I Bought Another Airgun
I really go into PCP air rifles for a while. I’ve got a .177 Marauder I regulated that shoots about 120 shots on a fill at 920 feet per second. Its more than adequate for short range pest control, and even hunting. At practical airgun ranges its a little under powered at about 20FPE at the muzzle. Its still more powerful than your daddy’s Benjamin pumper that he told stories about pumping it 100 times and it sounded like a .22 rifle. My .177 Marauder is hitting 120 shots at 920 feet per second with a 10.65 grain pellet. That’s still nowhere near the 95 to 120FPE of a 22 long rifle cartridge.
I have a couple other airguns and in times past I talked about all of them on this site, but of course that content is all gone. Currently my most accurate airgun is a .22 BAM B-50 that shoots between 1000 and 1053 FPS with a 14.3 grain pellet. It has been known to drop a golf ball size group at 135 yards, and it did it with the cheap discount store tins of Crosman Premier hollow point pellets.
Almost as accurate as the B-50 and much more powerful is my .25 Marauder that came stock with a Green Mountain barrel. It probably won’t pass the 5 on a dime at 50 yards challenge, but it will come darn close. It does it with a 25.39 grain pellet coming out at 900-920 feet per second. I do not hesitate to hunt with this airgun. Its dropped collared dove with authority at over 60 yards. At closer range it just passes right through them. If you have plugged the numbers in to your calculator you will have found that’s a muzzle energy of about 45-46 FPE. Its got some authority. Its a great short range small game hunter. It will drop rabbits and squirrels with no issue. It will shoot through a gopher that pokes its head up at the wrong time, probably lengthwise. Its still not .22LR power, but its quiet. The sound of the pellet hitting a collared dove is louder than the gun. I did some tuning on it, and put a larger air reservoir on it as well. I get 26-28 full power shots on a single charge of air before velocity starts to drop off. Its probably good for another 8-10 before short range elevation starts to change quicker than I can adjust. For small game and pest control its about as good as it gets. It could be more accurate, but its not bad. It does have one major problem. Its not just heavy (it is), but its front heavy. This makes off hand shooting more difficult than it needs to be.
Some years back I bought Kalibre Cricket in .25. It carried a few more full power shots (35 I think) than the .25 Marauder. It was slightly more accurate, and it was a little more powerful. It dropped the same pellets I use in the Marauder at about 950-970 FPS. It was a bull pup design with most of the weight above and behind your trigger hand. This made for much easier off hand shooting and even shooting from a rest or shooting stick seemed easier. It had a huge problem. It was a very very expensive air rifle. Many nice powder burners cost a LOT less than that air rifle. When I was a little short on cash I sold it.
The other day I was looking around and ran across a refurbished .25 Hatsan BullBoss priced at only about 2/3 the price of my Marauder. Maybe a little more as I got a good deal from a small dealer. Maybe a little less since I’ve done a lot of work on the Marauder. It’s got a lot of specs similar to the Marauder, and it’s a bullpup design. Now I’m like a little kid at Christmas waiting for my new toy to arrive.
Yes, they make a lot more powerful air rifles than this, but this almost ideally suits my needs (unless it’s too loud). The Hatsan does have a sound moderator (silencer), but its a lot smaller than the full barrel shroud on the Marauders.