Canadian Airgun Forum

Hi everyone,

I purchased a Ruger Airhawk a few weeks ago and have been breaking it in. The first thing I did was stick on the scope and calibrate it, and have been able to shoot inside under 1" circles from 25 feet away using the kneeling position like this:



While this has worked well, I have found that I have reached the limit on my aim and cannot tighten my accuracy even playing with the scope settings. There is no way I can hold steadier and the scope only serves to magnify my perception of how much I am drifting around while trying to steady the heavy Ruger rifle before firing. It seems to have also taken away some of my "fun of learning" because it is just too darn good for my 25 foot shooting distance.

Therefore, I took off the scope and worked on calibrating the regular sights. I managed to calibrate them fairly well and also noticed I need to hold the rifle a bit differently to look and line them up, versus the scope. After some fun at getting the sight set up properly I was able to get within about 2" circles from the same distance. The problem is that I can barely see the bullseye target from that distance (I usually draw a 2" diameter circle with a Black Sharpie marker on a piece of 2x4 and aim to hit inside that).

Any thoughts about a beginner air rifle shooter like myself and whether I should be learning with sights or scopes (or both) and at a 25 ft distance what I should be aiming to get to regarding accuracy? It is a 490 fps rifle (Canadian version) and I'm shooting indoors in a not-so-well lit basement for now.

I can't go any further distances in my basement yet, and I have no place to shoot outside. However I imagine that I will need a scope for any further distances because even at 25 ft I can barely see anything under 1-2" size at 25 ft away. When I don't use a scope it "seems" I am holding it steadier because I am not seeing all my movement which the scope magnifies and at least lets me compensate for, but when I examine my target I am definitely not as tight as when I am using a scope. At least for now... maybe with more practice it gets better, or am I already limited by some things I can't change easily (eyes and hand steadiness)?

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New at plinking with: Crosman Airsoft Stinger P311 Challenge Kit, Daisy Powerline 340, and Ruger Air Hawk 0.177 490 fps.

Stock Airhawks give off a fairly big kick. Lite hold on the rifle and don't jam it into your shoulder. You almost just balance the gun when firing. Open sites I place the front dot covering the target and back site level with front sight. I tuned my open sight Airhawk and my two scoped Airhawks and all three shoot a lot better and less kick. Artillery hold is still a must. They are very easy to work on. But you must used the proper lubrications as so your gun does not diesel. Get smoke out the barrel is not the ideal situation. I mostly shoot 30 feet and my scoped guns I can hit or atleast come very close to a pin head 4 out of 5 shots with a good rest. But I also have good 3to9X50 Leapers AO scopes. Open sight Airhawk I can keep them in a two inch circle at 30 feet. You will never get same accuracy from open sights as you will with a good scope. It is harder for accuracy even more with what you are doing.

On the scope you have you have to spin the back of scope to focus then tighten up that back ring to hold it in place so it does not move when shooting. Your scope will focus in and you can see all the fine lines in your target and see through your scope where pellet hits. I still run one of the Airhawk scopes on a cheap grizzly air rifle.

Practise is what it takes. No one holds a scope steady. Becomes habit when to realise trigger. Most best shots will happen when the gun fires and you don't even remember even pulling the trigger. But it takes time for that habit to forum. Kinda like working on a figure 8 pattern when to realise trigger.

Conceder yourself lucky to have 25 feet indoors as a lot of people do not have that. Official shooting distance is only 33 feet.

CHEERS!

Hi, first thing I'd do is improve the lighting. It makes a huge difference and it could be as simple as pointing a spot light at the wall where the target is. I don't like the scope that came with the Airhawk, only used it once for testing and been sitting in a box since. Besides, open sights is where the fun is at.

Personally I hate fibre optic sights, find them silly and much favour a blade. But since manufacturers all seem to have embarked in the trend to fit their guns with these shiny blobs, it's hard to find a rifle (hell, even pistols for that matter) that doesn't come with them. With that said, the fibre optics in the Airhawk aren't the worst. They're kinda tight, so not completely useless, certainly good enough for some fun. Improve the lighting of your target and I think you'll find you'll be shooting better with the open sights than with the average 4x scope it came with.

Another great fun addition to any gun is a red dot. I really enjoy these and find it fun to make a game to swap optics around. Btw if you enjoy scopes look at getting a 9x one (one that's rated for a springer airgun). Even if you don't go full zoom in your limited space, 6 or 7x magnification at 25 yards would make it a lot easier to hit the target. If you do try to get one with AO. Most scopes should allow you to play with the objective to allow you to aim at your range's distance, so that the image isn't fuzzy.

Where I think it's great you're using field positions, try using a bench sometime. Great way to tighten those groups. Make a cheap resting bag by filling up an old pair of jeans with pop corn grains or some other cheap seed and off you go.

I'm still to break in the Airhawk, I just don't shoot it at all, due to lack of time and other more fun guns littering the house. But I do plan to give it a tune job to cut back on the twang. Plenty of discussion on how to do this here, just search for it. It's one of the nicer cheaper guns, accurate, nice finish, damn heavy but you can always use shooting sessions as a replacement for hitting the gym. Enjoy it.

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No, no, it was bigger than that! It looked like a weird monkey-dog thing!
COG First Class Recruit
Gears of War

Joolz

Don't forget some of us old guys can not see iron sights any longer so fibre optics still gives us a chance now to use open sights. CHEERS!

Fiber sights are for quick acquiring the target. They suck esp when comes to airguns because the rods are too thick. Covers the target.

My biggest beef with these is how imprecise some of these are, where you pretty much have to guess where to aim. With a post it's simple, if you can hold the post against the target, you hit it. For instance the blobs in the Daisy 953 are large and spread far apart. It's a guessing game locating the target precisely, especially trying to pull a string together. The Airhawk's are tighter but it's no substitute for a post. The irony here is how a gun as precise as the 953 comes with the worst possible open sights imaginable. Maybe this was deliberate? You know, Daisy does sell a cheap diopter set for the 953.

One of the rare guns that are decent and come with a set of replaceable posts is the Diana 30. Been in my wish list for a while now, especially the synthetic stock one. For now I have to contend with the $29 Princess Auto cheapo springer as it has a true iron post (with a rear sight that doesn't allow for windage...)

It is unfortunate that some folks have to forgo open sights due to deteriorating vision. Hope I'm still a few years from that. Not sure having little headlights helping me locate the target to be the answer. I mean, if I was trying to hit a brick from 10m away then yeah, I suppose that could work. But since the plan is to pile up a string inside a target the size of a dime, then fibre optics isn't the answer. Some day down the road I suppose I may have to make the switch to glass, as sad as that sounds.

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No, no, it was bigger than that! It looked like a weird monkey-dog thing!
COG First Class Recruit
Gears of War

Would be nice to have a front sight like an archery bow sight has. Did shoot .10 but had to change pins over to .29 so I could start seeing them again. But they are interchangeable as most good archery sights pins are. Airhawk front sight is like a 2.0