Airgun accuracy: What should you expect?

by Harley Ayre

The ads sound so convincing, but you've been on the receiving end of some unfulfilled promises before. Can you really trust what people (dealers) say about the accuracy of airguns? Can an airgun REALLY shoot a half-inch group at 50 yards? I'm lettin' the cat out of the bag today, so come on along.

What about those half-inch groups?
You hear about them. Try as you might, you just can't shoot them with your RWS 52. Are they lying to you that PCPs are more accurate than spring guns? No, they're not, but some explanation is needed. First point - spring guns are many times more difficult to shoot accurately than PCPs. To shoot a springer well, you need a lot of technique. Shooting a PCP is like shooting a .22 rimfire, except that the PCP will probably out-group most .22s out to at least 50 yards.

PCPs are very forgiving of how you hold or rest them. They have very little vibration or recoil, which is what throws off the spring guns. It is POSSIBLE to shoot a spring gun as well as a PCP if it has a barrel of the same quality (which most do not), but it takes a bucketload of special shooting technique. Even a handmade $3,000 Whiscombe recoilless rifle (a very fancy spring-piston air rifle) has a hard time keeping up with a $500 Talon from AirForce that is just as powerful and weighs half as much. When you step up to a any Falcon sporter, no springer made has a prayer! That's not a commercial. It's the truth.

How many shots are in that group?
The number of shots determines the group size up to about 30 shots. After that, the group size shouldn't increase unless there is some sort of problem. I'll address the common problems in a moment, but back to the shot count. Three is the number of shots a flim-flam man shoots and calls a group. Three will nearly always be the tightest group a gun can shoot. It is not representative of accuracy and should be discounted. Five is the number of shots a lazy man shoots. I do it all the time. It's worlds better than three, but not truly representative of accuracy. Ten is the number of shots a real professional shoots. The difference between 10 shots and 30 is very small and not worth the extra effort. If you read American Rifleman magazine, you'll notice that most of their test reports are based on 10-shot groups.

Ten-shot groups are therefore about 40 percent larger than five-shot groups (and three shot groups aren't really groups at all). So, if you want the easier half-inch group at 50 yards, shoot only five. If you get a group that small with 10 shots, you know the rifle is a top performer.

Common problem No. 1: Wind
Shooting pellets in the wind and expecting accuracy is like pouring gasoline on a fire to extinguish it. Pellets are EXTREMELY sensitive to wind, and you MUST stop shooting during gusts if you want to have a prayer. You can compensate for a steady breeze by offsetting your aim, but even that is a learned skill that takes practice to maintain.

Common problem No. 2: Scope adjustment
It's not that your scope is broken, but some shooters don't realize that they have adjusted their scopes outside the range of accuracy built into the instrument. The worst situation is when you've used all of the vertical adjustment to get the pellet up to the aim point. On MOST scopes, the erector tube will be under zero spring tension when the scope is adjusted all the way up, and the reticle will be floating wherever it wants. Novice shooters blame "scope shift," when it's really their own fault for doing this.

Common problem No. 3: Parallax
Only by putting your sighting eye at the EXACT same place for every shot are you assured of shooting to the same place. The parallax adjustment on your scope will remove MOST of the problem BUT NOT ALL! If you don't use a cheek weld (location of your cheek on the stock) that you can repeat every time, don't plan on shooting good groups.

Common problem No. 4: Canting
We mount these humongous scopes on our rifles, then fail to take into account that pellets will go all over the place if the scope is not level for every shot! To cure this problem, mount a scope level that you can check before every shot. One degree of cant will open your group by half an inch at 50 yards! Just that one thing makes it IMPOSSIBLE to ever shoot a half-inch group.


The quick way to sort pellets by weight is with an electronic powder scale.

Common problem No. 5: Shooting pellets straight out of the box (or tin)
Even the very best pellets will vary unless they have been hand-selected. Among the sporting pellets, JSBs are the only brand I know that are all hand-sorted before packing. Even then, they should be examined for possible damage to the thin skirt. With every other brand, and especially with Crosman Premiers, you have to weigh each pellet and sort them into groups that weigh the same to the tenth of a grain. If you do that, your groups will tighten like magic. You can use a balance beam scale, but an electronic powder scale is MUCH faster (though no more accurate).

So the PCP really is the most accurate type of airgun. Under the right circumstances, which means all the common problems have been dealt with, it is possible to get those super groups.