Be prepared.
Yeah, it’s a Lion King number, but it also happens to be a motto I take seriously. Could you feed yourself, or your family, if there wasn’t ground beef in a freezer down the road, ready to be traded for your stacks of paper or a swipe of your plastic? Could you find, capture or kill game native in your area?
That’s what the air rifle in the above image is all about. With proper shot placement and a 33.9gr Diabolo pellet, at ~45 ftlbs of energy, you can drop most backyard critters to keep your table catered. With some luck, coyote’s and even whitetail can be taken with a headshot.
The best part is, with a high quality Moderator (I’m running the DonnyFL Ryu) and a quickly improvised Target stand, you can get your scope zeroed and get in plenty of practice shots right in your backyard!
Shooting from a bipod without a rear rest means it took a handful of shots to really get my scope dialed in, but even on a gusty drizzly March afternoon in New England I was able to put out the following shot string at approximately 50 yards.
That’s nothing to shake a stick at and easily “minute-of-squirrel” at the distances I’m looking to shoot at. Compare that to my son’s .177 pellet gun pattern above, which was able to get on target but had some serious trouble with the wind… And you’ll understand why I’m happy with the performance of my .25!
Overall, sighting in our pellet guns to get ready for some squirrel stalking was a great start to the outdoor season for us.