Is .20 Dead?

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Steveoo said:
Plenty of shooters still value .20 but the arrival of heavy .177 sort of killed off the big sales of .20 which peaked in the 90s.
Now that 10 to 15 grain .177 are available…and even up to 21 grains in slugs ….you can have efficient ballistic coef with deep penetration ..also a much greater choice of .177 in the store.
My old .20 Sheridan still my favourite gun for all tha…
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This might be true with PCPs. Heavy 177 pellets will never be as efficient in springers as 20 caliber. It's not the weight as much as the surface area the limited amount of air has to push on. A 177 springer will make at least two, maybe three fpe less with a 13+grain heavy pellet than the same EXACT springer with a 13+ gr 20 caliber pellet.
 
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Mycapt65 said:
This might be true with PCPs. Heavy 177 pellets will never be as efficient in springers as 20 caliber. It's not the weight as much as the surface area the limited amount of air has to push on. A 177 springer will make at least two, maybe three fpe less with a 13+grain heavy pellet than the same EXACT springer with a 13+ gr 20 caliber pellet.
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Also a JSB 13.73 in .20 caliber still has better BC than a JSB 13.4 in .177 caliber.
Also in a PCP with either caliber tuned to the same power, the .20 cal is more air use efficient and will yield more shots on equal air.
 
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Yes agreeing with that, especially a bigger bore in PCP making more effective use of the available air.
I was coming from a different perspective. This being that .177 once criticised for being too light, now gets rafts of pellet choices going all the way up into .22 type weights..
With this choice now available, even less shooters now picking the intermediate calibre…
They still have their merits for me, but these heavier choice .177s mopping up a lot of shooters.
 
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Motorhead said:
Also a JSB 13.73 in .20 caliber still has better BC than a JSB 13.4 in .177 caliber.
Also in a PCP with either caliber tuned to the same power, the .20 cal is more air use efficient and will yield more shots on equal air.
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The qualifier is equal air. A springer only has X amount of air to work with. As a non PCP owner springers don't allow me to dial up air volume. I have to work with the short burst of limited air.
 
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-> No point trying to get folks to understand why the .20 caliber continues to live.
I think the JSB 13.73 is one of the best pellets made period (y). At least my three .20's love them.

Everyone has their own life experiences :).
No written or verbal conversation really resolves/changes anything ........ that's OK.
 
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Motorhead said:
More area for the X amount of air to work against = greater FPE extraction one can expect
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Yes. That was exactly my point earlier. PCP owners can easily dial in as much air as needed to reach a desired power level regardless of caliber. Other than air consumption caliber efficiency is a non issue for PCPs.
 
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All the technical mumbo jumbo aside, it still comes down to, is .20 caliber dead? A good .20 cal will be a bit harder to find these days, both rifles and pellets, but the caliber isn't dead and the only real way to find out if it's one you'll like it or not is to buy and try one.
You might well have to hunt for a good used one whether on the forum or a gun auction site and pellets, while slowly, do show up at retailers. Random lame thought there is they got shoved to the back burner by the makers trying to get the more popular .177 and .22 out.
 
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I've always loved pellet guns for the "survival aspect". Like if you ever needed to survive off grid or after the apocalypse I feel like spring guns would be a great way to survive off small game for quite some time. I mean hell even Lewis and Clark used air guns! So in the event of survival id imagine it would be harder to find .20 caliber projectiles than .22 or .177. I know there is also more pellet choice for the common sized calibers. So to me I would not ever buy a .20 or .25 caliber pellet gun. Thats my 2c.
 
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dianap5 said:
I've always loved pellet guns for the "survival aspect". Like if you ever needed to survive off grid or after the apocalypse I feel like spring guns would be a great way to survive off small game for quite some time. I mean hell even Lewis and Clark used air guns! So in the event of survival id imagine it would be harder to find .20 caliber projectiles than .22 or .177. I know there is also more pellet choice for the common sized calibers. So to me I would not ever buy a .20 or .25 caliber pellet gun. Thats my 2c.
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First of all I agree with just about everything you said with the exception of the .20 cal because I have so many tins, I'll never run out.
Secondly.... buddy did you just open up a can of worms.
 
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Trunion said:
First of all I agree with just about everything you said with the exception of the .20 cal because I have so many tins, I'll never run out.
Secondly.... buddy did you just open up a can of worms.
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Uh oh not trying to start problems lol. I guess I was thinking just in terms of just the acquisition during apocalyptic times. Ofc if we could all stay stashed up comfortably that would be a blessing! I suppose it's the same argument put fourth with powder ammunition to a degree right?
 
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Mycapt65 said:
The qualifier is equal air. A springer only has X amount of air to work with. As a non PCP owner springers don't allow me to dial up air volume. I have to work with the short burst of limited air.
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Luckily as long as we can breathe i think air supply should be around long enough to kill some game and not die of hunger lol. I am not very experienced with pcp guns though so I guess I am biased to the limited air of springers.
 
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my HW80 with HW95 .20 loop was such a pellet quest it almost drove me crazy. They definitely didn't want to group the way I wanted them to. The 13.6 were too light and flew in all directions with 22Fpe. After installing a Vortek PG3 kit, all worries were gone and the JSB 15.9 pellets flew at 825fps on target with an accuracy the 13.6 could not match. Pellet on pellet every time. In the meantime I have been shooting with it for three years and would not want any other rifle.
 
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bullseye127 said:
I was thinking about getting a HW330 in .20 but I hear pellets are harder to find. Maybe there will be a resurgence in the .20!
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You might have more problems finding the rifle than finding the pellets but if you do, just buy it...lol. Don't know about any kind of resurgence, but plenty of shooters that still like the caliber and just waiting on pellet makers to catch back up with making them.
 
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