Hi everyone,
What are your thoughts on the Umarex Strike Point multi-pump pellet pistol? I'm going to get a Crosman .177 or this Umarex.
Thank you,
Peep
Howdy Peep. I'm sure you made your decision long ago and have been enjoying your air pistol for some time. I'd still like to find out how things have turned out since, if you don't mind.
As for me, when I first got back in the airgun hobby some years back (after a nearly 40-year hiatus between my late teens/early twenties and these days), my first airgun pistol purchase was a Crosman 1377, picked up years ago for just under fifty bucks (occasionally, as in now on Amazon.com in fact, it still can be had for that price!), followed not long thereafter by the sweet P1322 and the P2240 CO2 pistols, both with the shoulder stock attachment. Both were so much easier to shoot accurately than the pistol alone, I quickly purchased and added a Crosman shoulder stock (1399, I think?) to my 1322 and I haven't removed any of them since.
Because of the passing time and that sort of queasy, itchy desire wherein one has to try something new that seems to crop up regularly (grin), eventually I ended up adding an Umarex 22. caliber Strike Point to my collection, followed soon thereafter by the .177 version as well. When new, I have to say they were NOTHING like the Crosman pistols, at least when it came to charging them with air. I actually injured the shoulder of my primary arm with those, trying for a week/ten days or so to always use 10 pumps, hoping to speed up the breaking-in period enough to make the pumping much easier. Instead of that, unfortunately my R shoulder gave up the ghost instead (probably due to having been dislocated before), causing me to switch pumping to my L hand instead to keep plinking.
Twice-daily treatment with hot packs and laser light fixed up the shoulder quickly enough, and taught me not only to use BOTH arms for charging my pumpers, but also to be completely zen with an easily doable 3 or 4 pumps for my indoor variable pumper shooting!
Luckily, as with every other pumper I've owned (even the toughest, my Benjamin 392 & 397 air rifles), both pistols DID end up being far easier to pump up after regular use. Still, despite it being easily doable with the passage of time, I also found I almost never need such additional power these days, much less the maximum possible (maybe 'maximum recommended' would be more accurate for more people). ;-) Additionally, even though both Umarex pistols boast slightly higher FPS numbers than their Crosman counterparts, I pretty much go for a Crosman first, if and when I have a need for a lower powered pumper for anything besides target shooting (like when a rat shows up at the front porch feeder). It's not due to any failing of my Umarex pistols, though. It's because I get so much better accuracy out of their shoulder stocks, and IMO, that accuracy is FAR more important than a slightly higher speed giving me maybe another foot pound of energy.
Even with all my talk here that could be construed as evidence for the Crosman pistols being the better choice, I am very glad I bought my Umarex pistols as well (and both for that same less than fifty-bucks price, luckily, since nowadays they're selling for an additional twenty bucks or more over fifty nearly everywhere). As mentioned previously, I've shot them long enough to have gotten fairly used to their admittedly awful front sights; well enough to get pretty good accuracy for indoor target shooting anyway. Yes, I love the Crosman carbines (including their Drifter, C362 and C2023 carbines, all of which I own as well), but my Umarex pistols still get plenty of use, with me picking one or the other of them up for at least a few shots pretty much on a daily basis. In fact, the two Strike Point airguns are the only true 'pistols' I have in my nearly thirty airgun collection of pumpers, CO2 and gas-piston break barrel airguns now, since I don't take the stocks off my Crosmans. So, when I feel like shooting a pistol, that's what I use.
I still intend to make the Umarex front sights better some day, even if all I do is eliminate the hood by cutting the two sides off at the barrel shroud, if nothing else. I also hope to djinn up some sort of cleverly mounted shoulder stock for the Strike Points eventually, although I don't consider it quite as important as making them easier to aim. I like them, even with their faults, and I'm very glad I ended up purchasing the pumper pistols from both major manufacturers.
So, enough about me. How did things turn out for you? With what air pistols are you shooting now? What have you picked up since the first, if anything, and why? What's your favorite and why, your least favorite (ditto) and that sort of thing? I'd love to know, if you'd care to respond. Here's hoping!
- Bubba
