Air rifle hunting - Break Barrel or Under-lever??

Hello Guys - I've been playing with air rifles a bit lately to improve my off-hand shooting. I've got an accurate HW35 (break barrel with superb trigger) but its pretty low on power and I'm thinking there are a few pesties round here that could do with a hurry-up. Yahoo - new (secondhand probably) rifle to figure out . . .

I've had a nice PCP but got sick of the phaff (pun intended) of keeping air on hand - so I'm gonna stick with a springer. A while ago I got to try @KiwiinSeattle 's RWS M52 side lever. Its a really nice rifle, very accurate and great trigger, very easy to shoot well I found for such a powerful airgun. However for hunting I didn't like the reloading process, it seemed to take a long time with lots of hand movement, and in the dark it was easy to drop pellets in the wrong places.

So - for hunting purposes, whats your springer pick if you were starting from scratch?? Break-barrel, Under-lever or side-lever??

I got my son an hw30 last year, I’ve shot a couple possums and a fair few rats with it. If I wanted something with more grunt I’d be picking it from the weirauch line up, the match trigger is great and the open sights are really nice.

Under or side. Break barrels can change point of aim slightly over time.

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Side lever for me. M52

Break barrel is easier to load, lever often a bit more accurate. My favourite is a little multi-pump copy of a Sharpe Innova. Fiddly to load but accurate and quiet to shoot.

Under or side lever would be my pick too.

I'll give you a specific one and then the reasons. Weihrauch HW77k or Weihrauch HW97k if you are not going to use open sights.
Why?
- Superb, adjustable, two-stage Rekord trigger.
- Very accurate with a quality pellet like JSB Exact. 1 cm grouping at 40m with the right pellet and the right shooting technique.
- 18-19J. Not too powerful, because powerful springers are usually very hold sensitive and difficult to shoot accurately.
- Superb workmanship. Future heirloom. If treated correctly it will outlast you. Pride of ownership.
- Power enough for an effective, clean kill headshot on a possum (between the eye-ear) out to around 40m.
- Low to medium loudness for stealthy shooting.

The HW97k is one of the most used Hunter Field Target springers, together with the Air Arms TX200. And for a reason!

About 100 years ago, I was really in to air rifles. General opinion at the time was that underlever were more reliable and accurate than break barrel. My dad had a HW77 and it was a thing of great beauty (in a functional German kind of way).

Hey - thanks for the thoughts guys, @Josan - man I'd love an Air-Arms or Theoben but the amount of use it would get makes it hard to justify . . .

Best springer.... well you cant really beat the newer diana TH. The only reason i stopped shooting the airking in comps was because it literally shook itself to death after killing two scopes.
But for balance and offhand shooting, the AA2x200hc is as good as it gets. Just beating the prosport (its loading method was tedious i thought)

@Tentman. You might want to send Krale in The Netherlands a mail if their prices are attractive to you. You can subtract the 21% VAT from the listed price, but you might need to pay the NZ taxes if it enters your country. I know half the US order their Weihrauchs from there, much cheaper and quicker then when ordered from their US resellers. Krale will be able to tell you whether they ever shipped to NZ, what the challenges are and what price you will have to pay. Search for Krale at Gatewaytoairguns for references.

I got underleaver gamo, shoots extremely accurately and never had a problem in that sense. Shot plenty of rabbits with it too.

https://www.pyramydair.com/blog/2006...ion-air-rifle/

problem solved :)

I've been following that blog for a number of years
strongly recommend going and having a browse through the index lower down on the left hand side.
or pick a selection of models and search for reviews
www.pyramydair.com/blog/
Z

The most expensive part of shooting is your time. Spring rifles are inherently harder to shoot accurately due to the awkward recoil. Buying a cheaper spring gun to muck about makes sense when you are a kid, but it does not make sense when you are an adult who has to scavenge, beg, and lie to find the time to shoot. Shooting a cheap spring gun will make you constantly question whether you missed or the gun missed. This is a even bigger time waster if you went out hunting. After spending 30 bucks on petrol, 2 hours on driving, 4 hours on walking in the bush looking for game, then only to miss - maybe because the gun was not always accurate... That is the days I never wish to go back to.

Once you practice enough, loading a spring rifle becomes second nature, you wont really have much problems with it.

There are only 3 top spring guns competing at the high end: Diana/RWS mod 56(with their several variants), Weihrauch HW97, and Air Arms TX200 M3 (with its 3 variants).

* They all have very good barrels and very good triggers;
* The general consensus is that HW97's trigger can be a hair better than the other two. Personally I use a TX200 and I find the trigger to be quite good. I have two Anschutz with Match 54 action, two KIDD. These are the triggers I usually shoot and compare to.
* TX200 has the best bluing, and looking stock, and best fit and finish.
* Mod 56 is the heaviest, the most powerful and has a recoil reduction system.
* Historically the HW97 was the cheapest, but now it is the same price as TX200.
* The Mod 56 is currently the most expensive, it is about 200 dollars more than the other two.

Second hand good ones comes up every now and then. no long ago a Diana mod 440 was sold for only 500 bucks. Excellent bargain.

Thanks to a forumite its sorted. Diana 34 in it's short form. I decided that the more powerful HW's and Walther 's etc were to heavy. The Diana is a smidge less powerful, maybe, just maybe a smidge less capable/accurate but a whole bunch lighter by lbs.

And it'll get a high end Leupy to maximize its capability