.

[Altaros]

I live in a built-up rural area with houses all around me and 99% of the time I shoot at my shooting range at home and my longest safe distance available is 150 meter and is done only for target shooting. At 150 meter the H&N 18gr pellets can do a 50mm 10 shot group, sometimes better, sometimes worse. So, one of the reasons I want to shoot pellets is that it reduce speed / energy at a high rate. Another reason is the cost, pellets are much cheaper than slugs and for the amount I am target shooting cost will add up a lot. The closest public long distance range is about 40km away from me and when I go there I use my PB rifles for the longer distance and leave the PCP rifles at home. Other private ranges close to me is shorter than what I have at home. If I hunt small game with the air rifle, which is only a few times a year, I don't take shots at life animals at long distance. So, slugs have no advantage for me as for others. If I do hunt a bit longer distance, I use one of my PB rifles. When hunting antelope I have set myself a 200 meter distance limit even if I can shoot good groups at 500 meter. I once wounded a blue wildebeest at long distance and it took me the best part of a day to track it down and give it a final shot. I vowed myself not to do it ever again. I also don't want to wound a bird or a hare or other small game so I make 100% sure about shot placement by not stretching the distance.

yes if you want to stick to 150 yards then with a little luck the pellets should be enough. On the other hand, if the wind blows a bit more, shooting will be very difficult.
I understand your reasons though. They are practically the same, why, for example, I don't shoot long range fireams even though I have all the necessary permits for that.
I am discouraged by the distance (about 70km) of a suitable shooting range and also their length limitation (mostly up to 300-400m).
If you don't have a suitable longer distance, then pellets are the most suitable in this case, because you know that the impact energy will be negligible compared to a slug.
on the other hand, if you also shoot firearms, pellets airgun will not move you anywhere. It doesn't matter how you hold the rifle, it's very simple and fun to shoot.
For slugs with powers of 80 and more J, shooting requires a similar approach to firearms for maximum accuracy. If you make a mistake in holding the rifle and pulling the trigger, you can see it right away on the target, so it's a significantly cheaper way to improvement shooting skills that can be used on other rifles that airgun.
I know what I'm talking about, because when I switched from pellets when I had about 150,000 shots fired (caliber .177 and .22) and suddenly I used slugs, I found out that I can't shoot properly with a rifle where the recoil already has an effect.

It's good that everyone can choose what suits them, but the fact is that pellets will no longer move to a greater distance, they no longer have anything to offer, while slugs are very quickly approaching the characteristics and accuracy of firearms, and that is also the goal of our company.

 

[Franklink]

......slugs are very quickly approaching the characteristics and accuracy of firearms, and that is also the goal of our company.....

Slippery slope.

SOME pellets can be shot accurately to relatively long range. I spent a couple hours on Sat shooting most of a tin from 10-225yards. And it was only fun cuz they were going where I wanted.

And shooting 80-90% of a 500count tin of pellets cost me maybe $12-14.

There certainly is a segment of the industry very interested in exactly what you're doing. And again, that's a slippery slope.

 

[Franklink]

The smoking and drinking people spend more than that on one night and have a headache the next morning.

Yep. Was making the point that 350-400 shots taken with pellets is a $12-14 endeavour, whereas that many shots with Altaros slugs would run ya most of the way to $90-100$, something like 6-8x more expensive. So in that regard, yes, very much like shooting firearms.

 

[Franklink]

Sorry OP, somewhat off topic but that's kinda where the discussion has lead ....

Some time ago I compared shooting slugs to shooting .22LR. For me, I decided the .22LR was the better choice and it is not much more expensive than slugs. I can shoot the .22LR at home as with a silencer it is very quiet, but again, the safety factor dictates that I shoot much more pellets than the .22LR. The LR is very accurate at 100 meter and up to 200 meter where I did shoot it to but I don't see a point of shooting it beyond that distance were the centre fire rifles excel.

About 12 years ago I was finishing my clinical residencies and found myself in western Nebraska for a few months during the summer. My preceptor came from a farming/ranching family and in the course of discussion mentioned that her dad had a prairie dog problem in some of their pivot fields. Ho boy! I had a .22 long rifle buried under most of my earthly possessions as far back and deep in my trunk as it could go. I spent most Saturdays that summer, out on their pivot fields shooting prairie dogs with that .22 long rifle. Killed a lot of dogs, and many of them were stepped off past 150 yards. And that was with cheap rimfire ammo!

The easy button for 80-130fpe shooting at up to 200 yards is .22 rimfire. Air rifle slugs are the hard way to do the same thing.

 

[Franklink]

Jip, I can leave my .22Lr in the safe for a year, (not that I do it) take it out and it will shoot the same as I left it a year ago, doing sub-moa groups from shot #1. No pumping, no pumps or compressors stop working, no leaks, no POI shift, no loss of power, almost no weather influence and no replacing of O-rings. I can also choose the energy output I want, from 30fpe up to 200fpe just by changing ammo. But, with all it's obstacles I still like my PCP with pellets for around the house shooting.

Yep yep.

The safety, price, and convenience of pellets (and even SOME relatively low powered slugs) swing the equation back to airguns.

 

[Franklink]

What is the maximum distance you shoot pellets and get good accuracy?

Personally I am not interested in shooting slugs. I know all the benefits thereof but it is not my thing.

Most shooters change over to slugs at long distance so I cannot get good info by searching.

To help back back on topic...

The best long range pellet I've personally found is the .20/15.89. BC of about 0.048. From a 1:17.7, 12 groove Lothar at 915-930fps, it'll hold accuracy out as far as I've tried, which is 270-280yards.

I shot it a bunch this past Saturday to 225 yards and they were doing great. Pdog shooting accurate for sure, and they're about 12-15" long and about 2-3" wide in my area. Kill shots are usually in the front/top half of that body size (head or vitals). So the .20/15.89 can keep em in a 2-3" wide by 6-7" long/tall intended impact point much further than most will think reasonable.

 

[dizzums]

my max 'accurate enough' distance for pesting is 80yds and thats .177-.357 .. beyond that i just have never had to shoot that far but i imagine i could learn holdovers enough to push it a bit further, but you start getting into 'feet' of drop its not really realistic imo.. never saw the point of slugs, dont need em around here

 

[Trent A]

Have asked this to over a half dozen people that know a lot more than myself and pretty universally the answer was that they are good to around 100 yards and then things start getting pretty iffy in short fashion.

I'm new to PCP so can't speak for that realm first hand yet. I know my Diana 54 AirKing (a springer with a internal chassis to eliminate needing to 'hold' it correctly to get good accuracy) in .22 would keep fairly tight groups with a variety of pellets out to 75 yards, but when I backed it out to 100 yards my groups opened up to around 5-6+ inches. Not sure where it has its drop off as I never tried distances between those two points.

Of note, I also was not using premium pellets, and only even had a couple JSB options that I was shooting at the time, everything else I tested was under that price point, so with heavier JSB or better pellet selection maybe (probably) would have kept better groups at 100 yards, maybe more. At the time I shot probably 90% Crosman premiers, as all my springers shot them well, and at the time they were still $7 a tin of 500.

 

[Altaros]

Slippery slope.

SOME pellets can be shot accurately to relatively long range. I spent a couple hours on Sat shooting most of a tin from 10-225yards. And it was only fun cuz they were going where I wanted.

And shooting 80-90% of a 500count tin of pellets cost me maybe $12-14.

There certainly is a segment of the industry very interested in exactly what you're doing. And again, that's a slippery slope

In this discussion, it is first the most important to define some terms, as accuracy to a specified distance.
For me, the shooting is when I am able to hit a target of 1.5- 2MOA, for example, from 50- 100% of cases when I do my work correctly within reasonable limits( wind estimation with an error up to 2-3 km/h )

Pellets at a distance of 150 or more yards simply do not have this accuracy from physical nature, as 2km/h wind (around 1 mph) will make drift by more than 10cm (4 inches). Not to mention the vertical deviation from the muzzle velocity variation and acceleration or drop in the wind from 6 or 12.
So I do not have even to see specific airgun so I can tell for sure that accurate shooting with pellets at a distance of 150 yards and more, according to the definition in the introduction, is not possible.
Yes, Pellet are good, cheap, safe at a certain distance and to a requirement for some accuracy, but this list ends.

Sorry OP, somewhat off topic but that's kinda where the discussion has lead ....



About 12 years ago I was finishing my clinical residencies and found myself in western Nebraska for a few months during the summer. My preceptor came from a farming/ranching family and in the course of discussion mentioned that her dad had a prairie dog problem in some of their pivot fields. Ho boy! I had a .22 long rifle buried under most of my earthly possessions as far back and deep in my trunk as it could go. I spent most Saturdays that summer, out on their pivot fields shooting prairie dogs with that .22 long rifle. Killed a lot of dogs, and many of them were stepped off past 150 yards. And that was with cheap rimfire ammo!

The easy button for 80-130fpe shooting at up to 200 yards is .22 rimfire. Air rifle slugs are the hard way to do the same thing.

This depends on the point of view. 22LR can be an interesting alternative in the US, where you do not have to shoot at the shooting range. In Europe in almost all countries, you have to shoot with .22LR at the shooting range (except hunting), but it is no longer an obligation to shoot at all countries with airgun, in many countries you can shoot almost anywhere if it safe.
If you add that there is a minimum of shooting ranges in many states where you can shoot at a longer distance of than 100m, suddenly find out how huge advantage is to shoot with airgun on hundreds of meters, for example, on your own meadow or agricultural land.

Moreover, there are not many rifles .22LR that would show similar results as in this last my video and certainly not with cheaper ammunition than the used slugs:

When we go over a longer distance so .22 lr will be just worse and worse

Hard to shoot with slag can be when it does not choose a suitable set, but not when a suitable choice of equipment is made.

 

[Franklink]

The easy button for 80-130fpe shooting at up to 200 yards is .22 rimfire. Air rifle slugs are the hard way to do the same thing.

Hard to shoot with slag can be when it does not choose a suitable set, but not when a suitable choice of equipment is made.

A large part of why I said 100ish fpe is most easily done with a rimfire is because of the AIR part of shooting airguns.

High pressure air is a hassle, especially at the power levels necessary for an air powered slug to get to 80+ fpe. The "hassle" of HPA is all of the peripherals, the compressors and fill stations and etc. plus the dragging tanks around, or even worse, being shackled to a tank when tethering, like the old ball and chain of prisoners.

Regardless of chosen equipment when launching air powered slugs near rimfire fpe, that HPA component is there. With a rimfire you need the gun, and a box of ammo.

As for the safety that you also mentioned, fpe = fpe. Whether it came from a rimfire or an air powered slug. If it's not safe to shoot a rimfire in a certain area (due to fpe), it's also not safe to shoot an air powered slug of the same fpe.

I get it, I really do, for the sluggalos in the industry right now it's about pushing limits and seeing what is possible. The BC gains possible over pellets is huge, with downrange gains of performance commensurate to the BC. It's simply taking the hard road to get there.

And to try to drag it back to the original topic again, pellets are not hitting a wall at 100yards, beyond which they're no longer a viable option. There ARE pellets possible of hitting the killing half of a prairie dog out to 200yards with surprising success rates. (Again, a kill zone of about 5-6 inches long by about 2 inches wide).

 

[Franklink]

Lately I don't get much time to shoot as my work is keeping me busy and I am glad about it as I am working freelance and work was quiet for a while. Anyway, the last time I was shooting long-distance-pellet at home was at my 144 meter / 157 yard plate. Using a 6 year old Artemis M22 and H&N Baracuda pellets, sorted by head size, I shot a 50mm / 1.22 MOA group....

View attachment 464124

1.22MOA @ 157 yards with pellets you say?!?!
You mean to say it didn't hit an invisible wall @ 101 yards and just fall benignly, straight to the earth?

1.22MOA @ 157 yards is good stuff, pellets or slugs. Great shooting.

Played with some numbers, and based on one e ballistics app, and quite a few assumptions, that 18gr pellet would still have around 12fpe @ 150-160yards. (Assuming BC of about 0.033-0.035 and muzzle speed of 900fps). Lots of Brits would tell you about the efficacy of just 12fpe at the muzzle, you've still got that muxh downrange. Plenty for up to about rabbit size for example.

 

[Ballisticboy]

There are things that could be done to pellets, or more precisely pellet shaped projectiles, to make them more suitable for long range shooting. Making heavy pellets by putting all the extra mass at the front rather than filling up the flare at the back would help to avoid the dreaded spirals. Controlling the rate of decay of spin with velocity would also be a huge advantage. It is all a matter of getting the centre of gravity and the centre of pressure as far apart as possible and avoiding the dreaded increase in yaw wave length at long ranges.

As for the wind drift, in order to reduce this, the pellets need lower drag. Most of the drag on pellets comes in the form of base drag on the flare, unless you are shooting at silly speeds. There are ways of reducing the flare drag which would complicate the pellet design, but it could be done. Of course, there is the question of if it is worth it or not for a relatively small market, and the drag would still be higher than that of a specifically designed subsonic slug.

But there are still definitely things which could be done to pellets to make them more suitable.

 

[Franklink]

I saw that you added this with a edit on your post.

Those H&N 18 pellets left the barrel at 940-950fps, confirmed with a second chronograph. The only way I could get Strelok to match the amount I dialed on the scope was with a BC of 0.055, and then refined to multi-BC starting with 0.062 and going down to .045 at lower speeds further away. This was confirmed over and over again so I believe it to be ballpark accurate.

Miles here above know much better than most here on AGN how ballistics work as it was his full-time job. Myself, I am getting a better understanding by reading his and other's input but I can still not explain in technical terms what is going on. My better understanding of aeroplane aerodynamics is not of much help but seems to be rather a hindrance to better understanding of pellet ballistics. All I know is what I see on target compared by my inputs.

Very good. Your starting speed is faster than I assumed, and your BC is also better than I would expect from that pellet. With that data, you'd have even more fpe left at impact than I estimated.

In my testing, .22/18.13 JSBs are usually in the 0.035-0.038 range, although I've seen a few comment that their actual matches ballistic app predicted with higher....seems like I saw 0.045 cited by somebody. And generally H&N BCs are slightly lower than JSB. That was my rational for the BC guestimate.

In the pellet category, to get a BC as high as 0.062 we're usually needing the .25/34 or the .22/25.4 from some choice barrel combinations. I suspect the Grands are around there too, based on anecdotal personal experiences with them comparing to how they perform against .22/25.4 MRDs out of barrels where I have collected the BCs.

It's really surprising to find that there's only a handful of pellets that consistently produce BCs over about 0.045. And those are the pellets that you'll find being used to win Ultimate Field Target matches and EBR and RMAC and PA Cup.

Regardless, BCs are somewhat of a moving target....lots of variables like elevation and rifling profile and dependance on speed, etc. In theory the BCs shouldn't float around as much as they do for a given pellet shape/size, but in reality they simply do.

In conclusion, your 157yard pellet groups are great.

 

[Dairyboy]

These were my results with a few .22 pellets last year out of my Evol Mini. Id assume the heavy ones were lower due to the lower fps from the start. Byt ive been very happy with the JTS 18gr.

 

[Altaros]

I don't want to start any flames, but BC pellets, the standard ones in .22 caliber, since pellets in 7.62mm or 9mm no longer fulfill any of what we said in the form of the advantage of pellets vs slug, so these standard pellets ones have a BC of around 0.04. I have long-term tested JSB 18.1grain and measured at 0.041, measured by LabRader, tested from 30 to 205m and shot sat at all distances, verified by tens of thousands of shots.
These pellets, although they can sometimes shoot beautiful results, cannot consistently achieve 1 MOA or 1.5 MOA accuracy at 150 yards. Again, it is physically impossible unless you are an accomplished wind wizard who can detect wind direction and speed better than 1 km/h.
This is physics, not bedtime stories.
Each of you can enter a wind from 3-9h and 1km/h in a ballistic calculator and you will see how much will it show you the deviation.
This is the physical reality with which it is necessary to learn to live and count with it, otherwise you will continue to live in illusions of the impossible and you will try to achieve something that cannot be achieved.
(for exception seekers: you get the same result even if you put BC G1 0.61 )

And to try to drag it back to the original topic again, pellets are not hitting a wall at 100yards, beyond which they're no longer a viable option. There ARE pellets possible of hitting the killing half of a prairie dog out to 200yards with surprising success rates. (Again, a kill zone of about 5-6 inches long by about 2 inches wide).

and can you state what these PELLETS are? Aren't they more like slugs-bullets? because I don't know any pellets that are capable of this, unless we are talking, as above, about calibers above .25 caliber.

As for the rest. So carrying an air bottle is just like carrying cartridges along with bullets. The bullet will not fly out of the barrel by itself either.
It again it's a point of view. I take it from the point of view of maximum accuracy, not hunting pests, and for my type of shooting, people normally carry 10-20 kg heavy front rests to the shooting range, for example from SEB for a few thousand USD. For this type of shooting, some extra 5-7kg bottle is practically negligible equipment.

I don't want to take away your perspective. If I were to hunt prairie dogs from the car in an occasional encounter, then the .22LR would probably be a better choice, but that does not mean that for other types of shooting, the .22LR is still a better choice than a beige airgun.

 

[Franklink]

and can you state what these PELLETS are? Aren't they more like slugs-bullets? because I don't know any pellets that are capable of this, unless we are talking, as above, about calibers above .25 caliber.

Post # 32 earlier in this discussion. Pretty traditional pellet shape.

I'm not the only one stretching the. 20/15.89 so far.

The long range capability of the .20/15.89 has been witnessed by others, not just me living in "bedtime stories."

To clarify for the third time, I'm not getting benchrest accuracy from them, but I can connect on the killing half of a pdog @ 175+ yards surprisingly often. Or a Euro dove, or a starling (maybe move in a bit for the smaller starlings , 150ish)

Nowhere am I saying that these .20/15.89s are gonna outshoot the Altaros slugs with their BCs 4x as high. Simply stating that pellets ARE a viable option for long range pesting of typical airgun quarry, it just takes the right combination of barrel/pellet/speed.

This narrative that pellets are worthless past 100yards is simply false, evidenced by lots of long range pellet-taken pdogs last summer. And every other summer prior to that for the last 8-10years.

 

[Franklink]

I did not intent this thread to be a pellet vs slug comparison, but about pellets for those of us choosing to use pellets.
This is what I posted in the 1st post of this thread:

"What is the maximum distance you shoot pellets and get good accuracy?
Personally I am not interested in shooting slugs. I know all the benefits thereof but it is not my thing.
Most shooters change over to slugs at long distance so I cannot get good info by searching."

Yeah buddy, I feel ya.

I've tried to bring it back to pellets more times than I can remember this late at night. Certain contingent keeps piping in, almost like they're selling slugs or something, and they don't want anybody to realize pellets can still be quite accurate at long range too.

 

[Altaros]

Post # 32 earlier in this discussion. Pretty traditional pellet shape.

I'm not the only one stretching the. 20/15.89 so far.

The long range capability of the .20/15.89 has been witnessed by others, not just me living in "bedtime stories."

To clarify for the third time, I'm not getting benchrest accuracy from them, but I can connect on the killing half of a pdog @ 175+ yards surprisingly often. Or a Euro dove, or a starling (maybe move in a bit for the smaller starlings , 150ish)

Here I would like to apologize to you. Under the name Prairie Dog I had the idea that it was something at the level of a coyot, not that they are rodents. Therefore, my question about the type of pellets, because I expected something at the level 7.62-9mm to be at least some impact energy for an ethical shot.

I did not intent this thread to be a pellet vs slug comparison, but about pellets for those of us choosing to use pellets.
This is what I posted in the 1st post of this thread:

"What is the maximum distance you shoot pellets and get good accuracy?

Yes and already in the post on Monday I clearly said that first we have to define what for everyone is the term "Good Accuracy"
I have already said, with airgun for me is good accuracy target 1- 1.5 moa target
Until you say here what "Good Accuracy" means to you in numbers there is not much sense to discuss.

I don't compare slugs and pellets now. Just get a number and then we can entertain whether it is physically possible at a given distance.

The numbers and facts are what the reader should take from this thread so that he knows whether pellets are still sufficient for his purposes.
Everyone likes to boast extraordinary results and I am not an exception, but it is also necessary to mention what the probability is that it can also be done to another shooter.
The internet is full of half -truths and often lies, and then starting shooters have a sense of fluustration that they are unable to achieve, according to information they read or saw in the video bot even average results, because it is based on bad data.

A beautiful example of this is this video in the world firearms:

 

[Altaros]

Again, I want to mention, I am not saying that the only right way is slugs. Slugs must be used where the accuracy of pellets ends and the thread is just about where the distance is, which cannot be said without the number of accuracy value.

For example, if we talk about the size of a target 2- 2.5 MOA. So I'm not saying that it is not possible to shoot precisely at 150m - 165 yards with pellets. Here's one of my 7 years old video where the shoting conditions were not even ideal:

 

[Vetmx]

@Caliber 22, I understand what you’re looking for. And contrary to internet exceptions, there is a general distance where the majority of everyday shooters pellets no longer are hunting accurate. There will always be an exceptional or unique gun/pellet that on a certain day will surprise you but painting with a broad brush, it’s 100 yards. Even at 100 or when you start to inch beyond, your combo has to be tuned perfectly either by tons of shooting or just dumb luck. Then a breeze kicks up and it’s all over.