From England but living near Christchurch

Welcome along mate. I'm just down the road o in Ashburton but work in Christchurch most days.

I would grab Pauly5's cfx. I haven't rebuilt one of those but Mercs and others can point you in the right direction if you need to go down that route with it.

If you go down the c02 guns and want to bulk fill c02 I can help out there if needed.

Shooters supplies would be my best choice decent guys there

Also thanks for the welcome.  I plan on grabbing in and putting it to good use down here. Seeing quite a few rat signs around the chooks etc. and lots of pest birds.

I'm quite excited to get my hands on the CFX, might well be a good little project gun to tide me over until I'm more permantly resident in NZ and get a firearms licence.  I may well save up for a high end springer but that may well turn into a pcp or powder burner depending upon my needs down the line.  Or I might fall in love with spring/gas ram air rifles once again and forget all about pcp's.

Hey Elliot, welcome to NZ!

I know it will be controversial, but I currently have over 15 air guns in my collection, and when it comes to hunting, I pick my Gamo Magnum Gen 2 more often than I would want to admit. I hunt turkeys, and for the most part, I couldn’t find any other rifle to put up with it in those hunts, including well-made BSA, and fixed barrel Stoegers. They are much harder to shoot than a TX200 or a Weihrouch springer, but once you’ve nailed it down, the 30fpe, all weather stock (great on the field) it’s hard to beat - definitely not a plinker though.

So, a CFX for $100 bucks, if you don’t want that one, I might - you won’t find more bang for your buck than that! Another option to look at if you’re used to PCPs is the Umarex Magnum with the 88g CO2. It puts out about 11fp if I’m not mistaken, and if you buy the 12g CO2 adaptor, it should be cheap to run too.

The BSA Spitfire is another good option and widely available, but it is certainly not quiet. For reference, it has the same power plant as the lightning xl, but with a 10-shot mag fitted - I also never had any problems with those.

With all that said though, as rightfully pointed out, if you’re willing to put down the money, you can’t really go wrong with models such the TX200, HW90, ASP20, and so on. And these will indeed be guns your grandchildren will shoot decades from now.

Hope that either way you find your deal and soon enough be out there shooting! Welcome again.