Youkilis:
You ask which of the .20 caliber air rifles is best. "Best" of course is a highly relative and subjective term. What is best for me may not be best for you.
Then again, it could be.
First, a little background. I live in California, where we currently enjoy some of the most progressive regulations pertaining to the use of air guns as serious hunting tools for edible small game. We can use air rifles to hunt all resident small game species including upland game birds like quail, chukar partridge, and even turkey.
The beauty of this is that as California continues to urbanize, air rifles can still be used in areas where the discharge of, say, a shotgun, might be legal but might not put you in the good graces of your neighbors. There are also some advantages for upland game bird hunters such as myself who hunt primarily in true wild areas far from the fringe of civilization. The main one is that game birds shot on the ground with an air rifle are typically killed outright and dropped where they took the hit or missed cleanly. You don't have the birds that you roll in the air with a shotgun but hit the ground wounded yet very much alive.
If you've got a dog, those rolled cripples aren't such a big deal. Sure, we'd rather kill clean and not have any animal suffer needlessly, but with with a dog, those that do get crippled are usually found and at least don't become coyote bait.
I'd really like to live in a single family detached house. The problem is that real estate is so expensive in this state that the only neighborhoods I can afford such a thing in are those no one in their right mind would really want to live in. So I live in a duplex with zero yard space and I work my butt off to afford it. So does my wife. Not only do I not have space to keep a gun dog, I really don't have time to devote to one.
And that is the major reason why I hunt with air rifles. If you're dogless like me, recovery on shot game birds is as close to 100% as it can get when using air rifles.
Okay, so with that out of the way, I'll add this.........
California is a state with highly varied topography, but most of it that I hunt upon is rugged and steep. I hunt on the desert slopes of the state's mountain ranges, from the San Bernarinos to the Sierras, to the Warners -from Mexico to the Oregon Border. Most of this country is very dusty, and dust gets on everything and in everything. It is, for the most part, high-desert habitat.
But it is typically filled with game birds when you know where to look for them.
The thing is, though, that hunting game birds with an air rifle is best done during very narrow windows of time when they are moving in a covey on the ground from the roosting area to their first water of the morning, or when they are moving from their last water to roost in the evening.
In the middle of the day, they'll disperse in loafing cover after a morning feed. They'll be spread out in singles and pairs, which is great for shotgunning but not so hot for air rifle shooting.
Early in the morning, right at sunrise or in the grey light just before, temps during the season can drop down well below freezing. From November through January, I'll be hunting in below freezing temps most of the time.
Okay, so with that background out of the way.................
R-9: 7.3 pounds bare and around 8 scoped. It isn't too heavy to be a burden on steep country, yet is heavy enough to "hang well" for off-hand shooting. And in the desert scrub I usually hunt in, there isn't anything to use for a rest, so virtually all of the shooting I do is done standing. If you don't get silly with muzzle brakes and such, a scoped R-9 will have the kind of between the hands balance that is similar to a shotgun and works to allow you move the rifle so you can "track" a quail or chukar in the scope as it meanders through the scrub. Yes, you are shooting MOVING game and NO it isn't easy. It is a lot tougher than it needs be, however, if you use the wrong tool for the job. An R-9 in .20 typically limits you to exactly ONE pellet. It will drive Beeman FTS to the 735-750 ft/s range for about 14 ft/lbs of energy and carry about 9 ft/lbs to the target. That is plenty of thump to cleaninly kill all of the game you'll encounter and the velocity is high enough to allow a reasonably flat trajectory to make kills out to 50 yards. It doesn't have enough power to shoot heavier pellets well, though, so Premiers are out, as are Kodiaks. The trajectory with these isn't flat enough. It is, of course, a barrel cocker, so it can be quickly reloaded. This is a good thing for me since upland game birds will travel in groups of 20 to 50 in the case of valley quail, and the shooting can be pretty fast and fruious. It also uses a convential metallic mainstpring with no seals to fail in cold weather.
R-1: Great rifle, but the extra weight becomes tiresome and it is not as lively feeling in the hands as the R-9 is. Those are the two main drawbacks. Power wise, it doesn't shoot FTS's significantly flatter than the lighter and more compact R-9 does, nor does it offer a huge difference in thump at the 50 yard line. It just weighs more and is slower to swing. It does shoot the heavier Premeirs fast enough to give the same trajectory with them that you get by shooting FTS ammo out of an R-9.
R-7: Sweet little rifles, these are. But they really don't shoot flat enough in .20 to be useful for potting quail in a windy desert. Not enough power for the big jacks, and if you decide to shoot a turkey in the spring, you'll need something other than this unit to get the job done.
RX-2: Do you REALLY want to pack nearly 12 pounds of scoped air rifle around? You don't if you hunt where I do. You're going to carry thing across 2000 feet of elevation gain and decline, up steep slopes to rimrock summits, and you might lug it as many as 4 miles or more from where you parked your Jeep. I've seen the gas struts in these become totally useless in temps below 27 degrees, when the seals of the strut failed to hold the gas that makes the "spring."
HW 97: Nice rifle, just the thing in .177 for an FT match. Not the thing for quail hunting. Too slow to reload. Oh, and the breeching mechanism doesn't seem to like to get dirty. It weighs more than an R-9 does. It puts out roughly the same power. It feels less dynamic in the hands.
RWS 48: Slow to reload. Too heavy. Yada yada yada.
RWS 34: Old-fashioned ball-detent lock up. Seperate scope rail. Drooping barrels requiring special mounts to compensate. Okay, I reckon, but it ain't an R-9. I'd rather shoot a GAMO Shadow with a CdT trigger than a 34, personally.
Benjamin-Sheirdan "Streaks": Even slower to reload than a HW 97 is. The pumping is noisy and time-consuming. Getting a 4-12 scope on one is a problem. I find it hilarious that some of the same people who rip on Gamo for their bad trigger rave about the delightful shooting qualities of these things because as bad as an out-of-the box Gamo trigger is, the trigger on a Streak is far worse. Accuracy with these things can be actually quite good, but repeatable accuracy still depends on a consistant pumping technique, to a certain degree.
Theoben Evolution / Crusader / Eliminator/ Crow Magnum: Gas struts are cool. The problem is that even the lastest HE version of this technology isn't very cold-weather friendly. Maybe I shouldn't let a brief but bad experience with a Crusader discourage me, but the one that I had briefly really didn't like temps below 20 degrees F. You simply aren't going to kill many small game animals in this state if you can't be out doing your thing on "brisk" fall mornings.
ALL PCP: This technology might be the way forward in the U.K. The problem is that I don't do much hunting in the U.K. I do most of it in the High Desert of California. And the terrain I hunt on, the regulations that I hunt under, and even the game that I hunt doesn't really have all that much in common with what goes on in the U.K.
How do I know? Because I've been there and done that. My brother in law's parents live on a farm in the U.K. It is about 300 acres or so. Their rabbits are communal creatures. Ours aren't. Ours are very territorial. Theirs can be shot at night. Ours can't. There is nowhere near the amount of dust to deal with in the U.K. as there is in the California desert. Yes, it gets cold there, but they don't need to hunt in the coldest weather. There rabbits are plenty active during warm summer nights and during cool (but not freezing) fall days. They aren't all that active in the coldest weather. Ours are. They generally seem to be more "domesticated" and less wild. They don't have the threat of predation from coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, and so on. And the population density exceeds 1 in every 10 acres, which is what it averages on raw wild land here in California. It exceeds it by a healthy margin, too, which is why they are pests in the U.K. and are considered game animals here.
I personally don't believe that PCP is really all that reliable. You can find plenty of problems and tales of woe with PCP if you look for them on the 'Net.
Some of these PCP's are heavy, too. The Weirauch HW-100 weighs in at nearly 10 pounds.
If you only get 40 shots on a fill, you are going to be re-filling a PCP druing a weekend of quail hunting. The limit is 10 per day, 20 in possession. And you aren't going to hit every single one of the birds that you shoot at. Well, perhaps others would. I don't. I normally go 1 for 3. For every three birds I take a poke at, I miss 2. They aren't that easy to hit.
I am hardly going to be in the mood to pump the thing manually after a day spent trapsing across the desert slopes at an altitude of 4,200 to 6,500 feet. The rifle isn't going to like the dust and I doubt if I can really prevent dust from entering into the rifle's reservoir. I don't really want to lug a scuba tank around in the back of my Jeep on the 4 wheel-drive roads I use to access my hunting areas, either.
I need a self-contained powerplant that is reliable in the harsh environment that I hunt in. I need a certain level of power -at least 8 ft/lb at 50 yards. I need reasonably rapid reloading. I need dynamic handling, yet I also need a rifle that hangs well for longer shots. I need relatively light weight for portability. I need ease of service and maintenance.
That kind of narrows the field down a bit, for me. If I hunted in nicer weather, or on flatter ground, or hunted mostly squirrels, or mostly rabbits, or hunted in a less dusty environment, or hunted in a less remote one, then perhaps things would be different.
And believe me, I really wish there was more of a choice, because there are some things about the R-Series guns that are a big turn off to me, with the main one being the safety arrangement.
For me, there really isn't one, and for most of the hunting situations that I encounter, the .20 R-9 is as good as it currently gets.
As good as it is, I think a .20 caliber Shadow with one of Bob Werner's triggers in it and a little attention paid to de-twanging might be an even better deal.
-JP
http://www.uplandhunter.net
