Well as some of you know I was having probs with my Beeman SS1000. Well I decided to take it back to Wally world and trade it in for a Gamo Big Cat. From what I can tell it looks to be a Shadow 1000. The first thing I did when I pulled it out of the box was gave it a good looking over. You can thank Vince for that because he has inspired me to take a closer look at new out of the box guns. The first thing I noticed was that on top of the receiver it has a scope mount base, the receiver has 11mm dovetails and then the base goes from 11mm to a 3/8" mount. I wasnt too happy about that but I decided to just calm down and keep going over it. The next thing I did was break the barrel over to feel the cocking mechanism. The break was crisp and tight so that made me feel pretty good. Then I looked at the breech and saw that the breech oring seal had a chunk hanging off of it. That kind of made me mad also hehe. The stock is the standard Shadow synthetic stock (I am a big fan of wood not really into synthetic stocks) and in my opinion is made fairly well for a synthetic stock. The gun is very light which was kind of odd to me after hoisting the SS1000 to shoot hehe. Ok so far 2 strikes with the blown breech seal and 11mm to 3/8" scope mount base. There was a 2 piece trigger block that clamped onto the trigger housing holding the trigger all the way up into the stock, I guess this is Gamo's normal shipping mode? The barrel has some sort of synthetic shroud that is fluted that looks pretty good I think. But what bothers me is that there are 2 synthetic plates that come off this shroud that the cocking arm is pinned to, I dont know if there is metal underneath this synthetic stuff or what. I was going to make sure the forearm stock screwsand trigger housingscrews were tight but unfortunately they didnt supply the torx bit needed to do so. The rubber recoil pad fits nicely to the butt I was impressed with that.The scope that comes with this rifle is a BSA 3x9x40. Along with the scope there is a little box that says Gamo 1" One Piece Mount mediumheight, 3/8" base for ,22 airgun. Ok so you get a decent scope and a well made 1 piece mount but.... why go from 11mm to 3/8"? More is better I guess in there eyes. So I mount the scope using the one piece mount everything went smooth and the rifle looked pretty good. Out into the backyard I go with my smattering of pellets...CPL's, Tomahawks, Cosman pointed hunters, Daisy precision max flat nose. Cocking the gun was actually pretty nice considering the pull was a lot less than the SS1000. I also liked the fact that the safety didnt engage automaticly. I was lazy this afternoon after work and didnt feel like moving my pellet trap closer than the 30 yard spot it was at so I started sighting the gun in at 30 yards hehe. Took me about 15 minutes or so to get this done. On the first shot I was kind of surprised at the amount of spring twang this gun has. Bewoung!!! And you can feel the vibration through the stock. I know I know this can be taken care of with a lube tune, but this is an out of the box review hehe. After sighting in and shooting about 50 pellets through it, it seemed to start settling down and grouping at about 3/4" at 30 yards. I was very impressed with that because the Beeman was a lot ornerier and getting 3/4" groups with it was not an easy task. Well after the sun went down it was shooting pretty good and it just so happened that a cowbird decided to perch itself in the tree between myself and my pellet trap. I took aim and fired hit it sqaure in the chest with a tomahawk and it fell dead to the ground. Well that made me happy. For all of you Gamo owners out there I now understand why there is such a buzz about Bob's GRT III trigger. The trigger on the Big Cat is exactly what I have read about Gamo triggers. When the trigger is pulled half of the blade goes up into the stock leaving you with like 3/8" of trigger to pull the rest of the way through. I am probably exaggerating but thats the way it feels to me and I have small hands so I feel for you guys out there with large fingers. Also to me there isnt much definition in the 2 stages.... its kind of a strange feel difficult to explain. The trigger pull is very light but umm it just lacks definition is the best way I can explain it. Overall I am actually impressed with the gun in its untuned state and I see some very good potential in it. After I get 1000 rounds through it I will probably be sending it off to Bob for the works including the trigger. I am very happy with the accuracy I am getting from it, if I do what I am suppose to the gun does its job well. Tomorrow a couple of us are getting together for some shooting and there will be a chrony there so all guns I am taking will get tested out woohoo. Hope this is usefull to someone out there.
John
