How cold is too cold to go out with our PCPs

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Blackpaw

Blackpaw

Member
Apr 23, 2020
3,202
357
Idaho, United States
Alright, here is my mind set, for the last two years 90 % of it I have been unable to hunt, pest all of the above, and now I can. So I try to advantage of ever chance I can to go out shooting, hunting pesting. I am down to PCP RTI prophet compact.

Tomorrow is supposed to be down to 0 F in the morning, with high 12 F so minus 10 to minus 18 C. Depending on the weather it is supposed to be sunny and low winds, a rarity for the last two weeks. And so, I go out when I can attitude. With firearms I would never think twice, with air…twice thunking.
 
I have worried about the same thing a lot, but yesterday I got a squirrel and a porcupine and the tuck said it was -17. Used my .22 pp700 and was not problems at all. I was going to try coyote hunting this week with my rti prophet but just don't feel like sitting in the cold that long, of course when I go back to work we will be warming up into the 20's. Hopefully my next days off I can get out some. Also need to add we weren't out for more than 30 min at a time then going back to the truck to warm up. I also topped off the pp700 when we got back to the truck with it being out in the cold, It does drop pressure a lot with the cold.
 
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I hunt in below 0 weather quite often. Only trouble I have is the lubricating oils my freeze up. I use powder lubes in the winter. I also leave my rifle outside durning deer season to keep it the same temp. Otherwise when you bring it back in to the house, you have to clean it real good. Condensation will make the rifle look like it just took a bath. Plus you will loose a few shots do to loosing some pressure. 
 
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Hunting? Whatever you can stand. Shooting in general? Should be okay.

Shooting tethered with E grade air through a step down in-line reg in super cold weather will guaranteed freeze your reg up or bleeder, or anywhere else compressed cold air is released & becomes colder. 
That is the only problem besides fogged scope from fast temp change. Moisture will freeze & build up at fittings usually. That was 13*F last my reg was leaking with ice build up at bleeder.
 
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I was interested in this same subject, so I took my regular shooter (a very highly modified 2240 with a 450cc bottle) out yesterday when the temp was 12F and put my FX Chronograph on it. I took it out of my office, that was about 65F and started shooting. It performed like it always had for the first 15 or so shots, with a spread of about 8-10FPS, and then my spread went WAY up! I shot one that was low by about 30FPS, and that was how it went after that. It was a spread of over 40FPS and this gun is always consistent. I shot 75 or so shots total, and nothing really remarkable happened except the increased spread in velocity.

I am not using dry lube in the gun, so I am sure that this is contributing to the wide spread. This said, the gun was still really accurate even though my spread was wider than normal.
 
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I went out yesterday to shoot some pest birds with my FX Crown at -5 C for the first time. I was expecting the POI to be effected by the cold but my three zero test shots proved otherwise. The first shot was slightly low then shot 2 & 3 hit the bullseye at 35 yards zero. I was able to connect and drop a few birds ranging from 25-65 yards. The only negative, well two, is the potential moisture being transferred into the gun while doing a fill with my tank as it didn't sound right with the hissing sound of air. And I was uncomfortable after an hour plus of shooting even in the sunny condition. But I was fun nevertheless to drop a few pests and to get some trigger time.
 
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last season i filled my texan up to 3600psi indoors, put it in my truck

next morning and when i got to my property to deer hunt, it showed only 3200psi in the tank.

no leaks ever, and still none........i questioned the guy that tuned and performance built my texan and he said its the change in the temps from filling in and hunting in.

no problems just hold a bit over than zero @ 3600psi....

so now on fill gun at outside temps to remedy this problem.
 
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