GAMO Shadow 1000 .177

Yesterday a mate came over to sight-in his ancient Gamo Shadow 1000 .177 air rifle.

I’m not a Gamo fan.  If it were up to me, I’d have ‘em all melted down to make fishing lures!

So, we started with some Gamo pellets at 30yds, then some H&N Baracudas.  As expected, the grouping was so bad you could drive a bus through the middle and not touch any of the pellet holes.  I was about to say to my mate that he could advertise it on TradeMe and pay $50 to anyone mad enough to take it away (!), when I thought we’d just try my favourite go-to pellets - the Air Arms Diabolo Field (8.4gr 4.52 head size) - which both of my Weihrauch springers embrace with love.

5 shots later and I’m sitting up, taking notice!  We had a sub-1” group on target!  Nah - no way!  We adjusted the old simple Gamo scope to bring the pellets on to centre, tried another 5 shots and again, another sub-1” group appeared! 

We moved to 40yds.  Same again!  I’m in shock!  And so the day continued…. tight lovely consistent groups every time!  With a light-weight 1,000 year old Gamo .177?!  Incredible!  I eat my words!

Has anyone else had such luck with the Shadow 1000?  Is this known as a “good Gamo” model - or are we just lucky to have one rifle made well, back in the Paleolithic era?! 

I haven't had one, but whenever I see any springer, there's always something in my mind that says, "I reckon that could be good with some tuning" 

Pauly5 wrote: One exeption is the $100 gun challenge gun. I don't think those have much merit.

Myson, I own two gamos and had a third briefly before selling it to a friend, and all 3 shoot really well with the right pellet.
All 3 had horrible triggers before I did the longer screw mod, and all 3 still have (slightly less) horrible triggers now. But honeslty cant fault them on their groups. They have taken a few bunnies and a few possums.

Try the JSB Exact pellets as well, and the cometa exact, which ever ones are more easily available in your area. They are all the same pellet as your AirArms field diabolo, all three are made by JSB just supposedly different dies, but basically all the same pellet, same weights, from the same factory.

Thats why its so important to keep trying different pellets till you find one the barrel likes.

Indoors 25 yards Gamo Replay 15 ft/lbs

Edited by mercs - 25 Jan 2025 at 8:11pm