This summer has been a busy one. Who am I kidding, every summer month, every fall month– the whole dang calendar is busy year after year. This year has felt especially busy. I know my time has been divided up more between work, family, events, and even carving out some time to relax. Normally July and August are sort of dead at work and in the airgun industry in general. The whole world is spending time with the kids during their summer breaks and settling down under the AC to wait out those miserably hot days common to this time of year. In an odd turn of events, the “usual” September time slot usually occupied by Pyramyd Air at the Cardinal Shooting Center in Marengo, Ohio was promised to some other organization, leaving late July the only option for the Pyramyd Air Cup.
As such, Team Umarex was scrambling to prepare for this event after coming back from the Rocky Mountain Airgun Challenge the month prior. There were guns to go through, practice cards to shoot, and strategy to discuss. And as per usual days slip away from you and all the good intentions of shooting every night go right out of the window. I can’t speak for the rest of the team, but I only got out to the range a few times to shoot with my bench gun, a completely factory Gauntlet SL30 Limited Edition. I was not able to shoot my .22 caliber Zelos at all as it was in pieces during much of this time. The Zelos has been heavily modified and was going under additional modifications to dial it in for precision shooting with slugs (the jury is still out on these latest mods…).
The Pyramyd Air Cup was approaching much faster than it appeared and I wasn’t ready for it.
Last year, both Kolby and Ashley Rasmussen shot Field Target in the Hunter class and (Kolby) wouldn’t shut up about how fun it was. OK– slight hyperbole there, but both Kolby and Ashley did enjoy themselves and even shot decent cards with the tools they brought and borrowed for the event. For those of you who do not know, Hunter Class Field Target has an energy cap of 20 ft-lbs and is generally favorable to .177 caliber rifles. As you might be aware, we do not offer a .177 caliber PCP at the moment. A .22 caliber rifle will work, but one must be very careful to tune it below the 20 ft-lb limit. Last year, Kolby took the Notos .22 and it worked pretty well, all things considered. Ashley shot a borrowed Thomas rifle in .177. It’s pretty difficult to pick up a rifle that isn’t yours with a scope that isn’t tuned for your eye and take on a precision Field Target Course. Even so, Ashley did pretty well.
This year, the Umarex couple signed up again and for kicks, so did I. The Rasmussen’s worked with the tuning on a .22 caliber Zelos and I ordered a .177 caliber Komplete. Yes, you read that right, I took a $220 air rifle to compete against $5,000 Thomas’s.
Kolby and Ashely shared the Zelos and enjoyed modest success with it, especially on the first day. Kolby ended the day with 51/60 on the books. The second day, the rifle must have endured a bump that altered the point of impact as he was not shooting anywhere near the level of his first day’s performance. Since you can’t adjust your scope in Field Target, he had to figure it out on the fly and hold off in the scope to make everything work. Ashley, on the other hand turned in a 34 on the first day and a 35 on day two with the same rifle. Go figure.
For myself, this was my first attempt at this event. I’ve never been very good at shooting from anything other than a bench, and one could argue that even with the help of a bench I am far from a marksman. That said, I was much more interested in learning how the game was played rather than playing it well. There are some rules particular to Field Target that I wanted to be comfortable with. I’m a slow learner, so just figuring things out was going to be enough for my first go-round. You can read all about the rules and details for Field Target here.
Why did I pick the Komplete? It was a mix of desperation and time crunch that led to this decision. I had a .22 caliber Zelos at home, but the 20 ft-lb range has left the chat, so to speak. I’m shooting in the mid-50 ft-lb range in the time leading up to the Pyramyd Cup. There was no going back for my Zelos so I made the rash decision to take an unfired Komplete and hope the random tin of pellets I grabbed would come in under 20 ft-lbs. I managed to hit a target once in a while with help from some borrowed shooting sticks and a hastily purchased seat. But more importantly, I was able to figure out what one needs to be successful in field target as well as how the game is played. With this new knowledge, I plan on hitting the Tulsa field target shoot this fall when my schedule will allow it.
Also on the menu for this competition was the 100 yard benchrest. For this event we had 4 shooters. Ashley, Kolby, and myself shot the Gauntlet SL30 and first time shooter, Suzanne Ryan, shot the Zelos .25 caliber. Kolby turned in a combined score of 419, Ashley, a score of 391, myself, an unofficial (one card was not recorded) score of 379, and Suzanne, a combined score of 250 (her second card penalized with a several two-pellet strikes that could not be seen in the mid-day light).
Beyond shooting in the competitions, we also demonstrated several new products at the demonstration range. One big hit with shooters was the little Verada .177 caliber CO2 powered pellet pistol. With its top picatinny rail and 9-shot magazine, this accurate plinker was universally loved– so much so that I nearly ran out of .177 ammo for my field target rifle!
Another fun and hard to put down showpiece was our StormFire fully automatic .177 caliber BB carbine. Powered by 2 12g CO2 cartridges and fed by a 400 round BB reservoir, the Stormfire is an affordable, fun, and easy to use BB gun that your whole family will love.
We also brought a sample of the .25 caliber Outpost. We talked to many shooters who owned the Notos and were very impressed with the .25 caliber Outpost with its lightweight and compact design. Shooters also loved the 13 round capacity and easy to fill tank. We hope to have the Outpost on the market very soon!
The last new product we demonstrated on the range was the .357 Tusk big bore air rifle. The hard hitting Tusk can shoot either .35 caliber pellets or airgun slugs. We slapped a red dot sight on the picatinny rail and went to town abusing the Sasquatch silhouette steel target we brought to the range. Many shooters expressed interest in getting their paws on the Tusk for hunting and longer range target shooting.
We are all back home now, in the midst of a summer heat wave that has posted around 20 days (at the time of this writing) over 100 degrees. We have about 9 weeks between the Pyramyd Air Cup and the next competition, Airgun of Arizona’s Extreme Benchrest in Mid-October.
Mark Davis, avid outdoorsman, family man, and outdoors writer is the eCommerce Marketing Manager for Umarex USA.