My experience is that JSB pellets work just fine. Shot placement is what should be focused on.
While taking a family is possible with .177, I would NOT shoot at anything much tougher than a squirrel without a larger caliber. If your shot placement is even slightly off, the animal is going to be in unnecessary pain, more so than they would be if hit with a bigger punch. Frankly, I think it's incredibly risky and gives the community a bad image when people try to hunt with guns that could easily cause suffering due to poor shot placement, let alone an inability to penetrate the skull.
I agree with you 100 percent Tim. There are many people that think they are a good shot or they just want to see if they can do it and it leaves the animals suffering. This is what gives the community a bad name. I think it's mostly New people to the sport and young people that are the biggest offenders of this. I have did it when I was younger. Many years ago. I still think of it from time to time and regret doing it. We have a responsibility to learn and teach each other. That's why I joined these forums. So I can learn from everyone.
Telling people that hunting adult raccoon with a 12 fpe gun is doable every time and all they need to do is shoot FT to help improve skills? No explanation of where the shot should be placed or a diagram is irresponsible and terrible advice.
A little extreme aren't we. Not everyone came out the womb with a gun in their hands. I am sure like me, someone taught you how to hunt. If someone doesn't know where a kill shot is then it is our job as hunters to try to help educate them, and I would expect them to also have the brains to ask if they weren't sure! Just because I hunt deer their anatomy is different than a hog and have different kill zones.
As mentioned in my first post there are a variety of factors needed to get the penetration required on a thick skulled critter like a raccoon or groundhog. In hunting you can not always guarantee perfect accuracy or shot angle in the field and so you need a margin of error to insure ethical kills. I have told the story of ridding our tree nursery of groundhogs chewing the bark off out trees. For three years in a row I took out about 70 per year till the numbers started to decline. Back then I had a TalonSS in .22 with 24 FPE and a Career w/33 FPE. I was somewhat of a novice back then in shooting groundhogs and first tried taking them out with Crosman Premiers at 14.3 grains. The pellet was not getting good penetration either because of its light weight or soft lead. I decided to go with the Beeman Kodiak at 21.12 grains to see if the heavier pellet would do better. I did not know this pellet was also harder which was a big factor and from then on I was anchoring the majority of groundhogs in place out to 40 yards."AirgunBill"I have shot about 300 plus groundhogs with various air rifles mostly in .22 caliber and about 50 last year with my new .25 caliber Wildcat. The main thing you need is the ability to penetrate the skull and get into the brain for a kill shot. Penetration requires harder lead pellets or heavier pellets of a combination of each. For my Condor in .22 caliber I use the 32,4 grain Eun Jin Pointed pellet. In my Talon SS in .22 caliber I use the H&N or Beeman Kodiak 21.12 grains, which is made of harder lead and has excellent penetration. In my FX Wildcat the heavy JSB's at 33.95 grains do the trick. I limit my shots with the TalonSS to about 35 yards because of its power. With the Condor or Wildcat I usually limit shots to about 50 yards because of accuracy in the field, unless the conditions are calm and I got a good set-up then I might stretch it to about 70 yards. Airgun Bill
If getting a new gun I'd definitely get a .25 even though a .22 is clearly adequate. But sounds like you don't want adequate, you want the better of the two. I shoot most of my groundhogs with a .25 around 55 - 60 fpe. But have also taken a few with my .22 shooting around 27 fpe at the muzzle. A well placed shot (as all should be) between the eye and ear is going to drop them. These were taken at 45 yards with the Compatto using JSB 15 grain pellets.
