PCP air pistol accuracy at 30 yards

[North Country Gal]

As Bill and I grow older, we have been less and less inclined to load up the car and drive to the club range and shoot our powder burning guns. It's just getting to be too much work for us oldsters. In order to satisfy my accuracy shooting needs, then, I've been staying more at home and shooting the air guns.

Home on the range


Oh, I've also been shooting my rimfire rifles and pistols in the backyard and though that is fun, having to stick with the quiet options on rimfire ammo really hurts the accuracy, especially on the rimfire handguns. Yeah, it's great just being able to shoot some of these classic 22 pistols and revolvers with CB ammo and the like without bothering the neighbors, but it's hard to justify owning and collecting these fine 22 handguns if all I'm going to do is shoot them with sub par ammo. Seems like such a waste and an expensive one at that.

But what about air pistols? How accurate can they be? Surely you can't expect air pistols to compete in accuracy with 22 rimfire pistols at distance much beyond 10 yards or so.

That depends on the air pistol, though. Take my classic PCP Steyer LP-10. It's actually a very specialized air pistol designed to excel at Olympic 10 meter offhand competition. Just for kicks, after removing the completion sights, I recently modded it to take a Burris pistol scope, which it was never designed to use. Yeah, I was getting desperate to do some long range pistol work after settling for lousy 30 yard accuracy with the rimfire pistols because of the crummy ammo I was using.


A 10 meter air pistol, though? How accurate could it be at 30 yards, even using a rest? Like I said, I was getting desperate.

And ... easy under an inch at 30 yards.


Looks like I'll be staying more at home for my pistol shooting, too. I think my collection of 22 handguns is getting nervous.

[Sir Henry]

That is really a fun way to shoot and you are good at it. I shot a lot of air guns in Woodinville but switched to rimfire when I moved to Wisconsin. I shoot mainly SV and found that it’s quiet enough that it doesn’t scare the birds or wildlife away.

[DsGrouse]

I need to pull out my day state .22, .30 and RAW .357 and enjoy those.

Now that i have a swaging set up, i can swage slugs for them all!

Pcp's a great bit of fun

[BrokenolMarine]

I never shot airguns seriously, but did use them to start the kids off, before they moved up. Ice cubes in the grass off the deck, no clean up.

Great shooting as usual. Quality gun makes a difference, but you have to put a skillful shooter behind the trigger. Very nice.

[rickhem]

Couldn't agree more on the simplicity of shooting with an airgun. Very little set-up, no real problem with just taking 5 or 10 shots and that's it.

I have a few air pistols myself, and have always been able to find 10 meters to shoot indoors, but haven't tried them further or outdoors. I have an old Daisy 747 that I got for making a donation to the US Shooting Team back in the 1980s. Bought one of the original IZH-46 pistols back when we could import from Russia. And I have a FAS609, along with a hand pump to charge the cylinder. Both the IZH and the FAS are one hole shooters at 10 meters, but I, unfortunately, am not. I actually shoot better with the Izzy, it's a single stroke pneumatic, and a bit nose-heavy, but I shoot better with it. They're all great practice for precision style shooting. Plenty of places on the internet to shoot monthly matches posting a target or two, lots of fun.

For your backyard shooting, look into one of the lower priced PCP rifles. I have a .25 cal Air Venturi Avenger in a plastic stock that will shoot better than my .22 rimfires at 50 yards. Of course that needs a calm day, but I am really impressed with how accurate that rifle is. I have a couple old circular saw blades hanging on trees out at 100 to 130 yards across the grass from our front porch. I can sit on the steps, and sling lead at those whenever I need to scratch an itch, and those saw blades make a very satisfying clang when hit. Wind pushes the pellets, but that's part of the fun.

What do you use to charge your cylinder on the Steyr?

[North Country Gal]

Thanks folks.

To fill the Steyer, I have either a vintage Hill pump or our Hill compressor. The pump takes about 50 pumps to go from min to max pressure, but the Steyr can go at least 100 shots on a fill, plus I have an extra cylinder, so I can do a lot of shooting between fills.

I actually own at least as many air guns as powder guns and a fair number of those air guns are air pistols. Some of those air pistols include the IZH-46M (the Izzy) as well as a Daisy 747 and the HW75 and 45 (Beeman P). Of these, the Izzy is the most impressive and my favorite. The Izzy is also capable of competing at 25 yards with conventional powder handguns.

[rickhem]

Very nice, and I like how you have your Izzy set up with the dot. Mine is the non magnum version, and looks very similar, but no dot. They sure are accurate, and a good example of the Soviet mindset of being 100% function, and no worries about the aesthetics. When I bought mine, it was purported to be the pistol used by Communist block countries in the Atlanta Olympics.
I have one of the small steel traps set up in my basement now that allows me to shoot the pistols indoors. I even bought a stack of the Kruger 17 x 17 cm airgun targets that the trap was made for, they do give amazingly clean holes. I also have a Daisy/Avanti 753 that I shoot down there too. Tried shooting on the official 10 meter air rifle targets, but man, those are tough targets. I usually use the pistol targets even for the rifle now.

[daytime dave]

NCG, that is a very nice group you have. That scope works.
I agree that you need to have nice stuff to get nice groups. You have nice very nice stuff!

Marine, what you said is very true. "Quality gun makes a difference, but you have to put a skillful shooter behind the trigger."

[North Country Gal]

Thanks, Dave. Yeah, the gun makes a difference. I realize that very few shooters spend the big bucks (and I do mean big bucks, typically 2K or more) to get one of these PCP Olympic class air pistols. I got very lucky on the Steyer. Bought it used at an auction for a tiny fraction of what it cost new along with the hand pump to fill it. Otherwise, no way could we afford to get one. Just thought everyone would enjoy a post about one of these amazing air pistols, since most folks will never own one.

By the way, I do shoot all types of air pistols and enjoy them all and most of them are very affordable. Will do some posting on these, soon.