AusVarmint

I took delivery of what I will call my first decent quality AR yesterday,Theoben Crusader in .22 and I mounted a Leupold vari-x 11 3x9x33 EFR on it.
Now I have 3x tins of the 16gn JSB's and 500 18gn JSB's to try...........................are these pellets and weights the shnizzle or are there others worth trying?.
Local GS has H&N Barracudas and some other brand and they are over 20gn's,are they to heavy,I am going to bust some bunnies this arvo and there are also some fox dens along the river bank............might have to get the whistle and camo gear out.



Regards Chris.

Hey Chris,
Try some of the new .22 JSB RS pellets 13.2 Grains and also an old favorite of mine the JSB Exact Express .22 14.3 Grains,you will get a pleasant surprise out of the Crusader. Some times in the Ram guns lighter is amazingly better.The heaviest pellet I ever used in the 98,s was the Exact 15.9 Grn pellet. I learned a lot from My SLR 98,s in .22. The crusader uses the same Ram I think.
You are in for a good time with that one mate.

Ok I went for a quick shot this arvo with the new/secondhand Crusader,took some Baracudas(21.3gn) to try and got four from four and they seemed to penetrate quite well..
........................not sure of the velocity or FT/LB of energy but I do know that the trajectory isn't exactly what you would call flat .
Anyway on one of the shots which was 37 of my stride's as it turns out,rabbit was side on and I was able to lay down for the shot,I settled the horizontal cross hair just at the base of his ear and ...............................smack lights out on another one,walked over and low and behold the pellet was laying in the dirt/sand just behind him .As it turns out the pellet hit him in the neck completely penetrating and went on the hit the embankment at the burrow entrance to when fall onto the ground.
I have attached a couple of pics and I apolagize that I didn't just take one pic of the rabbits together but I was walking and didn't want to carry them.

Rabbit at entrance to burrow. Entry wound.
Exit wound.

Recovered pellet.

Here are the other couple.
and one of the rifle
.

I can see myself saving for a PCP soon.......................Hmmmm Steyr or Theoben .



Regards Chris.

Steyr, no question.

Nice shooting with the Crusader. The barracudas are obviously doing the job, but they are a very heavy pellet. You'll see a much better trajectory with lighter ones and they will hit just as hard for things like rabbits. Pellets like the barracudas really start to shine in PCP's. But your getting the results so all good, will be interesting to see how your experiments with different pellets goes and which you settle on.

Have fun, they are great toys.

JD I think that the 16gn JSB Exacts will be the ones to use for me,Lewis said that they would more than likely be the pick of them and today whilst mucking around with different pellets I noticed that out of the 4x different pellets I tried they were the only ones to actually stay in the hardwood backstop so penetration is good.





Regards Chris.

JSB's have always been the best pellets in my rifles (.177 and .22 PCP's), although the 21gr Barracuda's shot well too in my BSA Hornet. Right now the JSB 18gr Jumbos are the pick in my Air Arms S400 and it will stack them so I haven't needed to seek any other types.

I agree the 16gr JSB's should go great

Hi I would also try crosman premiers@14.3gn and HNftt at 14.5gn if you can get them. These will make the most of flatterning the trajectory at the 20ftflb region the Crusader runs at and will feel a lot smoother to shoot.

neil

Neil thanks for the tip,I will try and get hold of some of the pellets that you mention.




Regards Chris.

I'm not sure anyone imports Crosman Premier pellets into Aus so you might be searching in vain. The premiers are popular with the field target crowd when purchased in the bulk cardboard boxes of 2000 and shoot very well (.177), but the 500 tins were crap (speaking from experience with box vs tin).

Never shot them in .22.

But agree with the above recommendation, H&N make good quality pellets too. Beeman pellets were just re-branded H&N. Barracuda = Kodiak, etc

There are some new 14gn ish jsb's about. Over here they go under several rebadged names though I believe they are called exact express from the parent company. Not tried them, but they are a good weight for 20ftlb.

neil

As Ray (and Neil) wrote above the JSB Express 14.3 gr is very well worth a try in your rifle. Also the 13.2 gr Exact RS. You can get these from Rob Potter at Potter Firearms. Ph: 075549 3044 Email: potfire@potfire.com.au

Gas rams generally seem to lose kinetic energy and momentum using heavy pellets which is opposite to PCPs. I had a .20 Crow Magnum 111 (Theoben Eliminator). It shot 14.3 gr Crosman Premiers to 27 fpe. I had an experimental .20 pellet of 22 grains. It shot that pellet at less that 18 fpe. By contrast my old single dump Sheridan shot the same two pellets to very close to the same fpe.

Just the same, nice shooting with what you had ....... Kind regards, Harry.

Harry I will be getting some of the 14gners from Rob to try,at the moment the 16gn Exact's have been knocking the bunnies about something fierce though .



Regards Chris.