Spring gun revival (again.....)

[cooper_dan]

Die hard springer fan here, with hopefully many more years of springing ahead of me
I agree with a lot of what has been said here, but mostly with the comment that springers are often tried and then replaced very quickly with a PCP because the accuracy is much more readily available.

I've spoken to people who have said 'I had a Weihrauch it was s**t, got a Gamo PCP now instead, much better'. Bo**ocks!

I shoot a lot of HFT now and I'm trying to get more people shooting springers. As part of this I'm going to be reviewing a whole load of springers next year. Testing loads of things including accuracy at 45 yards. Starting off with budget guns, and hopefully moving up in price/quality as funds or lending allows.
I want to show that springers, even cheaper ones can be accurate if you learn them

[clarky]

Die hard springer fan here, with hopefully many more years of springing ahead of me
I agree with a lot of what has been said here, but mostly with the comment that springers are often tried and then replaced very quickly with a PCP because the accuracy is much more readily available.

I've spoken to people who have said 'I had a Weihrauch it was s**t, got a Gamo PCP now instead, much better'. Bo**ocks!

I shoot a lot of HFT now and I'm trying to get more people shooting springers. As part of this I'm going to be reviewing a whole load of springers next year. Testing loads of things including accuracy at 45 yards. Starting off with budget guns, and hopefully moving up in price/quality as funds or lending allows.
I want to show that springers, even cheaper ones can be accurate if you learn them

Great ...start with a Diana 34 ...see if you can match my 17 mm effort.....thats 50 yds

[cooper_dan]

Great ...start with a Diana 34 ...see if you can match my 17 mm effort.....thats 50 yds

Diana 34 might not fit in the budget, would probably have to be on offer.... I'm testing new guns that will cost under £300 with a scope.

[scutter]

I totally agree that there has been a great resurgence in springers, I put this down to a few things. Number one, with the help of website like this and shooting the breeze, learning how to set up and shoot a springer has become much easier. The second is the cost, PCP's are crazy money, even a bog standard HW100 is nearly a grand with a scope on top, where as a TX200hc is half of that and finaly, it's the people.

I shot PCP for 8 years and I realy enjoyed it, but after a while I started to become boared, I would come of the course and think about the shots I missed and not the ones I got and this is because if you own a top PCP, you should get most of the prone shots. With a boinger, you come off the course and you remember all the targets you hit and you especialy remember the ones you get that the PCP boys missed and that gives you ultimate bragging rights.

I have had so much help in my journey from people like Nigel Wood, Rex Bennet, Neil Wakelin, Vince Holland and even Phill Russel and its the fraternaty of springer shooters that has ignited my love of shoooting again.

If you don't own a boinger, go get one, they are great and the people who shoot them are a wonderful bunch.

all the best

Gary Chillingworth

[ChrisC]

Boingers are just as popular as ever, well except maybe in my regions FT winter league where they seem to be dying out a little.

One thing that always makes me giggle though.......Springers are tuned so that they'll shoot as close to a PCP as possible??

[LESS THAN FORTUITOUS KENNETH]

I'm beginning to look at rifles much as I do watches. Quartz watches generally tell the time more accurately than mechanical watches, but I'd prefer a mechanical one over a quartz any day. They have a "soul".

My rifle collection at the moment is about 50/50, springers/boingers. There is no PC on my wanted list. There are a lot of boingers still on it. More so the older stuff. Must be my age.

[flyingfish]

I sent my BSA scorpion to be tuned. This left me with only a TX200 to shoot for a few weeks. I bet I did not put more than 2 tins through the scorpion before I sold it. Just found I had fallen in love with springers.

[Phil Russell]

Boingers are just as popular as ever, well except maybe in my regions FT winter league where they seem to be dying out a little.

One thing that always makes me giggle though.......Springers are tuned so that they'll shoot as close to a PCP as possible??

Hi Chris ... I have to agree with your final comment but I do so in an amused way. There is, of course, a natural desire in all shooters to get their rifle shooting as sweetly as possible and if you enjoy your shooting there can be a tendency to want to inject cash on 'improving' or modifying your rifle. Sometimes this even extends to changing the rifle. So a shooter gets an 'out of the box' rifle and spends some money on a 'tune' of some sort generated by an itch to improve the feel of the rifle and also the performance. Once this itch has been satisfied, another one develops and another change is made or equipment added; etc etc. All perfectly natural and not peculiar to springers.
The desire to bring a springer into pcp territory is clearly real but will never be totally achievable without a recoil eliminating mechanism ... no matter what people claim, recoil is always there even in the 'tuned' rifles; it is just that the performance and shooting characteristics have been modified or hidden from the shooter so that the perceived recoil is far less. In this respect, spring bearings, top hat and spring guides, heavy stocks, barrel weights are all routes to achieve this. But the thrill of shooting a springer remains. You can still feel the life pulsing through the stock and action rather than the dead wffp of a pcp. Occasionally I shoot a Park, a truly 'dead' springer than can feel deader than a pcp. It is very pleasant to shoot but you still know it is a springer, both physically and mentally.
Cheers, Phil