David M

The HW95 is the same gun as the SMK XS20 and BAM20, just double the price. I have a B20 in .22 and it is smooth to cock and shoot plus accurate out to the sensible ranges I limit it to, about 25 yards. People shun cheaper chinese copies but for what we ask of a springer I wouldn't hesitate to look at an SMK xs20 or 19 or 208. If people are willing to open up an HW straight away to smooth it out then why pay top German prices..?

I'd see what they're feeding on, my farm still has 5 tonne of wheat in a barn and a split bag of runner bean seed between two pallets. The rats actually are quite brazen and venture out more in daylight..! I've proved this using a trail cam set day and night. The s410 you have access to will be a great accurate tool for the job, batch yourself up no more than 20 yards from their source of food a couple of hours before sunset. You'll be surprised how many move when you monitor the same area for a few hours. If they haven't been shot at for a while you might be in for a good time..! I target rats that have to run along a barn door for 6 feet or so to get in, they come out from some rubbish sacks. All I do is sprinkle some wheat along their route to stop them, that way I have a clear shot to the side of their head. Placement there drops them with a thud and occasional tail spin. Keep movement to a minimum and I watch for them to stick their heads out from the sacks before bolting to the grains. I sat with my nv in the barn a few nights up to midnight and got nothing but cold..!

I thought lamping any birds is illegal..? Just shoot them in daylight when they're perched with a safe back stop.

I used to use some standard woodie shells that had a mauve tinge to their backs and the birds came down to them very well, but I thought that full bodied ones would be dynamic and got half a dozen. The paint jobs were way out so I photoed a dead woodie and copied the colours with mat enamels. I was really chuffed with the results but they work no better or worse than the original shells..! I think the pattern and place you use them is more important personally. I thought I'd need accurate colours to get them to land confidently for my air rifle but the ones with original paint are fine......

Hi Peacefrog, You say you only want a cheap gun to target shoot in the garden and I can fully recommend the SMK XS19 or 20 range with a cheap Nikko Stirling Mountmaster scope on. There is nothing wrong with them for what you are asking and they might surprise you. I bought a secondhand B20 (same as an SMK XS20 for £80 and hunted with it successfully out to 30 yards for quite a few years, in the garden it would group nicely within a penny at 25 yards all day. If you feel the interest and need, there is plenty of good info on the Chinese Airgun Forum to open it up one day and fettle it a little... Atb.....David

Good video.... Good to see your dog has a grand day out too, really wants to please you and do a good job....

Good video thanks... I carried 'only' seven about a 1/4 mile back to my car once and I ached the next day, I vowed to try and limit myself to five at that place in future...! My home brew NV was my best buy last year, I use it a lot and have seen a wide variety of wildlife around the farms......

You may find that rabbits tend to just roll over with .177, when I used .22 they tended to jump 2 feet in the air with the same shot behind the eye for some weird reason. I only hunt rabbits and pigeons with my .177 pcp now, you'll need plenty of practice in anything over a 10mph cross wind past 30 yards though, they sway a bit...!! I find .177 very good using my NV kit, I zero at 35 yards meaning I use hold over to 15 yards where the first cross over is, then hold under to a max of 1/2" at 25 yards and back to cross over at the zero distance. I use only 1" hold over at 40 yards....

Carry a cree torch and wave it about in their direction, they'd be mad to shoot knowing someone else was on the land and you can't get much better than a cree torch beam...

I didn't realize they could catch it off each other.. I thought it was only caught through fleas but I've never looked it up..! I always shoot them and leave them for the foxes, as above I hate to see them suffer. There used to be an old boy in the village who asked specifically for myx''d rabbits as he said the disease naturally tenderized them..! I know you can eat them but not for me... I've shot rabbits with scarring around the eyes and thought 'poor bug*er, he avoided an horrific death then just hopped out in front of me at the wrong time..!'....

Hi Evo, an interesting read... I use a modified Air Arms silencer on my s400 and find it pretty quiet, certainly not worth me buying another. I removed the internals and replaced the two chambers with three separated by two washers with a 5mm hole through them. I wrapped three equal length curlers with packing foam and left it very effective. My springer has a 31mm diameter MWSS silencer made by a member on TheAirgunForum who makes them out of a hard plastic called delrin and they equal the Weihrauch in performance for half the money, he has made hundreds now for members on that site with no bad comments at all. Matt makes them for any gun, mine was a grub screw fastened slip on type. Very effective at muting the sound down range, obviously the springer's internals can still be heard next to my ear though..! The best silenced gun I ever heard (..?) was a Daystate with a shrouded barrel and a small silencer on the end. It was literally just the click of the hammer going off. I sat next to it on a club range and thought it was incredibly effective but what was left was an annoying 'ting' noise..!

I have an adjustable butt pad on my s400 and it aids perfect head/eye alignment to the scope. I use the lowest scope mounts I can get away with to keep the scope as close to the barrel as possible, this then makes the eye alignment too low with a fixed pad. I have my pad dropped 1/2" to raise the rifle. I have a fixed pad on my springer and am lucky it's perfect with the scope objective only just missing the barrel. If you need higher mounts due to incorrect eye alignment, I'd recommend investing the £30. Both of my guns now sport 3-9x40AO scopes and I find I shoot the pcp mainly on x9 and the springer around x5 to x7., but.. I knocked up a night vision add on last year and had to change my Hawke Nite-Eye 6-24x50 for a 3-9x40 scope so I had the lower x3 magnification to scan about with. I used to enjoy shooting the clear glassed Nite-Eye on x12 from a rest but I found it a tad wobbly in the field....

My first rabbit gun was an £80 tuned secondhand .22 B20 (same as an SMK XS20) and put plenty in the freezer for quite a few years. It had a £30 Leapers scope on it. They will all do the job as long as you are honest with yourself what is your range limit at shooting hunting size groups. The B20 with me on the end could hit £ coin groups only out to 25 yards time after time so that was my limit. I used it to ambush rabbits from set positions about that distance away and it was very effective. My mate's .177 AA TX200 was good for 35 yards for me but weighed a tonne..! Then I got a .177 pcp and never looked back, it takes out everything I point it at with clinical efficiency. Amazingly all of a sudden it seems I have become a world class shooter over night out to 35-40 yards, nothing to do with how easy the gun is to shoot, honest....

Good sound advice above, I bought a tuned B20 (same as an SMK XS20) chinese springer on the Chinese Airgun Forum nearly five years ago for £80 delivered and it is as smooth as silk to cock and shoot. I topped it with a £30 3-9x40 Leapers scope and put plenty of rabbits in the freezer with it. I wasn't much cop past 30 yards so just excepted that and made it my maximum hunting range.

You'll enjoy getting out with your NV unit. I built up my own from a collection of parts I was advised on getting quite simply for around £110 and have used it a lot since April. Like all new equipment, you have to learn how to get the best from it and in this case, how to use it in the dark. Range estimation can be an issue but using a .177 pcp takes care of that from about 15 to 40 yards when zeroed at 37 yards for me. I've found that I can go out and fairly comfortably get what rabbits I want, there's always plenty of glowing eyes to go after at night...