I have the GK1 .22 set at 14 fpe. Three magazines with no noticeable POI change with my red dot hitting cans at 55 yards. I usually run it tethered which is the bees knees for killing cans.
Wasn't all that long ago that a(ny) air pistol capable of producing 14 foot pounds was considered a (relative) HAND CANNON.
That's only because it WAS (relative to other air pistols of the time). For a rough time-line perspective-
In the early 1960s my first Co2 BB pistol (a Daisy) seemed quite a magnum compared to my very first BB pistol; a Daisy 179 Spittin' Image that spit out BBs solely from the force of the hammer blow! The Co2 pistol being not only much more powerful but also a semi-automatic, suffice to say its FIREPOWER was magnitudes greater than a
SPITtin' Image!
By the mid sixties a .22 Crosman 130 multi-stroke pneumatic pistol seemed as proportionately powerful as its size. That suggestion was reinforced when I managed to pop a sparrow off a barbed-wire fence that was knocked 2-3 feet back by the impact of the .22 Crosman Superpell wadcutter carrying about as many foot pounds (2-3).
Fast forwarding to the early eighties, I literally
bought Dr. Beeman's hype of the Beeman P-1 "Magnum" spring-piston pistol. Producing over 500 FPS in .177, it could easily be considered a magnum air pistol of its time. Unfortunately due to the fact recoiling spring-piston pistols are the most challenging of handguns to shoot well
, most prospective prey was in no danger...
long as it sat still! Not so once I not only discovered (fifties and sixties-vintage) .22 Crosman 150 Co2 pistols in the mid eighties, but their fine accuracy and power potentials when trigger-smithed, souped up, and scoped. Matter of fact I not only considered the 150s the first capable small-game hunting air pistols, and still do, but honed my pistol skills to a fine edge with Crosman 150s. How fine? Besides employing them in NRA Silhouette competition with good success against actual competition air pistols and competitors, my subsequent immersion in silhouette competitions improved my shooting skills to such levels as to adopt purposeful brain shots in most hunting situations; including offhand brain-shots with rifle and pistol. Some of those Crosman 150 offhand shots are among my fondest memories in over sixty years of hunting. The most poignant include a 25 yard offhand brain-shot on a gray squirrel that hit the eye I was aiming at (in the late eighties), and a 35 yard offhand brain shot on a cottontail (in the early 2020s).
The birth and subsequent growth of Pistol Field Target competition has probably done more to advance air pistol power and accuracy potentials, and into a much more compacted time-frame, than anything else in air pistol history.
Similar to how Rifle Field Target competition had its beginnings a couple decades earlier, in the early days of Pistol FT competition (2008-2011) we used .177 and .22 Crosman Co2 pistols against 3/4" to 1.5" kill-zone small-game field targets to emulate realistic air pistol hunting quarry at realistic distances of 10 to 25 yards. Our early FT pistols typically producing 6 to 10 foot pounds, as PFT shooters' skills and pistol modifications evolved, 12 foot pounds seemed not only a generous, but natural power limit considering that was the original power limit in Rifle FT (and is still in much of the FT universe).
As
typically power-hungry Americans' air pistol modifications continued to expand previous power and ranges, eventually airgun manufacturers recognized enough market to follow suit. Within a few years of its birth, Pistol Field Target maximum target distances increased form 25 to 30 yards, then to 35 yards, as the minimum kill zone size shrank from 3/4" to 1/2".
By the late 2000-teens the maniac driving the Pistol FT bus not only brought Extreme Rifle FT competition to Texas, but decided he'd... correction-
WE'D outgrown previous PFT bounds and founded Extreme Pistol Field Target competition. In his immense wisdom... correction- immense LUNACY
, The Fool decided Extreme Pistol FT should embrace not only the AAFTA
RIFLE power limit of 20 foot pounds, but the maximum AAFTA
RIFLE target distance of 55 yards!
But for some inexplicable reason, The Fool did not also embrace AAFTA's minimum RIFLE kill-zone diameter of 3/8" to further torment Extreme Pistol FT shooters.
My 'guess'
is he might have wanted to create the ILLUSION he is not
stark, RAVING MAD by leaving the 1/2" minimum PFT kill-zone size unmolested. However anyone who knows him also knows that
IS an illusion... AT BEST!
It would now seem with manufacturers and airgunsmiths producing ever more powerful air pistols, the air pistol power flood-gates have burst wide open. Not to infer there haven't been supremely powerful big-bore air pistols for decades. But supremely powerful .177-.25 caliber air pistols are not only a relatively recent phenomenon, but are now mass-produced in target-grade, target-sophistication, target-accurate platforms readily available for whatever mass consumption demands them.
I have often referred to "The Golden Age Of Airguns" of (roughly) the 1940s through the Sixties, when Crosman produced not only exponentially more airgun models than anyone before, but the most impressive designs. Friends, we're enjoying a second airguns Golden Age; we air pistoleros especially.
Gotta love it!
No-one more than I.
.
