-----Jason, at that distance I made two shots that made a "stop" and not a kill; it was the third shot from the CFX that finished the job. I had good placement on the first shot and a bad but lucky hit on the seccond. The jack was sitting on his hind legs and gave me a great vertical target for the first shot. My guess is that my actual point of aim was near the top of his head and the shot hit his chest. The second shot I aimed at just over his back and hit his hind leg - no big credit to me there. I shoot at dirt clods and empty plastic bottles when there is no game and I find that even beginners can make contact at 25-35 yards from a bench rest. Once you get the Kentucky guess on pellet drop, you can hit at extreme distance if the wind is light. If you can hit a plastic water bottle, all my guns shoot right on through both sides if there are a few rocks in the bottles. At 30+ yards, full bottles will suffer real damage and often fall over if hit above the middle. Shot end to end, the white caps will almost always come off if not shatter at that distance. PS: just checked again, 56 paces from the base of the tree to my bench. Also I noted that I have about 8' of downhill to this spot, need to work on my angled shots. If you get out to the Joshua Tree National Park area, drop me an email and come by to shoot and visit!!
----Mike M. tuned the gun for max speed. I bulk load and rarely get 25 full power shots but then I only shoot from next to the siphon bottle at my shooting station in the garage. I do not own a chrony but my guess is that the AR2078 is pushing the limits of a CO2 gun as it vents a bit for the first few shots. Here in the high desert at 4000' with a gun that is warm to the touch I would be thinking we are getting close to 700FPS. That day the AR2078 at ten yards badly bent an NRA turkey silhouette that I was silly enough to shoot at 10 yards+!!
-----This jack was sitting still and I had been on the target bench for an hour and had the BSA scope holding a zero that allowed me to put pellet holes touching as long as I did not goof up. There was almost no wind and I had perfect light (good thing as the scope is only 6 power and very hard to keep the image clear). The first shot made him stand still but the second broke his leg in two, the bone was a clean break. The third shot was from my CFX that CDT tuned and it had a chrony of over 960FPS for ten shots when he sent it back to me (with Gamo Hunters). The CFX shot was a clean through, must have missed everything but the lung. I walked up, put another pellet at point blank range (6") right into the brain and he still kept on breathing. You have to hunt on these high desert jacks to see how tough they are. I usually only get a shot on 1 out of ten that I jump as they are gun shy and I cannot hit anything at 40 yards that is moving unless it is with a Ruger 10-22 and lots of kicked up dust to follow to the target (none of my hi-cap mags will feed so I stick with 10 shots).
-----We shoot on a football field in the early summer on cotton tails and there we have the best ranging device possible, 4" white lines at five yard intervals plus lots of banners/flags to show us the true wind. We shoot prone to allow for the average shot of 35-40 yards (obviously no cover in 2" tall Kentucky Blue) and I post below the result of about an hour of hunting by three of us using my old Mendoza (no speed freak - I doubt it hits 600FPS), a Crossman 1077 CO2 that was such a weak performer that I gave it away and my CFX. To tell the truth, I did not do that much better with the CFX than the other two did with my lender guns. If you can hit them, especially if you can get in a follow up shot, they go down. Robert Beeman says that 3-6FP is all it takes for thin skin game and he is right.
------I almost never shoot offhand as I am not as steady as I once was; I use sticks, a camera tripod or a bench rest with a leather glove on my forend hand.
------I have shot almost every day since I got my .177 CFX, mostly on small game and during the 6 month cotton tail season it is a rare day that I do not bag one or two of those plant eating machines and so I have a fair amount of experience in what my gun will do. If it was a squirrel in a tree, I would embarrass myself as we don't have many trees out here and only birds use the trees. I don't shoot birds as the high angle shots put my neighbors in danger.
Bob
