I have limited and ancient rifle shooting experience. Today I visited an indoor range to zero-in my new scoped pellet rifle. From limited shooting into a pellet trap target in the woods, the gun seemed to be shooting left and low.

Watching a highly accomplished shooter-gunsmith deal with the pellet gun was enlightening. First, the no-nonsense appraisal of the gun detected slippage in the scope mount, probably from inadequately tightened mounting rings.

Second, while preparing to correct the slippage, the scope and mounting rings actually separated from the rail [addressing my embaressment, he said I see this all the time and also get guys bringing in their scopes wondering why it fell off in the field]! Apparently this brand is notorious for a difficult to seat set screw.

Third, once everything seemed tight the recommended pellets, a premium pellet, and the rangemaster's favorite pellet, all shot left and without good grouping, raising the possibility that prior shooting with a loose scope may have damaged it [not my day].

Fourth, by switching to a cheaper pellet the groups suddenly became tighter and predictable! Watching several shots go into almost the same hole is impressive.

Even I shot some decent groups and was able to understand what was happening enough to "walk" a series of shot's into the bullseye area and place a decent group there [2 1/2 inch target at 10 yards, bullseye 3/4".]

Much more work and practice to be done, of course, but wanted to share another example of giving a gun the ammo it wants to shoot.

i gave up using a scope on my spring powered pellet rifle.after a bit the scope was just about out of the rings.turned out you need a scope made for spring pellet guns and just not any cheap 22 scope.

If your air rifle is a "springer" (a.k.a. "breakbarrel"), then these take some getting used to to shoot accurately. And each air rifle is different. You have to learn how to hold the rifle gently (no tight gripping) and also to hold it where it wants to be held. Usually, you will find the rifle likes your support hand back further than you're used to for a firearm (back = closer to the trigger guard). The rifle lays in your hands, you don't grip it. Let it move when you shoot it, don't try to force it to do what you want it to do.

Shooting a springer air rifle is much more difficult to master than shooting a firearm. Just because you can shoot a firearm does not mean that you can shoot a springer. But if you can shoot a springer accurately, you will be a real sniper with a firearm!

Springer it is. Scope is supposedly purpose-built for a springer.

I hope to replace the spring-piston unit with a nitro-piston unit fairly soon.

The double recoil of the air piston slam hitting its forward limit followed immediately by the spring-recovery slam recoiling backward is noisy and a bit alarming.

I am trying to learn what I heard called the "artillery hold," which is as you describe: resting the forestock near its balance point on top of my closed hand, and only lightly holding the stock with my trigger hand without tightly pressing the stock to my shoulder.

Because this is not at all what I recall from shooting a NATO-round military rifle years ago, or what my 12 guage instructs me to do, shooting the .22 pellet gun requires a conscious change of mindset with which I am struggling. Good thing it is so much fun!

In shooting and zeroing in a spring-piston air rifle, a number of factors come into play. The manufacturers' hype over pellet velocity induces new users to buy the fastest, nevermind that pellets can destabilize in flight at higher velocities and become inaccurate. Another issue is that new SP rifles usually have lube in the spring compression chamber that ignites under pressure and the pellet is actually "fired" out the barrel rather than driven out just by compressed air. Of course this serves the gun marketing departments well because they can tout in their literature (OVER 1000 FEET PER SECOND!!!!!). How do you know this ignition effect is taking place?? Smell/see smoke after firing the new gun?? This gradually goes away over time as the excess lube dissipates.

So, it is well worth doing quite a bit of research on springers and other types of airguns in order to know what to expect and adjust to. High quality springers particularly (such as the German made real-steel Beeman/Weihrauch models--e.g. R1, R7 and R9 etc) are known to not really be broken in and functionally stable until many thousands of rounds are fired. They are expensive but not really that expensive considering they are heirloom guns and last several lifetimes. The German Beeman/Weihrauch models have the renowned Rekord adjustable triggers which are truly phenomenal and contribute greatly to accurate shooting.

My springer still has less than 100 pellets fired and so is still breaking in. Early on you could see an oil "haze" looking through the breach down the barrel after a shot and could smell oil. The barrel is not supposed to be oiled ever on account of fire hazard!

I chose my gun for a lot of reasons: the best shot I know and someone from whom I hope to learn hunting and shooting decided after looking to buy one; you can upgrade to a nitro-piston; you can upgrade the trigger group [though so far that seems unnecessary]; it is a gun found everywhere along with people who work on it; in .22 it is a legal hunting gun for turkey and small mammals; I was able to handle the gun several times before buying; reviewers touted its relatively quiet shooting; and [hangs head in shame] I really liked the way it looked!

What springer did you buy? Just curious.

For those moderately insensitive to rat genocide, there are some very interesting vids on youtube of rodent extermination with an airgun and a night vision scope. Regardless how you feel about the subject, that is one striking illustration of efficacy.

Spring guns are notoriously hard on scopes and mounts. The double-action recoil, back then forward, can kill even expensive scopes not designed for them. Mounts will always tend to slide for the same reason. Scope tape helps but the ultimate solution is to install a stop on the receiver to keep the rings from sliding. Unlike a regular firearm, where the stop would be mounted in front of the forward ring, this stop should mounted behind the back ring. Most spring guns, even the cheap ones, have a stop already mounted. Mounting the scope make sure the ring is hard up against the stop.

You are going to find that the barrel will take a couple thousand rounds to settle in fully. Consistency between shots should improve over time even discounting any learning curve.

There is nothing wrong with using oil in the barrel. The key to prevent dieseling, detonation of any oil, on a spring gun is to never let oil get into the hole where the spring is. It isn't oil in front of the pellet that causes dieseling; it is oil behind the pellet where pressures spikes.

Some sort of oil or treatment is necessary to prevent the bore from rusting. Store the rifle muzzle down to keep any oil in the bore from running down into the spring chamber where it might cause dieseling. If you used a heavy coat of oil to protect the bore in storage swabbing the bore with a dry patch before shooting is a good idea. But a tiny amount of smoke or vapor is not an issue. Remember that the spring is compressing air to several thousand psi in a fraction of a second and then releasing it. So some vapor, because air is never dry or clean, is to be expected.

The rifling on a pellet rifle is quite shallow and the steel is relatively soft. It doesn't take much wear or rust to destroy the rifling. So never shoot anything but lead pellets or plastic booted pellets. Avoid BBs in a pellet rifle. The copper coated steel will peen the rifling flat. Also never use a bore brush or any bore cleaner intended to remove fouling. They are much too harsh for the delicate bore.

Cleaning the bore is just not necessary very often. There are no residues from powder. Cleaning can be limited to fire-through wool plugs wet with oil. I had someone show me how to break a Q-tip in half, oil it, and insert it like loading a pellet, this is simply fired into a tin can. Done two or three times the bore gets scrubbed clean, dirt is carried off, and bore gets a light coat of oil to keep it from rusting.

Be aware that from magnum spring guns many of the lighter pellets have thin skirts that can get distorted from the impact of the pressure wave. With a distorted skirt they don't seal well and they fly inconsistently. You can get a lot of random scatter and fliers. If you look at a target and see 'key-holing', where the pellet went in sideways, suspect that he skirts are getting distorted.

The other thing to remember is that keeping pellets below the speed of sound will almost always get you tighter groups. Shooting without the Crack of a supersonic pellet is also a little more enjoyable. Higher power spring guns tend to shoot better with heavier pellets that travel a bit slower.

Unfortunately whereas bullet weight for firearms is easy to look up there is no reliable lists of pellet weights that I know of. A few online sites that sell to dedicated pellet shooters tell you the weight of the pellets they sell but the prices are a bit high and are not the brands most commonly available over-the-counter.

The good news is that pellets are cheap, particularly when compared to fire-stick ammunition, so it isn't too expensive to experiment. The brands that aren't up to snuff are still great for murdering tin cans and general plinking. And if you miss a shot while plinking with your nephew you can blame it on the less-than-prime pellets.

The .22 I am shooting exclusively dines on lead pellets and expels them at a maximum of around 900 fps - well below the approximate 1250 fps speed of sound.

Returned to the range today - what a difference. Began with two in the black, overlapping by more than 50%. I almost decided to quit while I was ahead and go home!

After that the misses were the suprise exceptions, Usually on the misses I could tell that I pulled the shot or should have backed off to get a steadier scope image. Fun, fun, fun!

Paper bullseyes, metal knockdown targets, cans and bottles hung from string, old spoons hung from wires, metal spinner targets, lengths of metal pipe suspended from string - they all went down hard or were rung or punctured. Eventually I focused on one plastic bottle and shot it until it fell from its string.

The differences seemed to be I was relaxed, I used only the padded tip of my trigger finger, and I began to be able to hold the scope image after firing to see the impacts, holes, etcetera.