Alisha bought her FIRST springer today

We decided to try Sportsman Exeter, Heavitree Gun & sport and Blue Fox today.

We started with Sportsman, what a disaster that was! On their website they say they have a blue lam HW97 .177 "hurry last one" Nope, not there !!!! I expressed my unhappiness as that was the main reason to go there and moved onto looking at their range of HW's. I asked if Alisha could try to cock any HW95 they had on display and if she could, I'd like to see all their HW95 stock (4 guns). So with that request, the man went off to the store room and brought out one gun? He started to unbox it, I said there was no need to unwrap it, one from the shelf would be OK to try and cock! He gave some rubbish about that was not what I'd asked, but then went to the rack. Alisha confirmed to me after that my request was perfectly clear, and the guy was just not listening!

Anyway, can't remember detail now, but a gun was cocked. The guy went to dry fire it into the carpet, I said please don't do that, it's not good for the gun and it can be de-cocked via the trigger! He said it couldn't as the barrel would return to strongly to hold by hand I told him I'd been shooting spring guns for 30 odd years and it CAN be de-cocked! He then shouted across the shop floor he was going to fire, stuck the barrel of this new gun into the carpet and dry fired it

Alisha was handed the gun back, I said to her, "you know we are now not buying that gun", twice. The guy said "is there a problem?" I said "yes, because you just dry fired it! Every gun she cocks to find one she can, you will then dry fire it, so we do have a problem!" I pondered the situation for a moment, telepathically consulted Alisha and told the guy, "thanks, but no thanks, we'll go elsewhere". and left!

Angry bear suggested Heavitree Gun & sport as it was also on the way to Blue Fox. I rang them first and asked two questions, How many springers do you have in stock? and how do YOU de-cock them? They replied, with a pellet in the barrel out the back of the shop. That was good enough for me and we were in there within 5 minutes.

They had a nice selection of mainly HW's to try, They all got de-cocked via trigger and arm easily, What a surprise He even gave each gun a little spray of oil and a wipe after we had handled them before putting back on the rack On the rack, they had what looked like a HW95 Luxus in .177 long barrel with out open sights but with a barrel weight. We'd never seen this flavour of WH before on the net. It had a totally undamaged stock, some nice grain and wonderful metal work. She was able to cock it, so we bought it She then went on to buy a nice bag and the shop gave her a tin of pellets of her choice (she went for JSB Exact Diablo 4.52 )

The gun is REALLY nice, even I say that and I'm not really a 'Weihrauch man'. Heavitree Gun & sport were really helpful and gave Alisha all the time she needed to chose her gun and didn't hesitate in offering her a wide selection of guns to try. I told the shop they had been recommended to us from BBS member Angrybear and I'd report back to the forum.

Alisha is over the moon with her new Boing Boing and is now climbing the walls counting down the days to the Sep Bash !

A big thank you to Angrybear and Heavitree Gun & sport, a huge 'never use you again' to Sportsman (any Sportsman)!