Is this new ammo what the BB gun world has needed for years? Phill Price asks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-E5bmdKkXU
I’ve been pestering the UK importer of H&N products, John Rothery Wholesale, for a while to bring in this new ammunition.
They’re high-quality lead BBs with a copper coating to ensure they feed well from all sorts of BB guns. They answer to what, for me, has been the biggest complaint about steel BBs – when they hit a hard surface, they ricochet in a scary way. It’s so bad my gun club, Bisley, won’t allow permit shooters to use them anywhere on their ranges.
At home, I use a large cardboard box stuffed with rags to capture and hold steel BBs and I always wear eye protection. Just one unlucky rebound could cost you your sight.
credit: Archant
The Excite Smart Shot lead BBs are quite different. Like a lead airgun pellet, they deform on contact so they just fall to the ground. I tried them first in an ASG Dan Wesson revolver, which uses dummy bullets to hold the BBs. Sure enough, they shot well with no difficulties. The Smart Shot flattened about halfway and simply dropped to the bottom of the steel pellet catcher.
Next, I gave them a far sterner test in the form of a stick-style magazine in a Crosman PFM16. This stacks the BBs one on top of the next and feeds them from the top. If there was going to be a problem, this would be it. But to my delight, it fired a whole magazine-worth without a hitch.
This pistol uses its gas pressure more efficiently, and the Smart Shot was almost completely flattened and again, just dropped down to the bottom of the steel catcher.
I’m really pleased this new ammo works so well. It has opened up a whole world of pistols I’d previously discounted as they shot steel BBs only.
More testing will be needed to see if they suit all guns – some rely on a magnet to hold steel BBs in place, which clearly won’t work on lead – but I have great confidence this really is a new dawn for the BB gun market. Let the fun begin!
Gary Chillingworth reports on events at the WHFTA World Championships, which celebrated its 15th year at Borders Wood.
By Airgun World
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.