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'You're a damn vicious shot for a vegetarian.' - Trainspotting

It's just been recently that I've renewed my interest in airguns (rifles in particular). Maybe it has something to do with living in a house now with a nice, open 10M stretch in the basement. I don't know. But I think I've got the bug.

Here's a pic of my at Christmas, when I finally got the Slavia 631 I'd been waiting for (kinda knew it was coming). I haven't had much chance to shoot it yet, but as soon as my basement range is set up, I imagine I'll put a lot of lead through it.

My interest lies strictly in target shooting, and though I'll be starting with a lot of 10M practice, I'd like to do some 25M down the line. But the 10M range in the basement is just a little too convenient, and going to actual rifle ranges costs more than I want to spend at the moment.

For those of you unfamiliar with airgunning, it has grown in popularity in recent years, and has been an Olympic event for many years now. I was looking at some of the scores from the Olympic competitors in the men's 10M event - wow, these guys are good. The degree of accuracy that can be achieved with simple compressed air is truly astounding. An ISSF 10M (33') airgun target is 45.5mm wide at its outer ring, worth only one point. The bulls-eye, worth 10 points, is only a dot, .5mm wide. The 9 point ring is under 6mm wide. On a 60-shot string, Olympic shooters are typically in the 580-590 point range, which means they are consistently putting a .177 pellet into a 6mm space, for 60 consecutive shots from 33', with open sights (scopes and optics are not allowed for the 10M event), standing unsupported. It's pretty impressive (but then, that's why they're Olympic competitors).

I'll likely never make it that far (I'm not sure I'll even really shoot competitively), but I'm hoping to get some practice in, and then perhaps compete in some of the informal postal matches run over the internet by many airgunners across the continent.

I'm currently active on the Network54 Airgun Board under the alias Stavrogin. You can find the board here.