New Airgun

[Mortblanc]

It may be the dream of your youth but you do not have the eyes of your youth Talon!

I advise that you zero the factory sights so you know they are dead on, then install a good scope. Air gun scopes on a springer do fail at a rate higher than those on a 600 Nitro Express rifle and they demand a good quality glass.

My present experience is that HW rifles can shoot better than your eyes can see, even young eyes. You can not get the best from them without a scope.

If hunting small game/plinking is the main intent of the rifle you might even think about a red dot sight. They are less affected by the "reverse recoil" and are precise enough at ranges under 50M to give very good results, especially in low light situations such as a forager would face at dusk or dawn when the iron sights would be completely useless even to a 15 year old with perfect vision.

The modern red dot scopes have an amazingly long battery life too. Most have auto shutoff as well as use life measured in the thousands of hour range. That is one of the reasons the military has gone to full use of them on combat rifles. Over here our recruits now shoot qualification with the issue scopes and red dots. They are trained on scopes from day one, and your boys have had built in scopes on their Enfields for near 30 years.

When I bought my HW30 they sent me the wrong caliber. I had ordered a .177 and they sent a .22. I did not shoot the rifle, just sent it back after giving it a good inspection. I think that it was actually smoother in mechanical properties than the .177 they sent me.

My little 30 is so accurate that I do wish I had a .22 to compare it too. My range in the back garden is at 25m from the back porch, where I have a sandbagged shooting platform. My targets range from 50mm down to 20mm spinners and the HW30 is good for the spinners and smaller on a quiet day with no wind.

My PCP rifles will shoot almost that well but none of my .22 springers or the Benjamin Pump I just bought will come anywhere near matching it.