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New member, getting back into air rifles. |
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R0b0tMaf1a
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Joined: 01 May 2026 Location: NZ Status: Offline Posts: 6 |
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Topic: New member, getting back into air rifles.Posted: 01 May 2026 at 6:22pm |
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Hi. I’m popping in here so that I can accumulate enough rep
to be able to PM people in the For Sale section of the forum, so feel free to
be chatty
![]() I haven't used an air rifle since I was a kid and don't even remember the brands of the couple that I had. I moved back to NZ and bought a few acres beside about 18 odd acres of bush next door. Well, there are a few small pests wandering about that I would like to deal with and I can’t be bothered with the rigmarole of getting a FAL and a safe etc….so an Air Rifle it is. Once I’ve dealt with a few of the pests, I’d also like something that is well made enough to be accurate so that I can amuse myself with some target shooting as well. Anyhoo, I have a bit of reading to do it seems as there’s
way more to it than the knackered old plinker dad gave me as a kid.
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-Ec
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Joined: 02 Sep 2025 Location: Matamau Status: Offline Posts: 175 |
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Posted: 01 May 2026 at 8:04pm |
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Hi and welcome to the forum. Here you will find a group of very knowledgeable air gunners who will willingly share their knowledge - you need only ask. There is a good mix of serious target shooters, plinkers, hunters and professional pest controllers within this group. Sounds like you came into air gunning and ultimately this group along the same path as me. A life sentence block with a pest problem. In my case, mostly possums eating the veggies, fruit and even chook food. The final straw was breaking one of my daughter's favourite standard roses! With little knowledge about air guns other than not needing a firearms license to buy anything other than a PCP, I purchased a Gamo .22 on Tradme only because it was the only .22 on TradeMe at the time that wasn't too expensive and was close enough away for me to go and pick up rather than having to deal with mail-order forms and having it sent through the licenced dealer network. While not a top quality air gun, my Gamo has dealt with the possums, hares and even a turkey that was starting to hang around my chickens. I have caught the airgun bug and now have 4 air rifles and two pistols which mostly get used for plinking though some of them still used to keep the pest numbers down. What part of the country are you from? There may be other forum members who will be happy to meet with you and let you try their guns and help you find what suits you. Anyway - once again WELCOME.
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-Ec |
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mercs
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Joined: 25 Apr 2020 Location: Stratford Status: Offline Posts: 360 |
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Posted: 01 May 2026 at 9:56pm |
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Hi R0B0, welcome to our part of the airgun world.
Good that you are going to check things out. Airguns are a great option for pest control and there are plenty of choices. Look forward to future posts. cheers
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kruzaroad
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Joined: 03 Jul 2022 Location: Hastings 4 now Status: Offline Posts: 2881 |
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Posted: Yesterday at 9:51am |
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Hi.
Think my first question would be, what will you do most? If its going to be mostly target at end of day you may want to get something of lesser power than usual for hunting... Buy still have the fpe for closer range pests. Makes the gun easier to shoot. A lot of target guns are low powered. Visa versa too. If your going to be using mainly for pest control you might want a slightly more powerful gun that though accurate wont give you hole in hole accuracy. Then there's the scope. I have a hawk vantage on one rifle with wedges. Its ao and about 24x mag. For target shooting its great or being in set place. The wedges give me a much wider spread over the vertical mildots which in turns gives me a lot more points of aim on the scope distance. ao adjusts out any parralax error. Awsome scope and leathal for accuracy. How ever for hunting i hate the bloody thing. Have to dial in foucus if its out, have a lot more distance marks to remember, i find it difficult trying to dial a scope standing and rabbits you spring out of blue, close by don't tend to hang around while you fiddle with scope. Now.im trying 3-9.x 40 scopes fixed parralax. Just killed a none air rifle rated one and about to try an air rifle rated one. For me the advantage of a set parralax scope hunting is to much to ignore. No time wasted focusing objective lens..smaller and sleeker.. less moving parts to go out of aline... Less aim points to rember as without wedges the line of sight intersects the pellets path much higher in it arc. Down side is hold... Inconsistent hold will lead to parralax issues. Once you're looking at few models guns and scopes you want, then put them up here before you buy. You can avoid a few pitfalls with the knowledge stashed in members heads. Welcome to the slippery slope of air rifle addicts Edited by kruzaroad - Yesterday at 9:57am |
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vault
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Joined: 27 Apr 2026 Location: Dunedin Status: Offline Posts: 17 |
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Posted: Yesterday at 2:10pm |
Welcome bro, Living the dream. If your in Dunedin I got a Prosport you can try, heavy but it's a mans gun, accurate as, last forever.
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Air-arms Prosport .177 FAC
Optisan 10*32 Air-arms Tx200 Mk3 .177 FAC Hawke SW 8-32*56 |
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R0b0tMaf1a
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Joined: 01 May 2026 Location: NZ Status: Offline Posts: 6 |
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Posted: 20 hours 22 minutes ago at 6:38pm |
That's a very kind offer, but I'm about as far from you as I could get. I'm up in the Bay of Islands.
Edited by R0b0tMaf1a - 20 hours 20 minutes ago at 6:40pm |
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R0b0tMaf1a
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Joined: 01 May 2026 Location: NZ Status: Offline Posts: 6 |
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Posted: 20 hours 11 minutes ago at 6:49pm |
I think first and foremost, I would like to have the gun more suited to dealing with the pests. If I find that it is not great for targets, then I can't always get something more suited to that when the novelty of using the pest gun for targets wears off. I've just been invited to a pistol club too, so who knows...maybe I'll end up with a FAL after all. As for optics, I know exactly what you're talking about as I am into photography and lens swapping or missing shots due to having the wrong glass on is something I'm all too familiar with. At this stage I will have to look up what wedges do, and I saw someone selling a gun I am curious about. It comes without the scope and rings. I have to look up those too. When it comes to this stuff, I am Jon Snow. |
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R0b0tMaf1a
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Joined: 01 May 2026 Location: NZ Status: Offline Posts: 6 |
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Posted: 19 hours 55 minutes ago at 7:05pm |
Life A Gamo was the first rifle I thought about getting. A Magnum IGT Mac1. But a friend has just offered me a Benjamin Trail NP. I should be able to get it at a fairly good price...but I'm not sure if it's a suitable pest rifle. I was also eyeing an HW50 in the for sale section of this site. Edited by R0b0tMaf1a - 19 hours 54 minutes ago at 7:06pm |
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-Ec
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Joined: 02 Sep 2025 Location: Matamau Status: Offline Posts: 175 |
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Posted: 18 hours 37 minutes ago at 8:23pm |
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My Gamo is a .22 Wildcat whisper IGT that runs at around 15 FPE - so not a Magnum gun but it has dealt to the pests around here. I have since bought a Hatsan Carnivore .30 that is an absolute beast. Very powerful and accurate for a break-barrel gun and a lot of fun to shoot - but my Gamo is much more practical for pest control. So far I've restricted myself to a max of around 30 meters - I know the gun is capable of much more but at this stage I'm not. Don't know anything about the Benjamin Trail but it seems to have some good reviews and is running at about the same power as my Gamo so should be up to the task. A UK spec sub 12FPE air rifle is capable of a clean kill on a rabbit at 80 m - the key is being able to hit it in the right place at that range.
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-Ec |
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KiwiTR6
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Joined: 04 Nov 2022 Location: Stratford Status: Offline Posts: 427 |
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Posted: 18 hours 8 minutes ago at 8:52pm |
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I had a Benjamin Trail for a sort period (along with with several others budget models) but it was hopelessly inaccurate. Eventually (I'm a slow learner) I realised that the level of accuracy can be plotted on a simple graph with Dollars Spent along the X axis at the bottom and Gun Accuracy on the Y axis.
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Daystate Red Wolf .22
FX Dreamline .22 Diana Outlaw .22 HW98 .177 HW30 .177 Diana 340 N-Tec .177 FWB Sport 124 .177 Gamo 900 .22 Diana Mod 25 Baikal IJ-22 .177 Crosman 2240 Custom .22 |
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kruzaroad
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Joined: 03 Jul 2022 Location: Hastings 4 now Status: Offline Posts: 2881 |
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Posted: 5 hours 1 minutes ago at 9:59am |
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Basics on wedges .
Pellets start arcing down as soon as they are in the air. The arc gets sharper as the speed drops off, the further away it gets. So the pellet is never really any higher than when it leaves the barrel If your scope was level with the barrel you would never have a place where the line of sight crosses over where the pellet flys. So they don't. Scopes have a slight downward angle . Now your line of sight is a strait line that because it has a slight angle towards the barrel it will go through the arc of pellet at two points. One will be close one will further away. You set your zero where you want it intersect that arc. That means part of the arc of the pellet will appear above the line of sight and part below. These are your hold overs and unders. Wedges go between the scope rings and the scope and make that angle more downwards. That means the strait line of sight will be able to intersect the pellet arc earlier and later. That means more of the arc is outside the strait line of sight.That means you use more hold over points to accomplish that. Examples hw97 wedged scope covers 13 mildots over a 100m Diana none wedged scope approx 3 mildots over same distance. Hw97 15,20,25m are basically one mildot separation at two mildot hold over. Diana none shimmed (another word for wedge) scope. 15,20,25m is a half mildot hold under. That line mark at half mildot does all three distances. Level with bottom of line,15m. Dead middle of that line 20m and hair above it 25m. Needless to say but i will. The wedge scope allows me more mildots to cover the same area. That means more points of refrance for distances. The none wedge has such a small amount of movement i can be 10m of distance just from gun movement and it hardly noticable. |
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R0b0tMaf1a
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Joined: 01 May 2026 Location: NZ Status: Offline Posts: 6 |
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Posted: 2 hours 15 minutes ago at 12:45pm |
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KiwiTR6, I completely agree, but at this stage I am still trying to determine where the line of diminishing returns really kicks in. You posted an HW50 in the for sale section (that I'm not allowed to comment in yet) and I am aware that the Weihrauch are a well thought of rifle, and it seems some of the Diana range are too...but there seems to be a bigger difference in price between those two than there is between the Benjamin and the Daina. Thank you for sharing your experience with the Benjamin Trail though, much appreciated. Edited by R0b0tMaf1a - 2 hours 14 minutes ago at 12:46pm |
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R0b0tMaf1a
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Joined: 01 May 2026 Location: NZ Status: Offline Posts: 6 |
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Posted: 1 hour 53 minutes ago at 1:07pm |
I would hate to see your FULL breakdown haha. I do understand some of the basics....but only due to playing some video games where bullet drop is a factor and you have to make distance calculations etc. I did however think that it was all built into the scope and if you dialled up distance, it would adjust the scope angle at the same time. I was not aware it was mechanical. |
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kruzaroad
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Joined: 03 Jul 2022 Location: Hastings 4 now Status: Offline Posts: 2881 |
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Posted: 1 hour 52 minutes ago at 1:08pm |
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Yeah i think thats more weihrauch has a rep. But its a rep based on well made guns.
Diana i think also has some guns that arnt that great due to trying to appeal to a larger cross section. Higher end is close to wiehrach prices i believe. Though don't quote me.on that, i haven't gone to far into diana models yet. |
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KiwiTR6
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Joined: 04 Nov 2022 Location: Stratford Status: Offline Posts: 427 |
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Posted: 40 minutes ago at 2:16pm |
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The HW50 was sold last week. I have several Dianas, the smallest made in 1977 by Milbro in the UK. Purchased from Collector Weapons, it's an absolute gem and highly accurate. An Outlaw PCP, made in China, also a very accurate gun but had a few manufacturing issues when received. I was able to sort them myself and it's used by my niece for target shooting each week with good results. Also, I recently purchased new a 340 N Tech followed by a Two Forty, both in .177, The former is made in Germany, the latter in China. The Two Forty is definitely not as well finished as a Weihrauch (to be expected at half the price) but it is equally as accurate as my HW30. Not a high powered gun though. The 340 N-Tec is a full sized gun that is equally as well finished as a Weihrauch and retails for around $750 new. What I'm getting to is that regardless of where it's made, a Diana is going to be a much better and more accurate purchase than any Gamo/Norica/Benjamin et al. currently on the market. IMHO |
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Daystate Red Wolf .22
FX Dreamline .22 Diana Outlaw .22 HW98 .177 HW30 .177 Diana 340 N-Tec .177 FWB Sport 124 .177 Gamo 900 .22 Diana Mod 25 Baikal IJ-22 .177 Crosman 2240 Custom .22 |
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