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.