50 yards with the air rifles begins
Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 5:55 pm
I finally got around to trying some 50 yard shooting after setting up our backyard airgun range for some 50 yard work earlier this spring. For sure, I could have picked a better day as far as wind and also far as the air rifle, but nothing like a challenge, right?
The gun I chose is actually an excellent air rifle, namely, our new AA (CZ) 200T. It now wears the excellent Nikon 3-9x EFR.
The problem, though, is The AA 200T is a 10 meter match rifle and only develops 500 fps at the muzzle. It was never designed for distance work. That means that any breeze at all or even any air instability will push the light 7.87g 177 pellets I was using all over the place by the time they travel out to 50 yards. In fact, the pellets were moving so slow, I could easily follow the path of the pellets in the scope as they slowly traveled that 50 yards. Seems they took forever to get there.
Still, I was determined to shoot a good group. The problem, today, wasn't so much wind speed as its unpredictability. It would be calm one minute and the next I'd get a gust and even stranger, the gusts would come from different directions. Playing the wind, though, is a big part of air gun shooting at this distance.
Here's my best group of the day. I'd love to tell you I repeated it over and over, but I couldn't. The wind just refused to cooperate. As it was, it took a long time and a lot of patience to shoot this one. Most groups stayed under an inch, though, if I was patient, but waiting for the wind to behave so I could get 5 good shots in a row was pretty darn frustrating. Ended the session just shooting steel, instead.
BUT, this really is representative of what a good PCP rifle can do at 50 yards. I know, because I've done it often enough with our other PCP rifles (those shoot at 900 fps). So, welcome to the club my little CZ 200T.
The gun I chose is actually an excellent air rifle, namely, our new AA (CZ) 200T. It now wears the excellent Nikon 3-9x EFR.
The problem, though, is The AA 200T is a 10 meter match rifle and only develops 500 fps at the muzzle. It was never designed for distance work. That means that any breeze at all or even any air instability will push the light 7.87g 177 pellets I was using all over the place by the time they travel out to 50 yards. In fact, the pellets were moving so slow, I could easily follow the path of the pellets in the scope as they slowly traveled that 50 yards. Seems they took forever to get there.
Still, I was determined to shoot a good group. The problem, today, wasn't so much wind speed as its unpredictability. It would be calm one minute and the next I'd get a gust and even stranger, the gusts would come from different directions. Playing the wind, though, is a big part of air gun shooting at this distance.
Here's my best group of the day. I'd love to tell you I repeated it over and over, but I couldn't. The wind just refused to cooperate. As it was, it took a long time and a lot of patience to shoot this one. Most groups stayed under an inch, though, if I was patient, but waiting for the wind to behave so I could get 5 good shots in a row was pretty darn frustrating. Ended the session just shooting steel, instead.
BUT, this really is representative of what a good PCP rifle can do at 50 yards. I know, because I've done it often enough with our other PCP rifles (those shoot at 900 fps). So, welcome to the club my little CZ 200T.
