Crosman Social Marketing Manager Hinting at 2011 SHOTSHOW Product Announcement of NEW AIRGUN

Chip Hunnicutt, Social Media Marketing Manager for Crosman Corporation, Inc. of Bloomfield, New York has recently been dropping hints as to the company’s plan to debut yet another groundbreaking new airgun at the 2011 SHOTSHOW, the shooting industry’s premiere trade show set to open next week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Following is a conversation that took place between Azairgunner and Crosmancorp on the social media site, “Twitter”:

azairgunner Azairgunner-Jan. 5th, 2011

@crosmancorp: Any hints to exciting new Crosman products the be released

at the 2011 SHOTSHOW???

crosmancorp Crosman Corporation -Jan. 5th, 2011

@azairgunner Hint: Your latest blog article will come in particularly handy.

(NOTE: Chip was referring to a recent article I wrote on the subject of shot angle and it’s effect on long-distance airgunning that he had re-posted on Crosman Corporation’s Facebook page.  Interested readers can follow this link to the article; http://azairgunner.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/angle-cosine-and-the-airgun-hunter/).

azairgunner azairgunner-Jan 10th, 2011

@crosmancorp : So, after your skunkwork’s newest release next week, is my trusty .25 Marauder going to be jealous?

crosmancorp Crosman Corporation-Jan. 11th, 2011

@azairgunner Nah, not jealous. Envious? Oh yeah…..

So what can one surmise from Mr. Hunnicut’s hints? – Whatever it is, it must be an incredible airgun to outperform the well-received .25 Marauder. Could it be a new Marauder-based competition rifle that is intended allow shooters to compete in Hunter Field Target (HFT) events with a newly-designed stock and factory-supplied Lothar Walther match barrels?  Is it the industries first “big-bore” airgun ever designed and produced by a major manufacturer? Those “guesses” are of course just my own personal speculation (and wish list!). I guess we will all have to wait a week to find out exactly what this new airgun is. All I know is that if this new airgun’s performance is so good as to make my .25 Marauder “envious”: -I WANT ONE!!!

To read more about this subject, a discussion with speculation from the heart of the airgunning community on what this new Crosman airgun may be, can be found on the Yellow Forum -”airgunning’s home on the internet”, by clicking the following link:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/message/1294764740/Crosman+Social+Marketing+Mngr.+Hinting+at+2011+SHOTSHOW+Product+Announcement+of+NEW+AIRGUN

Angle, Cosine and the Airgun Hunter

Today is an amazing time to be an airgun hunter. With the availability of reasonably priced airguns (specifically Pre-Charged Pneumatics, or “PCP’s”) that are not only powerful but amazingly accurate, and a wide range of optics to choose from that have been purposely designed for airgun use, the last decade has seen the effective range of airguns basically double: Hearing an airgun hunter speak of a successful 110 yard shot is no longer uncommon! (and in some instances, even believable, lol). In consideration of these increased ranges, new challenges to accuracy must be understood and overcome by the airgunner in the field.

For airgunners that find themselves hunting in hilly country as I often do, shot angle can greatly affect the point of impact of our pellets at these new “modern” airgun hunting distances. With this in mind, an airgunner must understand that due to the relatively large, arcing path of our projectiles caused by the low projectile speeds generated by our favorite hunting arms, knowing your individual airgun’s performance, accurate range estimation and shot correction are all critical to success in the field. In fairly extreme cases of high-angle, long-range (for airgunning) shots, the pellets point of impact can be significantly affected.

As an example, where I hunt Jackrabbits in the Arizona desert it is not uncommon to be presented with the following shot: A Jackrabbit at 80 yards distance as measured by use of a traditional rangefinder, but is 27 yards BELOW the shooter in elevation (See fig. 1, below).

 

FIGURE 1

Let’s assume that for this shot, the airgun hunter in fig. 1 is shooting a .22 caliber airgun that is sending out a 14.3 grain pellet at 825 FPS (a “middle of the road” pre-charged pneumatic rifle, if you will). If our theoretical shooter aims for the jack’s head at the 80 yard shot as told to him by his trusty rangefinder, the pellet’s path will only horizontally cross 75.2 yards of the earth’s gravitational field, leaving it to hit +2.07″ above the point of aim, completely missing his intended target!

To resolve this issue (and make a clean, ethical shot) we need to not only know the angle of the shot (which in this example happens to be 20 degrees), but properly adjust for it. To do this, the airgun hunter needs the following three pieces of information:

• The trajectory of his pellet,
• The range to his intended target,
• The angle of the shot, and it’s cosine.

Pellet Trajectory Knowing the point of impact of your pellet at various ranges is one of the most critical components of successful airgun hunting! In the not too distant past, to learn the trajectory of a given airgun shooting a certain pellet, an airgunner would have to shoot at multiple yardages (20, 30, 40, etc) and measure the point of impact at those yardages to “chart” the trajectory path of his pellet. Though this is still a very accurate method, it is very time consuming and therefore rarely employed by the average airgun hunter.

Airgunning, like many other sports and hobbies, has recently benefited from software applications that allow information to be available to the user that was at one time only available to ballistics engineers and top trainers. Hawke Sport Optics provides an incredible freeware program, ChairGun Pro (Click this link to download) that is highly useful to the airgunner for determining the path of his pellet. The use of this software is beyond the intent of this article, but a quick search of the Yellow Forum (http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/search) for “Chairgun” will return hundreds of useful threads regarding it’s use and application.

Range Estimation The ability to accurately and quickly estimate the range to an intended target is one of the most critical skills that an airgun hunter must master. Many optics manufacturers such as Nikon, Leupold, Leica and Bushnell offer electronic rangefinders in the $150-$750 range that work well for airgun hunting.

Author's antiquated, yet trusty mechanical "coincidence" rangefinder, a Ranging Model 200 popular in the early 1990's prior to the availability of affordable laser rangefinders. It's accurate, fast, easy to use and completely overlooked by the majority of airgun hunters as a cheap, yet effective ranging tool.

Laser rangefinders are surely the most popular in use, but the airgun hunter that does not actively use them to sharpen their own range estimating skills is missing out on an opportunity to become an even more efficient hunter.

Shot Angle There are several manufacturers of both angle and cosine indicators that will allow the shooter to have the proper information required to compensate for this rule of simple physics  (http://www.snipertools.com/aci.htm). Once the airgun hunter can determine the angle of the shot, the COS(angle) Chart (fig. 2, below), will quickly provide the necessary cosine to apply to the ranged yardage. In use, a hunter can quickly become comfortable making these adjustments and add it seamlessly to his standard pre-shot preparations.

FIGURE 2, COS(angle) Chart -Author's Note: all cosines are rounded to the nearest .01th for ease of calculation in the field.

(An important note to remember is that it does not matter if the shot is uphill or downhill, the effect on the pellet’s impact is identical -the point of impact will be higher than the point of aim: On either shot, uphill or downhill, the actual distance that the pellet travels as relative to the force of gravity will be shorter than the measured distance to the target, hence the higher point of impact and need to compensate to correct this.)

Now armed with his pellets trajectory path, the range to his intended target and both the angle of the shot and the the COS(angle) Chart provided in fig. 2 above, our airgun hunter can properly adjust for this extreme shot angle simply by multiplying the ranged yardage by the angle’s cosine as follows:

 

FIGURE 3

As illustrated in fig. 4 below, our airgun hunter used the simple formula above to correctly adjust for the extreme angle of his shot and shot for an adjusted distance of 75 yards rather the 80 yard shot as measured with his rangefinder.

FIGURE 4

As in the example above, an airgun hunter that puts the effort into not only knowing his rifles performance (exact point of impact at various yardages being key) and makes an effort to understand the mechanics that affect his pellet’s flight path will be rewarded with not only the regular satisfaction of properly placed shots, but also with increased opportunities to take game when confronted with more difficult shots.

A Hare of Winter: December Airgun Hunting Arizona’s Black-tailed Jackrabbit

Late morning sun lighting the Granite Mountains, backed by the rugged crags of Four Peaks of the Mazatzal Mountains. Four Peaks, at less than an hours drive from Fountain Hills, offers the closest Ponderosa Pine forest to metro Phoenix. It rises up from the desert floor to a final elevation of 7,657' and is not only a favorite local day-hiking area, but also home to many Desert Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) and is reported to have the densest population of Black Bears (Ursus Americanus) in the state of Arizona.

December is a magical time in Arizona’s desert country, especially for those individuals that enjoy the outdoors: Winter flowers are in bloom, the desert retains most of it’s green from the recent late fall rains and desert airgunners are rewarded with crisp morning temperatures in the high 40′s to low 50′s that are almost guaranteed to turn into perfect 70 degree afternoons.

Combine the above with a fellow airgun enthusiast who’s company you thoroughly enjoy and the stage is set for a perfect Saturday morning! I made a deal with my hunting buddy and friend Scott D., aka “Chief” (being that I spent four years as an avionics technician assigned to the 965th AWACS, I have respect for his 33 year career and retirement from the USAF) that if he arrived at my house at 6:00 am, I would have a big pot of coffee waiting. We filled our to-go cups and headed out to “jackrabbit central” in the high desert foothills north of Cave Creek, Arizona (see information at end of this article for information useful to airgunners interested in hunting this area).

We topped our Benjamin Marauders (his a Greg Davis-tuned .22, mine a factory-stock .25) with air, slipped on our lightweight jackets and left his truck behind and headed into prime jack rabbit country. We start by employing a technique that I have to work well in the desert: We walked parallel to one another as we followed along an arroyo down to a lower elevation with one of us walking up high near the top of the ridge for better game-spotting visibility with the other walking the bottom of the sand-covered washes which are usually thickly covered at either side with vegetation.

Scott D. working the mid-line of an arroyo as the author walks parallel in the wash bottom. When jumped, Jackrabbits often run to higher ground to gain better visibility of the immediate threat, be that bobcat, coyote or airgun hunter.

Twenty minutes in and I spotted the movement of a big jack making his way -post-haste, up and over the opposite side of the arroyo. I signaled it’s direction of travel to Scott and we both quickly made a change in heading that would hopefully put us in an intersect path with the fleeing hare. I slowly crested the ridge, eased the safety off on my Marauder, set my left elbow firmly into the sling. I then checked to make sure that my AO was still set at 50 yards (the “standard” setting I hunt on foot with). Just as my head and shoulders cleared the ridge, I saw the jack take a few slow, slinking steps as he tried to sneek away as they often do. He stopped short of the far side of the adjacent arroyo, leaving himself perfectly broadside to me at what looked about like 55-65 yards. I drew the .25 up to my shoulder, centered my scope’s crosshairs on high on his right shoulder, slowly exhaled and squeezed the trigger:

ThumPPP!!!

The resounding smack of the 31 grain Barracuda Pellet connecting with it’s intended target sounded like a rug being hit with a golf club! The big jack piled up instantly on top of himself with only a few fleeting leg kicks from no longer having a functioning heart or lungs to provide oxygen. “Well that sounded solid. I heard that all the way over here!”, Scott said from about 50 yards away, his angle of approach leaving him making his way up out of the bottom of the 60 foot-deep arroyo still.

Black-tail Jackrabbit buck downed by 58 yard shot from author's .25 cal. Benjamin Marauder. Notice vein structures in quarry's ears for purpose of regulating body heat. Temperatures in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert vary greatly. Winter temperatures often falling below 32 degrees and summer highs can exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Also note deep scarring at leading edge of ear, no doubt caused by the desert's armored vegetation while it hastily fled from predators.

Black-tailed Jackrabbit (Lupus Californicus) facts:

• aren’t rabbits at all, but are hares.
• can run up to 45 mph in short bursts.
• rest and sleep in a “form”,  a shallow depression scraped in the ground.
• young jackrabbits are called “leverets”.
• females reproduce up to 4 times in a year.
• re-ingest their dropping -they eat their food twice.
• leverets are born after a 41 to 48 day gestation period
• their meat contains little fat or protein, making them a poor food source.
• like deer, males are called “bucks”, just as females are referred to as “does”.

Scott and I both admired the jack’s beauty, especially it’s lush winter pelt and, both picking him up like two elderly ladies inspecting produce at the local grocery, guessed him to weigh somewhere around 9 lbs (I have recently purchased a digital fish scale that weighs to the nearest 1/10 ounce and due my scientifically curious nature am excited to put it into use in the field).  We both noted the dense fur that lines between the pads of the hares feet, believed to allow it to travel the hot, sun-baked sandy washes they seem to prefer.

A closer view, showing the jackrabbit's beautiful grey-brown pelt and large eye. This angle allows the reader to observe the qaurry's ability to nearly "have eyes in the back of it's head", hence it's ability to spot the airgunner at what seems like almost any angle of approach.

We spent the next two hours continuing on our hunt, jumping a handful of other jacks,  none of which presented shots within range of an airgunner. In fact, after spending a few consecutive weekends hunting this area, we’ve concluded that the area’s popularity and subsequent heavy use during Arizona’s winter quail hunting months is the cause of the jacks fleeing at 130-150 yards instead of the 30-40 yards that seems to be more common of the species.

With any time in the desert airgun hunting the black-tailed jackrabbit, one quickly learns to view getting even just the opportunity to squeeze the trigger with one in your scope to be considered a successful day in the field. With this in mind, I was even more pleased to actually have had the good fortune of taking one.

Soaptree Yucca (Yucca elata), a plant commonly found in the higher elevations of the Arizona-Sonoran desert

Useful Information for Airgunners Interested in Hunting this Area:

• Topo map and GPS Coordinates of this location: USGS Map Name:  Humboldt Mountain, AZ Map MRC: 33111H7
  N33.89892°  W111.75135°                   Datum: NAD27
  
• Hunting licenses (non-resident and 3-day non-resident licenses must be applied for ) can be obtained by visiting the Arizona Game and Fish Department on the web here: http://www.azgfd.gov/eservices/licenses.shtml
• This area is part of Arizona’s Tonto National Forest and a one day use pass must be purchased for each vehicle used per day. More information can be found here: www.fs.usda.gov
• The Arizona desert in the winter can have vast temperature swings from early morning to mid-afternoon, airgunners are advised to dress in layers to aide in regulating body temperature to match the conditions of the day.
• As always, carry more water than you feel you should require. A good rule of thumb is one litre (.26 gallons) of water per hour of time in the desert during the winter. Double this figure in warmer months.
• Every plant in the desert is armored, wear appropriate clothing and footwear.
• The airgunner that does his or her homework and is familiar with their setup’s trajectory at longer ranges will have greater success in this style of hunting. Chairgun Pro is an indispensable piece of freeware to aid the airgun hunter and is offered by Hawke Sport Optics. Chairgun Pro can be downloaded free of cost at the following link: http://www.chairgun.com/

 

Morning sun backlighting Scott D., alone atop a granite boulder, Soaptree Yucca in foreground.

 

Sun Optics to release $600.00 compressor April of 2011

I spoke with Dwayne of SunOpticsUSA today about purchasing a 4-16×52 mildot scope for my .25 Marauder and took the chance to get an update on his newest soon-to-be-released project -a $600.00(-ish) air compressor designed  specifically for airgunners. Dwayne is the individual that designed and originally produced what first was the AirForce Airguns and now the Benjamin hand pumps, so this is not his first time designing a product for mass-production or successfully bringing it to market.

Dwayne’s performance goal is for the compressor to fill a Benjamin Marauder-sized (+/-215CC) air chamber in 7 to 8 minutes, and is currently modifying the design to eliminate $20.00 a unit from it’s production cost, which he says will translate into about a $100.00 savings to the retail consumer.

The new compressor is projected to be released in April, 2011.

“Air boolits”, cast-lead hollowpoint slugs for the .25 Benjamin Marauder

Well, I finally bit the Boolit yesterday afternoon (pun intended) and ordered an assortment of .25 caliber cast slugs from Mr. Hollowpoint, aka Robert Vogel to see how my Benjamin Marauder shoots them. In my time as an Airforce Condor velocity junky, I read many rave reviews posted on TAG [www.talonairgun.com/forum] of different versions of Robert’s cast slugs as used by shooters with custom built .25 AF Condors.

.25 caliber pure lead hollowpoint slugs in 31g, 51g and 53g (35g shown in photo above) will each be tested in author's stock Benjamim Marauder.

Before I even pulled into the driveway from picking up my new Bloomfield, New York-born quarter-bore from Airguns of Arizona, I was already excitedly planning it’s future as my “little big-bore” pneumatic ic varmint rifle with designs on shooting some of Mr. Hollowpoint’s “man-sized” slugs out of it.

So today, I pointed my browser to the magical home of the airgunning world’s cottage industry, the Network 54 airgun forums, were all things “airgun” can be had, found, bought, sold, recommended, studied and argued. There I found Mr. Vogel’s contact information, and emailed him a quick blurb explaining my interest in testing some of his slugs, teased him a little bit about his famously silly (of infamously silly, lol) Youtube videos, about the lack of driving skill of the average commuter (both of us sitting in traffic on opposite sides of the country) and we quickly put my order together.

After my enjoyable phone call with Bob (he seems like a very nice guy, that happens to LOVE airguns as much as I do), I popped into the local US Post Office to send him $25.00 of the Official Currency of the United States of Airgunning; The U.S. Postal Money Order.

I am excited to see how, or even if, my Marauder handles such a heavy projectile, and I hope that you come back and allow me to share my results with you soon!

Crosman releasing Marauder Pistol Friday!!! (11/19/2010)

Posted on Crosman Corporation’s Facebook fanpage and via Twitter at about 4:58 pm Eastern Std. time today:

“as a thanks for being a Facebook Fan, you get the big news early: Marauder PCP Pistol goes on sale Friday @ 12pm EST / 9am PST *exclusively* on crosman.com! Details tomorrow….”

and………..

“Thx for being a follower, you get the big news early: Marauder PCP Pistol on sale Friday *exclusively* on crosman.com! Details tomorrow….”

Looks like you can only buy it this Friday directly from www.Crosman.com.

There will be A LOT of happy grown-up 50 year-old little boys come this Friday afternoon! I can’t wait to read all of the first-hand reports on the Network54 Forums next monday morning!

Upcoming stock Marauder .25 vs. Greg Davis tuned Marauder .22 side-by-side field test

Azairgunner and the ever charmingly retired Scott D. are going to take our Marauders out into the Arizona desert this Saturday for a side-by-side, real-world comparison: my factory-stock .25 Marauder will go head-to-head against his Greg Davis hotrodded, Walther-barreled .22 Marauder. We hope to come away from this with an answer (or something that at least smells like an answer, lol) to the question that is on all airgunner’s minds as of late, “what performs better in the field, a fast shooting, tuned and accurized .22 or the slower, but harder hitting .25?”

As part of this “test”, I have obtained the help (reads: promised to bring donuts) of Kip at Airguns of Arizona (www.AirgunsofArizona.com) to put both guns up against their chronograph to assure accurate FPS and FPE figures for both guns.

In addition to taking a look at each model’s real-world field use and performance numbers, I will also be taking a look at each gun’s shot count, trajectory path as calculated by Chairgun Pro (http://www.chairgun.com/) and how the differences effect range estimation between the two calibers as well as how much air per shot it takes to run the quarter bore Marauder as compared to it’s little brother.

I plan to be complete and posted prior to Thanksgiving break, so please make sure to come back and check in!