Prepper's Armory: Air Guns

Air guns have a much broader and more interesting history than the .177 and .22 caliber target and pest control arms most people are familiar with today.

History

There’s considerable debate about the initial development of the air gun. Many historians consider them to have come on the scene sometime in the mid-1500s; few examples have survived from that time, of course, and those are mostly in museums.

The earliest air guns fell into the same two categories used in modern designs: spring powered and compressed air. 

• Spring powered guns were fairly low power, but could be extremely accurate at short range. Therefore, their use was generally relegated to indoor target ranges.
• Compressed air (or pneumatic) guns were another story. Over the years, their power and reliably improved to the point they could be used for hunting. In fact, this became the fashion among European nobility of the time, and compressed air guns powerful enough to cleanly take stag and wild boar were produced to meet this need. 

Their chief advantages over black powder were resistance to weather and near silent operation. Because of these advantages, in many parts of Europe, commoners were specifically forbidden from owning air guns. 

Fast forward to the 1780s, when the Austrian Army equipped an entire regiment with Girandoni .46 caliber repeating air rifles. The effectiveness of these soldiers was so great that it has been stated Napoleon ordered any Austrian soldier captured with an air rifle to be summarily executed. France, Japan, and several other countries also armed soldiers with advanced air guns, though in smaller numbers.

Girandoni Air Rifle

At the recommendation of President Thomas Jefferson, a Girandoni air rifle was brought along on the 1803 Lewis and Clark expedition. The Indians they met along the way were very impressed with the “smokeless thunder stick” that could fire 20 aimed shots without reloading, each of which was nearly silent and still powerful enough to take large game at reasonable ranges. On top of all that, the Girandoni could be fired almost as fast as the shooter could pull the trigger. 

After this heyday American and European air guns reduced in size and power, once again becoming curiosities used for shooting paper targets, primarily indoors, and generally at short range.

Following World War II, air guns saw another resurgence. Many of the German arms companies, specifically prohibited from manufacturing firearms, turned their ingenuity to air guns instead. In 1984, air guns were added as an official event to the Olympic Games, partially due to the increasingly restrictive firearms regulations in Europe but also because of the ever-increasing accuracy, quality, and popularity of air guns.

This brings us to the current day. Spring and pneumatic air guns of every style, size, and power level abound. Pneumatic guns are also divided between pump and pre-packaged compressed air cartridge styles.

Properties
Now, as then, the benefits of the air gun remain the same:

• Very quiet in operation
• Reasonably to extremely accurate
• Economical in comparison to cartridge firearms
• Nearly immune to weather (though this point is less of an issue when using modern metallic cartridge ammunition)

For dispatching pest (or food) animals quickly and quietly, especially in more urban environments, it's hard to beat a small caliber air gun. In addition to the more common .177 and .22 caliber air guns, there are also larger caliber options available on the market capable of taking big game. 

As an added bonus, air guns are legal to own in nearly every state and city in the USA. I'm less familiar with laws outside this country.

 

Ataman M2RBullpup, Type 2 Walnut

There are even options for the do-it-yourself crowd, with books and guides available for making an air gun at home.

Take a look at what’s out there -- there’s an air gun for everyone.

(Editrix's Note: Air rifles are a popular topic at Blue Collar Prepping. You can find more information on them from several different authors here.)

Product Review: Beeman Black Cub 1022 Air Rifle

While shopping for Christmas gifts a couple of months ago, I found myself wandering down the sporting goods aisle of a local Walmart. Their selection of ammunition has changed recently and I can find better prices online, so I don't wander that area much any more, but I was looking for a gift. I stopped at the air gun display and took a good look at what they had to offer since I've been looking for something to use for pest removal at work. Due to various safety and other concerns I'm limited to an air rifle and lead pellets for this task, and I had been thinking of getting an inexpensive gun to leave in the office. 

Air guns have a place in a prepper's arsenal. Quieter than a firearm, they can be used for harvesting small game at close range. Their low recoil makes them a good choice for training, and many are made with child-sized stocks for the younger shooters. Ammunition is cheap, and as long as you buy a brand name it is fairly accurate. The lack of propellant makes the shot-to-shot variation smaller, so they can be very accurate weapons.  They are also exempt from a lot of the regulations associated with firearms.

https://amzn.to/2RFOAUh

I found the Beeman “Black Cub” air rifle, also marked “Beeman 1022”, for less than $80. This package included the rifle, both .177 and .22 caliber barrels, and a cheap 4x32 scope. It is a “break-barrel” design, which means you grab the front of the barrel and pull it down to compress a spring in the action. This also presents the “chamber” of the barrel for loading a single pellet before you return the barrel to the firing position. It's a simple design, and that's one of the things I was looking for. Single shot works fine for the type of shooting I intend to do with this rifle, and the single-stroke cocking is quicker than a multi-pump pellet gun. I also like the option of switching calibers; the .177 is more common, but in my experience the .22 tends to be more lethal on pest-sized targets.

Once I got the box to the office, it was simple to switch the barrel to the .22 cal. Using the hex key supplied, I loosened a set screw on the bottom of the front of the action just ahead of the pivot and pulled the barrel out of the action. The other barrel slid in easily, and tightening the set screw locked it in place. The instructions did warn that the rifle sights will not hold zero between barrel swaps, so I'll have to sight it in again after each swap.

A few points of interest:

• There is a threaded cap on the end of the palm grip that opens to a hollow space for storing the hex key and spare parts (they included a spare set screw and O-ring for the barrel seat in small bag).
• The fixed sights both have light-gathering plastic inserts. The front sight has an orange bar and the rear sight has two green bars. This is not a bad set-up, but does require fairly bright light to work.
• The front sight is fixed and protected by a metal shroud, which is handy since that's where you need to grasp the barrel to cock the rifle.
• The rear sight is adjustable for windage and elevation. Use a small flat-head screwdriver to loosen the locking screws and manually adjust the sight, then tighten the screws back down. This is not a very accurate or secure type of rear sight, and the lack of any makings makes adjustments a guessing game.
• The plastic stock is light, but it seems to be sturdy enough for moderate use. I'm not looking for a battle rifle and I doubt I'll have to butt-stroke a dying rat, so this will work for me.
• The safety is mounted high on the rear of the action and automatically engages when you cock the rifle. It takes a few times to get used to having to push the button in before each shot.

The first thing I did after installing the .22 barrel was sight in the rifle. This is where things started to go wrong:

• I set up a target in a flat field of dirt and used an improvised bench to provide a steady shooting position.
• My choice of pellets was Crossman Premier Hollow-points, a good target/hunting choice. Not the cheapest, closer to mid-range in price, I've used them in the past.
• At 50 yards, my spotter couldn't even see where my shots were going. Normally you can see dirt being thrown up near the target if you're not hitting it. We moved the target up to 35 yards with similar results.
• Placing a full 4x8 sheet of thin plywood behind the target didn't help, the shots were nowhere near it.
• After several attempts at shifting the windage to the left on a guess, we finally got hits on the plywood. I had to use almost the entire space available to adjust the rear sight enough to get hits near the point of aim.
• Adjusting elevation wasn't as much of an issue, and I was able to place 5 shots into an quarter-sized group at 35 yards. Not great, but acceptable accuracy for my purposes.

After a test run on our resident flock of sky-rats, I found that the light-gathering sights need almost full sunlight to be useful. Indoors, with limited lighting and dirty windows, the sights were just a dark post and notch. The large size of the front sight (due to the plastic insert) made it difficult to get a good target picture on a bird 4 inches wide at 20 yards. Time to try the scope that came in the box.

• 4x32 is a low-power scope and the quality of glass in this one was pretty low as well. It came with an amber dust cover, but that reduced the available light even more.
• The scope required as much adjustment as the fixed sights did, so I'm going to assume that the barrel is bent. This is not what I'd expect from any factory-fresh gun on the market today, even from a Chinese copy of a rifle that Beeman has been making for many years.
• I did get to teach my apprentice a bit about scopes and how to sight them in. My helper is quite young and uneducated but not stupid.
• The cross-hairs on the scope were much better than the iron sights, but the lack of accuracy limited me to body shots. I may be old, but hitting a one-inch target (head shots) at 20 yards is something I can still do with any of my rimfire rifles.
• Two dozen dead birds later, I turned the rifle over to the apprentice and let him have some practice. We'll try the .177 barrel at a later date, once it warms up a bit.

For any real use, this rifle would make a better club than a gun. The bent barrel fresh out of the box, poor accuracy with good ammunition, and typical Chinese fit and finish make this something to avoid wasting prepping money on. This one will stay at work, probably even after I retire in several years.

In preparation for writing, I normally try to do a bit of research. I try to find sources for anything I do a review on, and I like to find better photographs than I can get out of my phone. However, this rifle is about as close to being a “ghost gun” as I have ever seen: no mention of it on Beeman's website, nothing on Walmart's site, no product reviews online. Amazon does have a listing that I finally found, but it has no reviews.

The most likely scenario I can come up with is that it is a Chinese copy of the Beeman RS2 and it didn't sell very well or the quality was so poor that they got tired of having them returned., so it has been moved to the “Clearance” rack in the local store. If I get any extra discretionary money in the near future, I may get the RS2 and see how it compares.

Update: After writing this article, I did another quick search for this rifle and actually found a review. Written a few weeks prior to mine, the review was by someone with a lot more experience with air rifles and his conclusions were close to mine. If you're interested, it's here.

Small Game and Survival

Many preppers talk about hunting after SHTF. I have heard countless discussions about caliber, availability of ammunition, capability of weapons, and so on. These discussions almost inevitably center around the taking of large game, as an elk or a deer can provide a lot of meat for someone.

I go the opposite direction and make an argument for taking small game instead. This approach has several advantages:

• Small game is very common. In fact, most small game animals are considered pests. In Utah, there are a number of small game animals that do not require a permit of any sort to hunt or trap. You are almost guaranteed to find small game animals within city limits, even in big cities.
• Small game is likely to disappear last in a long term emergency. Everyone else will be busy hunting large game, leaving the small things for you.
• Small game makes a single meal, and if you don’t have refrigeration that makes a big difference. You may have to kill two or three animals to get a meal, but you don't have to spend time processing the rest of the meat so that it's preserved without refrigeration. 
• You can hunt small game with smaller, cheaper weapons. A slingshot is much easier to acquire and keep in your preps than a full size hunting rifle, and the ammunition is cheaper and much easier to improvise. I don’t recommend a slingshot for hunting deer (even if it has been done), but it's fine for hunting quail. Airguns and bows that are sufficient to the task are much cheaper than ones up to hunting large game, and blowguns are a traditional method to hunt small game.
• Small game traps are much easier to keep. They are lighter, smaller, less expensive, and easier to improvise with wire or rope. 
• Small game hunting is inexpensive. In Utah, the permit for small game is much less expensive than that for a deer tag. A combined small game/fishing licence along with an air rifle, ammunition and so on costs less than a single elk tag. This means that you can afford to practice.

You aren't limited in variety when it comes to small game, either:

• Pheasant is originally from Asia, but it now ranges over much of the world specifically from people introducing it as a game animal. Its taste is excellent, and it has provided food for centuries. It has lovely feathers that can also (and often have been) used for decoration.
• Potguts (also known as Uinta ground squirrels) and similar squirrels are a popular source of protein for small game hunters.
• Rabbits have no bag limit where I live and everywhere I have looked at the hunting laws for. They are also commonly considered a pest animal, and may not even require a permit to hunt.
• Pigeons (a domesticated form of doves) are possibly the most common animal in any major city, and they were originally bred as poultry. They are a common food in the middle east and there are countless recipes for them online. 
• Raccoons are a pest across much of the US, and a staple of southern cooking in days gone by. My grandmother told stories of hunting and eating raccoons during the great depression, and how tasty they really are.

You may want to be careful with any animals living in a city. Since they are surviving on garbage, the taste may be poor, and any of the mammals may have rabies, so look up the symptoms and signs of it to prevent infection.

Be sure to look up your local laws and regulations before you start hunting small game -- you don’t want to violate the law!

Good luck, be safe, and don’t forget to practice.

Air Rifles and Backstops

When SHTF, you never know what will happen to your supply of food.

A number of people will resort to hunting and scavenging for their dinner. I know that some of our readers will be in an area that will be hunting rifle friendly, and they will have the budget to purchase one, purchase ammunition, and to go to the range regularly. However, this is not true of everyone, and to those people I suggest getting an air rifle.

Modern air rifles are good for hunting small game: rabbits, squirrels, turkeys and even pigeons (they were domesticated from rock doves as a food source). I don’t recommend using one to hunt bear, or elk, or even deer, but there are plenty of options in and around most urban environments that will keep body and soul together until you can get into a better situation.


What You Need
You only need a few things to use an air rifle for hunting: the rifle itself, ammunition, any storage that you decide on, any accessories, and a backstop.

• The Rifle

A good air rifle can be had for less than $200;  they start at around $80 for a new one that will take very small game and go up from there. Many municipalities that restrict ownership of firearms do not restrict air guns, making them easier to obtain.

• Ammunition

Air rifle ammunition is cheap. Plinking ammo tends to cost about a penny a round, and you can purchase high end hunting ammunition for two to three cents a round-- compared to even the cheapest .22 ammunition, it's a fraction of the cost.

• Storage

Storage can be as simple as putting it in a closet all the way to keeping it in a full-scale gun safe.

• Accessories

I like a red dot sight on mine,  but any cheap sight for an air gun is acceptable as  they are meant to be shot at 100 yards, not 1000.

Note: Make sure that any scopes or sights you put on an airgun are designed for it. The recoil works differently, and can actually destroy a scope meant for a firearm.

• A Backstop

If you have a yard, or a long enough range, you can purchase a commercially made target. I have used a simple resetting target, and I enjoyed it, but as it is not a proper backstop it comes with a risk of accidentally hitting my neighbors' property if I miss my target.

If you want to spend the money, you can purchase a commercial backstop to stop the bullets, but they are expensive, with a small one costing around $85. I prefer to make my own.


Making Your Own Backstop
The recipe is fairly simple:

• A Container

I use cheap old plastic Walmart bins, but I know people who use cardboard boxes or custom-made wood enclosures.

• A Target Hanger

I make my own with hardware cloth and binder clips.

• A Way to Stop the Pellets

Ballistic putty is what a lot of commercial options use, and it works well, but it gets quite expensive -- for a small target you will want ten or so pounds, which runs around $40.

For a do-it-yourself solution, I have found that old carpet scraps do the trick.

1. Find a local store that sells carpet and ask for scraps. I was able to find a selection of commercial carpet, shag, and other, and all it cost me was asking nicely and picking it up.
2. Eight layers of carpet in an old bin stops everything I have tested quite nicely, with the deepest penetration being at five layers.

Good luck, and don’t forget to practice.

GunBlog VarietyCast Radio #171 - Talking Turkey

We recorded this on Thanksgiving, between Erin's lunch and Sean's dinner. We apologize if listening makes you hungry.

• Beth is on assignment.
• A burglar is shot and captured. But what did he do just before that? And who were they, really? Sean takes a look.
• Risk vs. Reward is as important a consideration in the Tech world as in real life. Barron is back to talk about doing a proper risk assessment.
• Miguel is still on assignment.
• In this week's Main Topic, Sean and Erin the tackles the "Giffords! Courage to Fight Gun Violence!" new position paper "Legal and Lethal: 9 Products That Could be the Next Bump Stock." <Dramatic Music>
• Tiffany recently appeared on the Polite Society Podcast with fellow Rangemaster-certified instructor Aqil Qadir. She was so intrigued by his story that she asked if he would sit for an interview.
• Erin spent the week shooting a gun in her back yard. Don't worry, it was an air gun. She's going to tell you about it and the heavy duty bullet trap she needed to make sure everything was safe.
• Anti-Gun Researcher Tom Gabor is back, and he's not any more factual than last week. Weer'd issues the appropriate corrective.
• And our Plug of the Week is Silver Spoon, a really awesome Russian cop drama on Netflix.

Thank you for downloading, listening, and subscribing. You are subscribed, right? We are available on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and Google Play Music!

Listen to the podcast here.
Read the show notes here.

Thanks to LuckyGunner and Remington for their sponsorship, and a special thanks to Firearms Policy Coalition for their support.

Blue Collar Prepping Transcript: 
Air Guns

As I mentioned in the introduction, I received an air rifle, a Gamo Wildcat Whisper, from my friend Charles Lee Scudder. While not strictly necessary, an air rifle is something very nice to have in your preps for a variety of reasons.

• They are inexpensive. A decent air rifle costs between $100 and $150, depending on what options you choose. 
• So is the ammunition. The most common caliber for air rifles is .177 -- from now on, I’ll just call this .17, okay? -- and this stuff is ridiculously cheap. 500 rounds of .17 cost about $6. 
• Because of this, you can practice a perishable skill economically. Air guns are better than .22 rifles in that regard. 
• It’s a good training platform for children. The rifles are light, there’s no recoil, and there’s no “bang”, which means there’s no startle reflex to overcome.
• They’re quiet. When I used mine in the backyard, the only sound I could hear was the PING! from the bullet hitting the trap. My mother, who was about 20 feet away inside the house, couldn’t hear it at all. This means you don’t have to go to a range to practice; you can practice in your yard or inside your home, so long as you have a good backstop. 
• It’s not a legal firearm. This means that you can buy it online, have it delivered to your home, and there’s no paperwork to fill out. 

When considering an air rifle for purchase, there are two big choices to make: caliber and action.

While there are actually four popular airgun calibers - 17, 20, 22 and 25 - to my mind there are only two worth considering due to availability and effectiveness: 17 and 22.

• .17 caliber is cheaper, more readily available in stores, and comes in variety of ammo types: greater penetration, greater impact, greater expansion, and match grade for practice and competition. It is also a flatter-shooting round.
• .22 caliber pellets are slightly harder to find in stores and cost twice as much, but have MUCH more impact when used for hunting.

Ultimately, caliber choice comes down to what you want your rifle to do.

• If you want to hunt with it, you should get a .22, because a .17 is likely to pass through an animal without killing it, allowing it to run away and die later.
• If you want it for practice or training, get a .17.
• If you plan to use it for vermin control, either caliber will do, although .17 is probably more cost-effective.

When it comes to what kind of action to use, your choices are CO2 cartridge vs Pump.

• CO2 rifles are easier to use and faster to shoot, because you won’t have to pump the rifle up after each shot, but add another consumable to your preps and extra layer of complication.
• Pumps are slower to load, and it can be a pain in the rear to un-shoulder the rifle, put the buttstock on the ground, break the barrel open, load the pellet, close the barrel, re-shoulder, and fire, but they also have fewer complicated parts and all you need are pellets.
• For this reason, I recommend pump action rifles for preppers.

When it comes to pump actions, there are different choices, but that risks getting into the weeds of break-barrel versus pneumatics. For those who are interested in learning more about air rifles, please check the show notes for a link to a Blue Collar Prepping article on air rifles. Give it a read!

• Gamo Wildcat Whisper .177 - http://amzn.to/2ziFr8v
• Champion Traps and Targets .22LR Bullet Trap - http://amzn.to/2Bf8uLw
• Airgun Pellets Combo Pack 1000 Assorted, .177 Caliber - http://amzn.to/2i0rFDZ
• Crosman Hollow Point Pellets, .177-Calibre, 500 Count - http://amzn.to/2hOdNJw
• The differences between .177 & .22 – and which jobs they do best - https://www.pyramydair.com/blog/2005/04/the-differences-between-177-22-and-which-jobs-they-do-best/
• Airgun calibers: The lowdown on the four most popular airgun calibers, plus a quick look at BBs - https://www.pyramydair.com/article/Airgun_Calibers_June_2003/4
• From the Mailbag – .177 vs .22 for hunting - https://www.airgundepot.com/from-the-mailbag-177-vs-22-for-hunting-article.html
• BCP Air Rifle article - https://bluecollarprepping.blogspot.com/2016/01/guest-post-air-rifles.html

Guest Post: Air Rifles

by George Groot

Firearms are awesome. But unless you have a silencer, or are using a very low power rimfire cartridge, firearms are loud. Firearms are also expensive to feed, even rimfires.

For sake of argument, let's say that after the (insert apocalypse here) you have a nice plot of potatoes, carrots, other root vegetables, but need some meat for the pot. Odds are good that if you live in a city you can find some pigeon or other bird, and if you live in the suburbs you can find squirrels. It doesn’t take much meat to keep all the essential amino acids in your diet, and hunting small game quietly is preferable to hunting small game loudly.

To choose an air rifle for the taking of small game (and let’s be honest, there is a lot more small game than big game out there) your choices are effectively limitless for squirrel and smaller. For rabbit or raccoon, you’ll want bigger pellets and stronger energy levels, and enough accuracy to make headshots if you can for instant kills.

Types of Air Rifles
There are four basic types of air rifle; break barrel, single stroke, multi pump, pre-charged pneumatic.

Break Barrel Rifles

These provide good power pretty cheaply. They are also “hunting accurate”, but have been replaced by precharged pneumatics in competition because the spring action induces vibrations which are not good for accuracy. These are relatively easy to tune and repair for most people who are mechanically inclined. There are lots of manufacturers and lots of options.

Single Stroke Pneumatic
These are accurate, but you are stuck with the power level given. I don’t recommend them for hunting, but they are great for marksmanship practice. In fact I highly recommend them for marksmanship practice.

Multi-Pump Pneumatic
These can be very accurate. People have been using Sheridan Blue Streak (now called the Benjamin 397) or Silver Streak (now Benjamin 392) air rifles for hunting small game since the 1950s. They can be pricier than break barrels, and trickier to repair.

Precharged Pneumatic
The ones regulated for competition are in the same league as most single stroke pneumatics. But you can get these in .17, .22, .25, .35, .45, or .50 caliber if you want to drop a lot of money. These are the fastest for follow up shots because there is nothing to do but put in another pellet. These can get very pricey, and are not easy to repair on your own.

Recommendation
If you are a prepper and you don’t already own an air rifle for hunting, I recommend a break barrel .22 caliber. While not as common as the .17 caliber ammunition, .22 caliber pellets will reliably dispatch squirrels in trees and knock them down to the ground for recovery. The .17 caliber rifles, even high powered ones, don’t always knock the squirrels down.

.22 caliber pellets are more expensive than .17, but still less than $10 per 100 (some are $10 per 500), which is a pretty good price considering how much a 500 round “value pack” of .22 LR is going for lately.

I also recommend getting a low powered air rifle scope in the 4x range to put on your hunting air rifle, because most air rifles come with not much to write home about in the way of factory sites. Not that you need one, mind you, just that it isn't going to hurt to have glass on a rifle.

My recommended air rifles for Blue Collar Preppers are:

• Crosman Crusher Nitro Piston ($130, comes with 4x scope)
• Benjamin Titan GP Nitro Piston ($130, comes with 4x scope)
• Gamo Big Cat ($150, comes with 4x scope)

Should you go out and sell your rimfires to buy air rifles? No. But if you have squirrels and rabbits getting into your garden, or a raccoon making a nuisance of themselves, a hunting power .22 caliber air rifle is going to be a good addition to your preps.