Beeman Sportsman RS2

I decided that I needed a better pellet gun than my Crossman 2100.  The Crossman is OK, but it is loud to pump up, the trigger is as smooth as dragging a chunk of cordwood across a freshly chisel-plowed field.

Amazon has the Beeman RS2 on sale for about $100 delivered to my door step.  It was four-of-five star rated.

Trigger time

My goal was to get some inexpensive, casual trigger time.

These newer pellet guns are not toys.  They have enough penetration to kill a person as one yahoo in Ovid, Michigan demonstrated.  Link*.  The upside is that those .177 pellets slow down very quickly.  My property line is 400 yards down-range.  That is nothing to a 40 grain .22LR but a mighty long hike for an 8 grain .177 pellet.

Shooting this gun has been a humbling experience.

"Springer" air guns tend to be "hold sensitive".  When you shoot a modern firearm the mass of the moving parts (firing pin and possibly hammer) is small and the lock time is fast.  When you shoot a springer the mass of the moving parts is large and the lock time is slow.  The preferred solution is to hold the gun in exactly the same way each time and to hold it as loosely as possible! 

That "loosely" part is not advice I had ever heard before.  Typically, one is advised to hold firearms firmly but not in a death grip.  The point with high powered firearms is to roll with the recoil rather than let the stock build up velocity before slamming into your shoulder.

The trigger is very long and is not "two stage", which is what the "2" in RS2 signifies.  Pull weight is adjustable, which I just did.

I will post a picture of some groups once I get this gun figured out.  One of the articles I found suggests that an airgun requires between one and four thousand shots to break in.  My thoughts are that it might take me that long to start shooting it well.  The upside is that one thousand pellets costs less than Friday night pizza.


* The story is that both gentlemen may have been enjoying undocumented, recreational substances.  The shooter shot the dead man in the back, through a tee-shirt.  The pellet interrupted the hydraulic integrity of the dead man's aorta.  The dead man had no external bleeding.

The shooter called 9-1-1 but neglected to mention that he had just shot his friend for funsies.  EMTs assumed an adverse reaction to the undocumented, recreational substances.