Question .. hybrid slugs pellets?

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owesme$

owesme$

Member
Sep 6, 2022
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Dallas, TX, USA
I have an fx maverick vp .25
Looking to shoot further with more accuracy and energy.
I have a regular tune from Utah air that was set up for JSB exact king .25. Currently gun is very accurate. Gun is shooting about 935 fps with the JSB pellets on power wheel 3. I can turn wheel down but not up (pressure drops off when I go up )

Wondering if I can get good accuracy, energy with slugs or hybrids without changing a tune?
If anyone has experience with this I’d love some advice. I would prefer not to mess with the tune.

What speed do hybrids shoot best at? What kind will work best?

If I have to raise reg pressure to get higher power with reg setting and getting power wheel to go higher I’d just as soon keep current setting as I do not feel super confident that I won’t mess something up.

My ultimate goal would be to shoot a hybrid or slug accurately from 50 to 200 yards. Since the pellets I shoot get affected a lot by wind where I am at on distances over 100. My main use is hunting/posting small game.
Thank you in advance
 
You will have to mess with your tune, sometimes testing for days and many tunes if you switch to slugs. Any slug. If you want to shoot accurately to 200 yards, buy a .223 powder burner. Maybe back off on the airgun videos also. Guys shooting accurately out to 200 yards can probably be counted on one hand. Maybe.
 
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I think @Vetmx nailed it. If your FX Maverick is your first air rifle, you just just passed GO and collected $1,000 in the world of air guns, because it sounds like you got a real winner from the start and are very pleased with it inside 100 yards. I think that is about the limit of effective air gunning.

A 25 caliber pellet at 935 ft per second is very powerful, but has its limits. If it is accurate enough for you, and a reliable shooter, then you have essentially won the airgun lottery. You bought nice, not twice, sidestepping the growth struggles that most in this hobby experience.

Now if you have a hankering to tinker and get experience for yourself, shooting beyond 100 yards and trying to get slugs to shoot, I would leave the Maverick alone and enjoy it as is and do your experimenting on another air gun.

I've never tried to shoot slugs so I cannot say that I have experienced it first hand but I have read many many messages here and seen plenty of videos and I am not convinced the struggle, time and money would be worth it for me. I have a fleet of pellet shooting air guns, the most powerful of which is 25 caliber at 890 FPS, and that does all that I want them to do so I have a satisfied mind in that respect.

Now FX has recently announced that their new, fantastically hyped but as yet unreleased, Halo "pellug" (hollow slug) will make pellets obsolete. Marketing hype or not? Time will tell.

I don't want to burst bubbles so if you want to explore the world of air gun slug shooting, It awaits you. I think many shooters prefer to set up differing tunes on different guns so I would suggest leaving your Maverick set up for the pellets that you are shooting now and either get a second one or a different air gun that you know has a good chance of performing well with slugs, based on feedback in the forum here.

GL,
Feinwerk
 
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Vetmx said:
You will have to mess with your tune, sometimes testing for days and many tunes if you switch to slugs. Any slug. If you want to shoot accurately to 200 yards, buy a .223 powder burner. Maybe back off on the airgun videos also. Guys shooting accurately out to 200 yards can probably be counted on one hand. Maybe.
Click to expand...
More than you think. I have at least 3 buddies that can out shoot me with anything .22. I am certainly not a pro, but i do shoot pretty well. On a calm day, we all shoot sub moa, and we are all even, with wind, i am last out of 4. Lol. As for a maverick, the hybrids will do alright, it is just a speed game to work out. I got lucky with my Throne and it loves .218nsa slugs and the HandN .218 as well. Previous owner, not so much, he never found a good slug for it.
 
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You will be tweaking your tune to shoot any slug. Pellets is pellets and slugs is slugs.
Pellets = easy
Slugs = work and no guarantee it will ever shoot as well as pellets.
I have a Maverick 25 compact and it is extremely accurate With pellets. Nailed it on the first tune. I got lucky but it is much easier to tune a pellet to shoot well than it is a slug.
If you have the budget get another gun to chase the slug shooting with. When you arrive at that point you will find that 200 yards is very difficult even if your gun is shooting very well at 100 yards.
 
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The "slug rabbit hole" is deep, costly & time consuming. The YouTube vids showing guys who ROUTINELY do it don't show the YEARS it took them to get there & the THOUSANDS of $ spent in the trying out of equipment. If one gets good at shooting pellets, 100+ yards can be routinely done (with the right guns/pellets/shooter).
 
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Thank for the responses. It seems I do not want to go down that rabbit hole as of yet with slugs.

However isn’t that what FX made the hybrids for? I thought, possibly mistakenly, that you could take a hybrid put it in a gun and have relative accuracy up to a certain point. Can anyone give me a positive or negative on that? Let’s say if my gun is tuned for 935 would I not be able to shoot a hybrid At less velocity but possibly keep some accuracy?. Let’s assume I shoot inside of 100. If this was possible the benefit would seem to be I would have more energy heading to target. With hopefully the same accuracy if it was inside of 100. And then my last question would be what is the best gas of distance to be sub MOA with these hybrids out of the Maverick with the 600 mm barrel
 
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Buy a pack and find out for yourself. It seems marketing has a pretty good hold on you and you’re not liking what you’re hearing from the reality world. Hybrids are not forgiving of tunes. They were designed to be forgiving of pellet barrels. Gigantic difference. I see you are slowly coming back to reality and now are focused on 100 yards or less. Buy a pack and then you’ll understand. You could get lucky but don’t hold your breath. Hybrids are not exempt from a perfect slug tune, good barrel or liner and a gun that’s components allow it to be super consistent.
 
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Scotay42 said:
More than you think. I have at least 3 buddies that can out shoot me with anything .22. I am certainly not a pro, but i do shoot pretty well. On a calm day, we all shoot sub moa, and we are all even, with wind, i am last out of 4. Lol. As for a maverick, the hybrids will do alright, it is just a speed game to work out. I got lucky with my Throne and it loves .218nsa slugs and the HandN .218 as well. Previous owner, not so much, he never found a good slug for it.
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If you are all shooting sub MOA at 200 yards on calm days then my hat is off to you. I don’t believe you but i also understand nothing is impossible. My best slugger right now would thrill just about everybody at 100. Can I hit stuff at 200? Yes. Is it accurate at 200? No. At least not by my standards.
 
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Vetmx said:
If you are all shooting sub MOA at 200 yards on calm days then my hat is off to you. I don’t believe you but i also understand nothing is impossible. My best slugger right now would thrill just about everybody at 100. Can I hit stuff at 200? Yes. Is it accurate at 200? No. At least not by my standards.
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I shoot a Reximex Throne, Other 3 rifles are FX Impact gen2 , impact M3 and a Maverick sniper. We are all just Ky country boys and were avid PRS shooters prior to airguns. None of us shoot rimfire anymore, just air. 200yds feels like 600 with a centerfire. i shoot more NSA, because they work, 2 buddies shoot jsb knockouts and the third will only shoot ZAN.
 
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Few things…. Called Utah, Being a relative newbie only on my third pcp. I did not correctly understand the hammer wheel.
The tech said the number I am in is at the “6:00” position not the “12” so I am actually on power wheel 7 at 925.
He also was explaining the hybrids and what they are for, what they do and how I can try them in the current tune. He said I can also do slight adjustments which I think I can handle.
While I do appreciate Vetmx’s input I would like to say the Utah tech was very positive about what he thought I could do with my current tune. I am hesitant to update Vetmx cause if anything good happens he probly won’t believe me anyway.
 
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I'm sure you've heard the saying, "if it isn't broken, don't fix it." Your gun is shooting accurate now. Why take a chance by changing the tune. You might not be able to get it back to where it was, if it doesn't shoot slugs well. Like others have said, try shooting slugs without changing your tune. Try a tin of H&N Grizzly pellets. They weigh 31g and should let you know if you can shoot a heavier pellet and still maintain accuracy, without changing your tune.
 
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Ok....so the thing here is that you have a tune that is working with pellets and you can now set that as a baseline, Get a small notebook and write down your starting tune with the 2nd reg pressure at its current setting, note the power wheel setting it is at currently, and then you can count the turns in to get to the hammer adjuster screw til it hits zero. (Turn it in until it stops). Now you have your baseline tune that works for pellets and you can get back to that at pretty much anytime.

As for hybrids,,,,well I can tell you that a majority of the slugs I have shot are all "hybrids". The dish based slugs and the JSB and FX hybrids are all very similar. I have had good luck with JSB Knockouts and with the Zan slugs. Have recovered both from squirrels and the expansion is pretty shocking. The biggest thing with the slugs is that they hold more energy downrange, so if you are hunting or pesting they are honestly the way to go. My experience so far....and YMMV....is that they prefer to be north of 970 to really tighten up groups. Even with my crappy abilities, I can routinely get 1.5" groups at 100 yards and I am no youtube influencer and God knows I cannot get any of the special shrouds and such the name guys get.

The hybrids should be pretty much in the weight range where you can shoot them from the standard STX liner rather than the heavy, so you should be fine without upgrading that. As long as you have a chrono, it should not be a real difficult process to work yourself up north of 970 to test. There are actually multiple shooters who will even shoot certain pellets in that same 970 range in .25 with great effect. Tons of videos out there about the actual tuning, so won't bore you with that, but watch a couple of them just for certain safety tips (such as degas before turning your regulators DOWN). Once you start tuning, you will actually start to get an understanding and not be afraid of messing things up. It is basically just get to a spot where it shoots decent and then you are just sitting there making very very tiny adjustments to the hammer spring and shooting groups while taking notes and group measurements to see what is king for your gun.
 
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Scotay42 said:
I shoot a Reximex Throne, Other 3 rifles are FX Impact gen2 , impact M3 and a Maverick sniper. We are all just Ky country boys and were avid PRS shooters prior to airguns. None of us shoot rimfire anymore, just air. 200yds feels like 600 with a centerfire. i shoot more NSA, because they work, 2 buddies shoot jsb knockouts and the third will only shoot ZAN.
Click to expand...
At least 600 yards. The slow lock time with an airgun is a killer. I feel like strapping it down with ratchet straps the further I shoot.
 
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owesme$ said:
Thank for the responses. It seems I do not want to go down that rabbit hole as of yet with slugs.

However isn’t that what FX made the hybrids for? I thought, possibly mistakenly, that you could take a hybrid put it in a gun and have relative accuracy up to a certain point. Can anyone give me a positive or negative on that? Let’s say if my gun is tuned for 935 would I not be able to shoot a hybrid At less velocity but possibly keep some accuracy?. Let’s assume I shoot inside of 100. If this was possible the benefit would seem to be I would have more energy heading to target. With hopefully the same accuracy if it was inside of 100. And then my last question would be what is the best gas of distance to be sub MOA with these hybrids out of the Maverick with the 600 mm barrel
Click to expand...
You are right with your speculation. I have a 30 compact Maverick shooting hybrids at 865-870 with supreme accuracy! I started with tuning jsb 44g pellets and was curious to see what the hybrids would do haven't shot a 30 pellet since! No matter what anyone says the right thing to do is test for yourself!
 
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