and historically you have had a debate between both camps as to which is best, the heavier hitting .22 or the flatter shooting .177.

With the FAC versions, given their higher power outputs, it gives more scope for heavier alternatives such as .25 (my chosen favourite all rounder in an FAC rated version) or the .30 calibre beasties!

These combined with the higher velocities achievable prove truly devastating on small game and surprisingly effective at closer ranges on foxes, and with good shot placement will drop them on the spot.

However you look at it, the airgun market has evolved into something else, a far cry from the basic break-barrels of my youth, and into a range of precision tools capable of incredible accuracy and extended range performance. Should everyone have such a rifle in their cabinet? …Abso-frigging-lutely!