Both targets show me that the rifle wants to group, yet the shooter is inconsistent. The top target shows two distinct groups which simply means that something as simple as your finger on the trigger position changed. Or your eye position to the scope. The 15 meter group also shows the rifle wishes to group, and that again due to hold or trigger control several flyers snuck into the mix.
Having said this and hopefully taken in a constructive manner, and as you asked for an opinion, well here it is. Grin! There is no longer any Budget air rifles, Gamo and the like are now priced up over 300 bucks. Add 100 dollars to that and you can own a decent HW. All and I repeat All the Gamo, Crossman, Hatsan and other creations can be accurate however due to sloppy triggers, defects in barrels and other variables they generally are not accurate to the point experienced shooters call accurate.
Example: I can at random pick up any brand new HW rifle right out of the box and at 25 yards shoot a .25 inch group or less. I expect that and more than that I demand this kind of accuracy. ( No it was not the wind, that is a joke as the chicken says)
I can at random pick up any Gamo off the shelf and get a 2 inch group at this same 25 yards. I expect this and have learned that this is expected accuracy from the entire mix of Gamo, Crossman and other so called budget guns. Can they be tinkered with and made more accurate, yes however they will never do much more than cause frustration and disappointment.
Want to plink and shoot, Go get a Gamo and set up a one gallon bean can at 25 yards and all will be well.
Want to shoot sugar cubes at 25 yards, go get a HW rifle. You will start out with a great rifle that encourages good technique and helps you to improve as you learn.
I have various Gamo, Crossman, Hatsan rifles and they can be found under the workbench in the garage, sitting up in the horsebarn, in the attic, or the back of a closet. I simply grew totally disgusted with all of them and have no intent of ever shooting one again. Life is too short to endure these products and I offer no excuse for my opinion of all of them.
All of my HW rifles are very accurate, and only promote good technique and trigger control.
Diana rifles can be good as well, however Diana requires lots of tinkering and maintenance. Over the years with them I have had many failures of something simple due to its construction being pot metal. Or soft cocking pins. I have a Diana 350 magnum .22 that is laser accurate, however if I shoot it much like two tins of pellets a week, I can expect issues with it from loose stock screws to a busted pot metal safety.
Therefore in my opinion there is only one brand of rifle worth owning and that is the HW line. I have six HW rifles from one year old to 23 years old and other than simple maintenance never had an issue. Now several do require adjustable scope rings and that is simply luck of the draw. Accuracy is always rewarded to any shooters skill level and this is an expected and desired result.
Leave the so called high dollar budget guns on the shelf and start life over with a good rifle. Go get an HW. Now when you put in hours of practice you will be rewarded with improvement to your skill and at the end of the day you will wear a smile.
Gamos are for folks shooting at one gallon bean cans. They are also for YouTubers held in pocket shooting 2 inch groups at 30 yards and saying, It was the wind son, it was the wind. That should raise some feathers.........Chuckle.
Cheers
Kit
The groups on both targets are good enough for me, I was just wandering whether there are such springers, that would be capable of delivering and keeping such accuracy for the first 1000 rounds... And from what I've learnt from you, there aren't any, anymore. Nowadays, there's only one principle that applies to most companies' manufacturing: Quantity over quality!
Note that this Gamo of mine was customized and de-tuned. It had to be tinkered with, so that it can now deliver such accuracy.
Now, I completely agree with you that for casual plinking and some half-decent target shooting, Gamo rifles or Hatsans are ok enough... And with that having been said, I also agree with you on everything else that you've written down here, except for one thing... You wrote that there are no more "budget" springers anymore, I beg to differ. Maybe that's the case in the US, but here in the EU, we've got guns such as the Crosman Copperhead 900, or the Hatsan Striker 1000 for about 150 euros. Even certain "better" Gamos are just over the 200 mark. These are current prices. Weihrauch HWs are on the other hand around 500 euros! That's twice as much. Link to one of our stores:
https://nold.si/30-puske As for Diana, they've moved their manufacture to China. At this point, you probably know where that's headed.... chinesium and all that.
BTW, you made my day with your last two sentences about folks who have Gamos
It's just so true, I can say that myself! I wrote all about it in my review of the Gamo Big Cat 1000, how it was good out of the box for some 300 pellets and after that its accuracy went down the drain... It took some tinkering to even get it to group as good as it did in those two images that I've posted up above. Of course, I do realize that I could've done better myself in tightening those two groups up. With Gamos you just have to be a bit more diligent than with some the other guns... Could it also be due to a plastic stock? Do wooden stocks provide better consistency due to their heavier weight, than plastic ones?
Also, in every 'brand new Gamo gun' review on YT that comes out, there's a guy who shoots one of their new toys at a target some 20-25 yards away, and makes a decent group, but then all of a sudden, there comes a flier and the guy just apologetically says: "Ohh, that was just a bad pellet" or "that must've been a bad pellet in the box, it happens, it got twirled up in the wind"... and such. In fact, just yesterday I watched a brand new video review on YT, about the Gamo Gen3i, 10x, Swarm, 'insert' more bulls***, and the guy got a couple of fliers right of the bat, with his "preferred" Gamo brand of pellets and started going all out, defending the company, as if for those fliers that could've been his fault not the gun, and that he's just had a few strong gusts of wind go by when he took those shots... and so on and on. However, in the rest of his videos, on other, better springers, that I have watched, there were no fliers with, for instance the BSA Meteor Evo, which means that the guy can shoot, it was just Gamo's QC in the review on that 3i, "upgraded" Gamo, of course in combination with their pellets, that are also of dubious quality most of the time.
All in all, I appreciate your reply... I guess it took some time to write all of that, and for that I'd like to thank you, since you got the point pretty much spot on. Budget guns require tinkering and there's just no guarantee, that something won't go wrong with them after that as well. Expensive guns on the other hand will provide better accuracy and are going to have much less problems overall.
Once again, I appreciate the post.
Have a good one Kit!
