Welp after alot of research and a little blind wandering I decided to spend all of my hard earned airgun money on a pistol, a 10Meter match pistol to be exact. I was concerned at first when I saw the price tag of the Steyr's, the Morini's, all of the great air pistols and thought to myself,"Man, that sure is an awful lot of money for a sport that I'm not sure I'll even like". So research continued and a few guns kept coming up time after time. For the price I was will to spend I was somewhere between the $400-$500 Tau7 CO2 guns, on down to the Daisy M717 ($100+/- or less used). In between those you have a couple others, the Gamo Compact ($225+/-), the IZH-46M($279+), and an occasional Aeron and a few others in the used classifieds between $300-$600. I have handled the 717 and although these are nice and accurate guns, the ergonomics appear to be completely wrong for match shooting. The Tau looks nice, but it's CO2 and we all know how well CO2 works in my garage that goes from 110F in the summer to 10F in the winter...I would only get maybe a month of decent shooting time a year. I wanted a gun that was in the right price range, had decent accuracy, didn't need a whole lot of add on accessories, and I wanted to be able to shoot it...all the time, without worrying about the weather, or my neighbors. I read alot about the Gamo Compact, but it didn't get the best reviews, and for the price it was easy enough to upgrade to something much better for a couple more bucks. I finally decided on the IZH-46M "Izzy". Most of the reviews I have read on this gun say it is a great gun at a great price, and it is a good entry level gun, but good enough to keep you going for good year before you need something better for competition.....not that I'll compete anytime soon, but I like to pretend....bear with me:)
One morning last week while on a break at work I hopped on the computer and zipped over to Straight Shooters.com. They had the Izzy at a good price, $279, which is less than most places online....prices just went up on this gun, mostly over $300 now. Always heard good things about the guys at Straight Shooters, so I pressed the order button. About a week later brown Santa was at the door with my package. Great double boxed packaging, everything in great condition, Thank You Straight Shooters!!!!
I openned the box, and inside was a very nice, all metal and wood gun, weighing in at about 2 1/2 pounds. The gun comes with a complete reseal kit as well as a pull through barrel cleaning rod....think it's brass, but will check before I run it all around the crown of my new gun. Also came with a drift punch, a multi-use tools and a set of sight blades(2 fronts, one back, plus the set on the gun......with the rear sight blades being flipable you get 12 different possible sight pictures...pretty nice feature to include in the box). So I grabbed the gun to see how it feels and...Yikes, these grips feel like junk!!! These are possibley the worsed grips I've ever felt out of the box, but I think that the makers intend for you to cut them to fit your shooting hand.....so before one shot was fired I was off to the garage to get my hands on the Dremel.....15 minutes later I had a grip I could hold.....I'll do a little more later. Really not a bad grip once I cut some reliefs for my fingers and just got rid of a little wood here and there. I'll finish them off with some stippling and some oil finish rub. Now I have a gun that feels good!!!!!!!!!
Well, I don't have a good clear 10 meters in my garage, so I printed out some 5meter targets and set them up on my trap. This gun is a single stroke pneumatic, one pump, no spring, just one pump and shoot. Haven't chronied it yet, but the claimed 400+ fps seems about right....this is a match gun, we're not huntin' wabbits with it, we just need to poke a hole in a piece of paper at 10 meters....for this the fps is more than acceptable. So how's it shoot? Well the single stroke aspect of the whole thing is actually pretty nicely well thought out. You pull the huge arm down from the bottom, that opens the breach and cocks the gun, then you close the big arm and that pressurizes the air tank. Then you can load your pellet right into the open end of the barrel, and snap the breach closed....there is no safety on a gun like this...make sure your fingers are WELL CLEAR OF THE TRIGGER WHEN YOU CLOSE THE BREACH!!!!! If not then th gun will fire in whatever direction you have it pointed....like my newly dented garage door:) The trigger on this thing claims 2lbs from th factory, and you can lighten it up to just about nil!!! I love the GTX triggers and Richs trigger inserts, and all that is cool about my springers and CO2's etc.....you wouldn't want this trigger on your hunting rig, but MAN this thing is nice!!!....sorry guys, like apples and oranges. 2 stage, 5 way adjustable, tuneable down to "look at it crosseyed from across the room and it fires" light. I had to detune it quite a bit after I shot the garage door cuz I was breathin' hard:)
I set out my targets and started to shoot. I was doing 10 shot groups with Crosman wadcutters....I know I should be shootin' Vogels or at least RWS R10's, but after $300 on the gun all I can afford is Bud Lite whilst driving my Ferarri. Once I had it sighted in I was shooting quarter sized 10 shot groups, freehand, standing. I am not a pistol expert by any means, and this is open blade sights...purdy good shootin'! After my 10 group I had those down to about a nickle sized 10 shot group. All in all I think I've shot this gun more in the last day and a half than I have shot any of my other guns in the last month or two, I am hoooked!!! Was it worth $300? Yes, definately, and I think with a better grip I will be shooting this gun for quite some time, unless I get rich and buy me a Steyr or somethin'! Steve Corcoran at
http://www.woodsandwateroutdoors.com makes some really nice grips for this gun, and once I have the money together I'll have him make me one, that will make the package complete.
Dan