Thoughts on .177 vs .22 air rifles

[Scythe13]

Oh my goodness, am I really going to date to start a threat about what's the best calibre to have? Urm....kind of.

I have had some thoughts on this and have come to a thought that might annoy some people, because it's about uber SHTF as in TEOTWAWKI style event outcome. Very extreme, but hey, if you're ready for that, anything smaller should be a snowflake instead of a blizzard.

If everything does go totally TU and it's really bad, if you need an air rifle as a survival tool (it just means you're not prepped right haha, I'm kidding) then you'll need ammo for that rifle.

If you have a .177 rifle, then you're going to have a good time with longer range and less of a dramatic curve/arch for trajectory. Obviously you're limited to accepting .177 ammo.

If you have a .22, you have a much more obvious parabolic trajectory for your pellets, which you can mitigate and get used to with enough practice, however, you can use .22, .20, and even .177 pellets in your gun. Granted it will lose accuracy and power when shooting smaller pellets, but you'll have that option, at least.

There is always the notion of the changeable barrels. You know, the guns where you can swap a barrel from .177 to .22 calibre. However, these are typically not that fantastic performance...plus I am not the best at keeping track of where parts are. I would probably end up losing one of the barrels.

Rest assured, there is a solution, albeit not a great one, and a stunningly obvious one.

If you have a .177 and find loads of .22 ammo, but did not store enough .177 pellets, you are in a real problem. That is, providing you don't also have a .22 rifle.

Simple hu? Get a spare rifle that's the other calibre. Problem solved.

Next month I'm getting another rifle. Identical to the .177 I am currently using, but in .22 calibre. How will I know them apart? I'm going to use a slightly different camo pattern on the 2 guns. Both patterns will work, but the different colours will let me know which one is which calibre.

There is also one other option, it'll be time consuming, but could be worth it. Have a system to modify/change the pellets you have into the ones you need. This could be as simple as a metal file, to smooth off a little material from a .22 pellet to make it into .177, or it could be a complete melt, mould, cool, load, shoot, type of system. But, if you have a way to convert the pellets you have into pellets you can use, that's even better. One of the best things about this system, you can reuse the pellets from target practice, if you can melt and remould them!