I’m thinking about buying an air rifle to do a little target shooting in my basement on evenings when I get bored.
I’m not looking for one of those fancy target rifles with all the gizmos, just a bog-standard break-barrel air rifle and my budget is probably about €300 or so. Which is probably at the lower end of the price range.
I’m interested in a sub-20 joules air rifle so I won’t need a firearms licence.
I was wondering if anyone on here has some experience in air rifles, who might be able to recommend a make/model and also perhaps a reputable on-line outlet.
You have mentioned sub 20 Joules, but you have not indicated a budget. I have several air guns, but no break barrel so I cannot really comment on the type. What I will say is that a member of my target club has a couple of Weihrauch that I have some experience of and could recommend. They start at around 310€. If you are insistant on a break barrel, then I can help no more…but if you are to consider a PCP rifle then I might suggest a Snowpeak AP900 or AP1000 as a starter at around 280€ + pump etc.
For target shooting a break barrel is less accurate generally. Fine for plinking and general sporting. I still have my BSA mercury but haven’t fired it in years and selling was problematic. Fine for dispatching the occasional rat though.
You can pick up a basic 4.5mm /.177” break barrel air rifle with just regular iron sights for €150-200.
I’d strongly recommend going into an actual shooting and fishing shop and picking a few different models up and seeing how they feel. It shouldn’t take lot online to get some model recommendations and then you an find a local shop to get hands on.
Obviously, an entry level break barrel model isn’t going to have a match grade trigger, nor will it put every pellet through the same hole at 10 metres. I’ve no idea what a good brand/model is these days and France has a lot of brands I’d never heard of in the UK.
I strongly recommend ballistic glasses for all shooting use and this goes triple for indoor use of air rifles due to pellets loving to ricochet off any surface harder than a blancmange. You might also find the muzzle blast annoying indoors. I have an old BSA Polaris I picked up for plinking and went shopping for a screw-on sound moderator after 4-5 shots as she’s a noisy old girl.
A pair of cheap ear defenders from one of the Brico Sheds would do the same job indoors.
Stuart bought his air rifle from this company in Spain. Good prices and nice people to deal with. They were very helpful in helping him choose his air rifle (a Gamo but not sure what model).
However, my French Pest Control diploma does allow me to shoot sub 19 joules for rodent control (I don’t have a hunting licence). I was out last week on a farm for a couple of hours legally nocturnally controlling using IR scope.
I have a 5.5mm Kral 2 (Turkish) Compressed air rifle, I bought it from Blackpool Air Rifles. It cost less than £400 sterling. I wouldn’t use it in a basement though, It will down a rat easily at 30m.
For ratting, and basement shooting I would go for a 5.5 not a 4.5, the latter fires faster, there are other reasons for the larger pellets for ratting, but might be too sensitive for some on an open forum!
The question being, how big is the basement, I wouldn’t use a rifle for anything under 15m.
Think of a rather more dangerous pea shooter where the air pushing the pellet along the barrel comes from a piston pushed by a big spring or a high pressure air tank.
As the pellet leaves the barrel, all that air behind it is going to expand rapidly which can be quite noisy. Not 12 bore shotgun noisy, but not silent either.
That’s known in the air gun world as “dieseling”, oddly enough because you’re compressing an oil/air mixture rather rapidly until it combusts just like what happens inside a diesel engine.
You reminded me that around the age of nine or ten, we used to make pea shooter rifles (and that I ‘invented’ a pea shooter pistol - a harbinger of becoming ‘creative art school material’).
These weapons consisted of a wooden rifle, with a trigger tensioned by a thick elastic band that held in place a dried pea in a very strong rubber band and string sling shot arrangement: it was surprisingly powerful and accurate. My father (who’d recently died) had been an Avro aero engineer, with a home workshop and a well equipped tool box that we put to good use.
I knew that but didn’t want to go technical. Yes it’s a naughty version of me that diesels the air rifle. It was very handy indeed from time to time when using Prometheus pellets. It could put a hole clean through about 1/2” of softwood
I handed all our “weapons of limited destruction” over to the local gendarmes when I moved. Did not want an antique twelve bore shotgun, three air rifles with sights and a sniper style air rifle any more as they were stored away plus I had two Japanese WW2 bayonets that were nasty and still in their leather scabbards. The office who took them all returned with bottles of wine for me as he took them for a private collection he had with permission.
I haven’t used it in a long time as its not part of my hobbies or agenda these days. When I was a apprentice I stripped it down and taper reamed the transfer port which gave it a bit more power, never had it tested for fear of it being confiscated. I am sure I also did some work on the piston as well but memory fades as it was a long time ago.
