Which was your first springer rifle?

Shanghai B3-3 in .22 with cheap crappy scope. I couldn't hit barn with that.
Without scope was a different story,not bad at all. Later came Niko Stirling and once again i can't hit barn... dovetail was not straight.😂
But ok,i paid 30€ for it and with iron sights was ok,pretty precise.
 
Weihrauch HW77K back in 1987. Sold it around 7 years later and always regretted it. Now have a new version and a 98 - the 77 is just as I remember - the new shape stock feels really nice though.
 
A very interesting thread indeed. If percentages were applied nationwide, BSA and Weihrauch sold a lot of air rifles.

My first airgun in the 1960s was a tin plate Diana. Doctramp has already posted a picture of an identical model, a Model 15. Mine wouldn't push a pellet out of the barrel, but it made a nice crack, cocking it and firing it as an eight year old.

I progressed to a pop out gat gun. Then as a young teenager, a Webley Senior pistol.
I swapped the Senior for a Relum Tornado. That is when I really made inroads on the local Starling and Jackdaw population.

The start of a long, and sometimes interesting story, which is still being written.
 
As a very young lad, we had a .177 Telly (Jelly) air rifle that I ruined by firing it a thousand times without a pellet in it ! When I eventually swapped it for a Harrington Gat pistol, the lad shot it and nothing came out, so the pellet had to be ramrodded with a knitting needle up to the muzzle end before it would leave the barrel ! My first purchase was a .22 BSA Super-Meteor fitted with a rubber butt pad. I think it cost about £16.00. It was from the local Sports shop that had a line of Airguns to choose from, all BSA models. It came in a box, with a metal target holder, paper targets, a small plastic tube of BSA Pylarm pellets (Approx. 50) and a lube. I knew nothing of fps and m/v and thought all airguns were the same power. I remember going out early one morning and putting a hand carved decoy out on some stubble and shooting 6 Woodpigeon. I bet the rifle was only doing 6 -7 ft/lbs, but it managed to bowl those woodies over !
 
Mine was a Webley Eclipse in 1988, still have it and use it a few times a year. It was purchased when they were first manafactured so had to wait a few months after paying the deposit to actually get it, which was not ideal as a teenager wanting to do nothing else but go shooting.
 
ASI Sniper (.22) from "Mark's Sports Shop" in Watford - this was 1985 i think and cost about £40 - accurate little gun 👍🏻
 
HW77K .177 in the mid ‘80s. Saved my school lunch money and birthday/Christmas money for ages then cycled to Veals in Bristol to buy it.

Picked one up again in a gun shop recently, I have no idea how I managed to hold it steady as a teenager - I was a proper streak of pi55 back then 🤣🤣

Don’t know what happened to the ‘77 but I’ve recently rekindled my air gun interest with a 1989 HW80 - one I always wanted after reading John Darling articles and books back in the day.
 
I recently came back to air gun sport after resurrecting my 28yr old BSA lightning fitted with a 3-9x40 deerhunter scope. My how the world of air guns has progressed?
 
1979 and the Webley Vulcan was launched and a .22 specimen purchased from my Nans Freemans catalogue complete with slip/ pellets/ targets /oil and booklet delivered to the door for something like £2.10 a week for six months if memory serves🤔

Great fun full power shenanigans ensued
 
Right Cant said:
Hw77 1986, still got it 👍
Click to expand...
It's like losing your virginity you never forget your first one!
Actually first was a 2nd hand shop Milbro Diana series 70 model 79 deluxe cheekpiece & a recoil pad ☺️
I absolutely loved it & still have it, really was an outrageously accurate gun but I also had young eyes, I remember asking venom to venomise it which they politely refused as an uncommon venture, I was still at school I only had a hand full of 22 pellets so I would dog them out of wood or a. old newspaper the chew them into a ball & repeat until I swallowed one by accident, then told my mum who made me go hospital where the doctor gave me a good telling off for chewing the pellets & how dangerous it wasI also got a good clip around the ear hole from my dad.
AHH they were the days silly as a-holes.
 
Mind was a Webley Tempest .Lent it to my elder brother who lost the bloody thing ! I found a boxed mint condition Tempest late last year ,its a keeper for sure.
 
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