Falcon prairie light hunter

[the growler]

Fancy getting one of these for night rat hunting. What do you guys think of them? Thanks

[Doobin]

Got an FN12. Nice, light and reliable rifles, not much to go wrong. I personally prefer the Hawk mechanism with the separate cocking bolt to the Raptor.

[airgunnut]

I've got a falcon fn 19, a fn8 pistol and the prairie as said stupid simple and bloody accurate (back when I was at airgun clubs whenever I wasn't working)I was getting single hole groups at 75m (12 ft lbs in .177)
I did have a fn 19 hawk but after 1 year I had put best part of 1/2 million pellets through it, thats when it started shaving one side of the pellet as it ermt from mag to breach, you can adjust it but its incredibly frustrating and fiddly, just using a new mag won't do anything as the metal indexing paws ware everso slightly, hardly visible but its enough to throw the timing of the mag out.
I believe the original mags were nylon, if they are then that explains why the indexing paws ware out (nylon is harder than steel, the amount of times i was told to change anti roll bar bushes when there was nothing wrong with them, they had worn down the steel, not the other way round.)

[the growler]

They look good. Might try get a single shot version. But multi would be better for hunting.

[airgunnut]

I now have single shot fn19 (all my falcons are single shot) having a second shot ready within a fraction of a second just incase you don't get a clean kill would be ideal, having only one shot teaches you to place your shot carefully and not to take chances. I've lost count of the amount of times I have not pulled the trigger because I could not guarantee a clean kill, but I feel better for it, as I've seen some who have multi shot guns use 5-6 shots to mave a kill. I was taught one shot one kill.
With pistol shooting at one club we hung a rich tea biscuit on a thin bit of welding wire, you had to get as many separate holes in it without it falling to bits, the record is 10, this tought us shot placement and it was nerve racking but fun.
When hunting you want as simple a set up as you can, the less things to go wrong the better.

[Doobin]

They look good. Might try get a single shot version. But multi would be better for hunting.

The Hawk adaptation that Falcon did is brilliant- this is with a lever to index the mag and a separate lever to cock. The Raptor has a single bolt to do both, but this leads to issues with side loading the complex mechanism and both Hawk and Raptor can suffer from issues such as those described above.

A good workaround is to ditch the orignal Falcon mags (can't get em these days anyway) and buy the auto-indexing 3d printed type that you can find on the bay or at the smw engineering website. This lets you ditch the indexing pawl (and the mechanism linking it to the cocking bolt on the raptor) and is much more reliable.

Rowan Engineering do a nice looking multishot conversion too, it must also be auto indexing and I'd certainly try one for £60 if I had a single shot.

I have an FN12 Lighthunter Hawk in .177 and I don't think I'll ever sell.