Hello all,
I'm raising my chickens in the center of a city and as you can guess, it makes protecting my chickens from predators slightly more difficult. Since shotguns and rifles are out, I decided to grab a Daisy BB Rifle. I took it into the back yard and put it through its paces. I'm surprisingly impressed. Here is the little beauty in question.
IN GENERAL
She is a Daisy Power line 880. She cost me a little over $45. Unlike most BB guns that have a smooth bore the barrel in the 880 is rifled with puts a spin on pellets to increase accuracy. the box also says that she maxes out at 800 feet per second. That's pretty good considering that a lot of the cheaper BB guns rate a max of 350 feet per second. she has a nice grip on the pumping mechanism and since the pump arm is rather long, its easy for even my daughter to pump. Ive been pumping it up ten times per shot and using pointed pellets.
SHOOTING
When i purchased this, I decided to take advantage of the rifled barrel, so I purchased a box of pointed lead pellets. I'm a bigger guy for a Monk, so I have to admit that manually loading the pellets into the receiver was a bit of a task. I don't think I could reload it very quickly under pressure. After loading, and pumping ten times I shot my fence, some boxes, and after making dinner, I shot metal cans. This weapon is as accurate as I am. It put the holes exactly where I aimed. Shooting the cans surprised me the most. We set them up on the fence and both me and the daughter took turns missing all the cans at 25 feet. ****** off at how bad a shot we were we went to get a closer look at the cans and found to our amazement we didn't miss once. The pellets cut completely through the cans so fast that the cans never even moved. This really surprised me. I never expected a BB gun to completely cut through a vegetable can like that. I expected the BB to be stopped by the back of the can. I'm very impressed with the power. It also appears that the lead pellets are deforming after they hit the target because the exit holes are larger than the entry holes. After shooting this rifle, I no longer think of it as a toy and seriously consider it a legitimate weapon with reasonable stopping power. (For a BB gun) In my opinion with proper shot placement this rifle could easily take down a raccoon or large dog.
DRAWBACKS and ISSUES
The typical tilt them in BB feed works great but manually loading a pellet into the tiny receiver with my big fingers was a problem leading to slow reload times. My thoughts is to leave a pellet preloaded for the first shot and following up with all BB's.
Strange safety feature. At least I think its a safety feature. The way this rifle is designed, it wont pressurize by pumping until the bolt is pulled back and a BB is loaded. In other words I cant pump it up, then chamber a BB. Cambering has to come first for the unit to function. This caught me at first and for a few minutes I thought that the rifle broke. Its a quirk that could cause delays while under stress.
OVER ALL
She isn't a real firearm, but for a BB gun she has reasonable heft and a good feel to her. She is made reasonably well, is sturdy and feels well built. Over all, I am happy with the purchase and am reasonably confidant she will do the job very well.
In my opinion money well spent.
Riki
