Pumpers

[Geezer]

Think its the 70s / 80s thing for me, I started off with a relum, in all fairness it was a cracking little gun, easy to work on and could even be made better than some today, The newer ones for some reason just dont appeal to me,

The pumpers were controversial in the 60s, seen as (in the tabloids) the new extra-dangerous high-power US guns. Leading directly to the 12ft-lbs limit.

In the 70s, they came back, modified (often crudely) to stay below 12. But they had a strong air of “forbidden fruit”.

I’m looking at a 1981 Sussex Armoury advert for the Sheridan - “power...just within the 12 ft-lbs limit”, “until now this rifle has been a listed firearm” etc.

It said you were getting max power in the power-focussed days of old, and implied that you could get it over the limit if you had the right spanner. (Which you could, metaphorically speaking, and cognisant of the rules here.)

As I’ve said above, if you compare even a Sheridan to an HW35/80, FWB Sport or even a Webley Vulcan it doesn’t come off that well as a general hunting/pesting tool. But a good pumper can fill a slightly different niche very well.