FT shooting rifle choice, opinions needed.

[Bellycrawler]

I'm going to have a go at FT shooting with a friend, she is disabled & normally bench rests, she now has a rimfire & is thinking of selling her sub 12ftb .22 S410 Classic. I normally hunt with FAC rifles, powder & air + a shotty, my sub 12ftb collection consists of a HW80, HW100, S410, RWS Excalibre, BSA Ultra all in .22 with a few tins of pellets in .22 but I also have at least 20+ tins of .177 pellets. There is no intention of doing FT seriously more like have a go for a few months while I decide whether to sell up my .22 collection or keep them for a bit longer. My thoughts are to use any of my rifles & let my friend use the Ultra as it's nice & light, she has no means to support a rifle while sat on a mobility scooter but it could get expensive buying loads of pellets. A 2nd option would be to buy a .177 rifle, either a S400 carbine or a Ultra to use between us & use up my stock of .177 pellets then if we decide FT is not for us sell whatever .177 we bought for roughly the same price as what we bought it for or if we like it at a basic hobby level sell up the .22 rifles & get a second .177 rifle & a pair of decent scopes. Your thoughts please.

[NeilMac]

OK, a really nice clear explanations.

First thing you need to do is find the FT clubs local to you, you should be able to find them here: https://www.mfta.org.uk/

Visit a couple of them and see if you can find somewhere that suits you both as not all clubs have good disabled access.

As far as kit is concerned, long term if you took to FT then you will most likely want to change at least one rifle. You can shoot FT with a .22, but it is more or less universally shot with .177 due to the flatter trajectory / faster velocity of that calibre. That said, it is perfectly possibly for you to spend at least the first few months getting the hang of FT with a .22, we have a guy locally who is a very experienced .22 shooter, he got involved with FT and was doing extremely well, but realised as he got better that other people had an edge on him, only after a number of months did the reason for this edge become clear, he was shooting .22 and no one had realised as he was doing that well.

You don't need to get too deep into kit at this stage, when you visit clubs you will see some real rocket ship rigs, some of which cost thousands of pounds... you may or may not end up there, but in the mean time any accurate rifle, like the S400 will do very nicely. Remember that FT courses have typically 40 targets so if you are going to share a rifle, you will either need to top up the air part way through, or find a rifle with an 80 to 90 shot capacity.... or shoot a springer.

At this stage we are not going to talk about pellets, as on its own it is a huge subject, just visit some clubs, chat with the folks there, try some courses with the rifles you have and see if you like it, hopefully you will.

[Bellycrawler]

Thanks, I'm glad you didn't talk pellets !!!!!!! My first hurdle is finding somewhere with good disabled access, at the moment I'm thinking of finding somewhere & just trying then go from there. 50/50 with rifle choice though, my headache boils down to sell the .177 pellets at a loss then buy .22 pellets or get a .177 rifle to start with to either keep or sell on later.

[NeilMac]

Do not buy or sell anything yet. First job, visit some clubs.

Selling pellets all depends on what they are as 'all pellets are not created equal' and even if you buy a .177, there is no guarantee that the rifle you buy will like the pellets you have.

Mine field? You bet!

[Steyr]

If your dipping your toe into HFT/FT the rifle is not your first priority.

The scope is.

If you have a rifle that is comfortable at the moment unsupported or whatever the needs are then that will get you around an HFT or FT course. For FT though... a range reading scope is pretty essential.

Most FT rifles especially if German will usually have adjustment in pretty much every way. But an ordinary scope wont cut it for FT.

2nd hand would be the route to follow AFTER you have been to an FT club and talked about your needs and restrictions and tried kit too.

Side wheel high mag scopes will help but if your going cheaper so your homework as to which make is likely to do what it says on the tin.

I used a clubs S200 with a shxte scope (cheapo Nikko stirling iirc and a gravel trigge and came off with 75 x 80 but i was helped with ranges. It was just for the craic.

As some FT shooter like back up kit for when it goes tits... someone might lend you theres .... just make sure insure it.

I wouldnt just jump in. FT will show you if you have got your kit choices wrong and that assumes you can read the signs which is unlikely.

The best kit in the world wont overcome your errors. Probably make worse TBH

[Bellycrawler]

Thanks Steyr but a little off from what I'm thinking about. There is no intention of taking FT/HFT up as a serious hobby, more like just something to wander around a course plinking at targets, It won't matter if we miss by miles or knock every one down in one shot, the main rifle combo consideration is the ability for a disabled person & myself to shoot unsupported. We can do serious paper target practice out to 115yds if we wanted at our local powder burning range but prefer to "have a go" at knock downs while we consider the long term fate of our sub 12ftb air rifles, be it with the Ultra & low power ratting scope or the HW100 with a Bushnell Elite or even the HW80 fitted with a spare large Hawke Sidewinder, we don't care. Question is do we just amble along with what we have in .22 with whatever scopes we have & sell off my spare .177 pellets or take the plunge for a .177 rifle that possibly will be sold on later. Our available scopes are Bushnell 6500 Elites, Hawke Sidewinder, Hawke Vantage / Varmint, EB 10x42, Nikon Monarch, Filipino WTC + a variety of fixed focus scopes & others I've forgot about so the scope side of it is sorted without extra cost. If the intention was to take up knock down shooting seriously my question would of been quite different & in fact there would be no need to of asked but this simple what choice query has me beat at the moment.

[bozzer]

Sadly I can see quite a few problems here ... but problems are there to be overcome.

I think there's going to be a problem with 'Having a go' with what you have, and that option giving you enough enjoyment to want to keep going back.

I'm not sure what clubs will have genuine access around the course, and access up to the pegs ( for safety reasons ), for a mobility scooter.

If your friend is shooting from the scooter unsupported then that's not a very stable position ( re her knocking many down ).

I know you are saying you just want to plink around a course and don't mind missing etc. It can get a tad tedious when you aren't knocking many down and you don't really know why.

You keep talking about 20 tins of .177. I don't know if they are all the same type and batch or various, or if they are a popular pellet. In any case you may only get 100 quid for those. That's not really buying you a rifle or FT scope ... but it may go towards something.

Does your friend shoot from the scooter at all at the moment ( without any external support ) or does she just shoot from the bench as you stated above?

Seems to me the first thing is to see what rifle/scope/weight package your friend can handle safely and enjoyably from the scooter. If that's an Ultra 0.22 with a small scope then there's your answer for her. You then find a club that she can get around on the scooter and have a go in 0.22.

An Ultra won't get you both around and I'm not sure about both your eyes but I'd imagine you'll need a set up each. So you just use whatever else you have in 0.22 + scope.

You'll soon get an idea of whether you can cope with shooting a FT course with those rigs in 0.22, or whether you need to move up regarding gear to get enough enjoyment from it. Your friend will be able to try other shooter's FT rigs and see if she can cope with the weight and hold from the scooter.

So don't sell anything.

Find a club with scooter access ... right up to pegs ... or where the marshalls will let you shoot safely from.

Set up a couple of 0.22 rifles with scopes. Let your friend check what she can handle from the scooter.

Give it a go. See if you enjoy just shooting what you have in 0.22 ( expect a LOT of misses ) and explore other shooter's kit and make decisions from there.

[bozzer]

My thoughts are to use any of my rifles & let my friend use the Ultra as it's nice & light, she has no means to support a rifle while sat on a mobility scooter but it could get expensive buying loads of pellets.

You already have a few tins of 0.22 pellets.

You don't want to talk about pellets at the moment so let's just stick with you are going to use whatever calibre pellet through that same calibre rifles that you have ( 0.22 ). FT shooters will be fainting at that sentence but you and your friend just want to give it a go. That's sort of taking me back to my comment re ... Knocking enough down to be enjoyable enough for you to both want to keep going back. Honestly, 0.22 using any 0.22 pellet in a 0.22 rifle with a low( ish ) mag scope, unsupported, on a FT course ... Lots of misses.

Getting expensive buying loads of pellets ... Use the ones you have in 0.22. Even if you have to buy more you will know within about 50 quid's worth of pellets if this is for you or your friend or not. That 50 quid is far cheaper than buying a new 0.177 rifle and using some of the 20 tins of 0.177 that you have.

Find a club with access. Use what you have ... rifles/scopes/pellets ... meet FT shooters ... try their gear to see if your friend can cope with the weight unsupported from a scooter. See how you go.