The range portion of the Crosman Benjamin testing took place on Tom’s private rifl e range.
compare those penetration results with, this rudimentary exercise would seemingly be of limited value. So, I decided to run my .17 caliber, single- shot break-barrel design rifl e, built by a different manufacturer, through the same exercise. Like that of the .25 caliber Crosman, I fi rst set up the phone book at 25 feet and took my shot, followed by doing the same at 50 yards. At 50 yards, the little 7.5-grain .17 caliber pellet penetrated only 137 pages for a depth of ³⁄₁₆-inch. At the close range of 25 feet it did little better, at 223-pages and ¼ -inch of penetration. With the .17 I actually had to take three shots at the phone book at 50 yards before I was able to even hit the target book. My fi rst two shots struck the ground below, throw- ing a small cloud of dust into the air. After each shot I elevated my sighting picture until fi nally, on the third try, the
pellet made contact. I’m not exactly sure what the drop was at that range, but it was substantial when compared to the fl ight of the .25 caliber. In the case of the Crosman I found
that by sighting-in the rifl e to shoot ¾ " high at 50 yards, at 25 feet the pellet impacted at the center of the target. In other words, the pellet was still climb- ing as it approached the 50-yard mark. Obviously, no one should get the im- pression that any airgun is meant for long distance shooting, or for that mat- ter even moderate range shooting. It is imperative that a shooter recognizes and understands the inherent limitations of any rifl e. I like to categorize cartridges by their logical range capabilities. For example, I have a big bore 500 Jeffrey rifl e that I would rate as a 100-yard fi re- arm. For the 17 HMR, I would also rate it at that same range. And for those folks
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who shoot a 30-06, I would consider it to be a 250-yard cartridge. Certainly, any of those rifl es are fully capable of shooting farther than those distances. Nevertheless, when shooting beyond those points, the trajectories will rapidly begin to wane, making it imperative to know precisely the exact amount of drop that will be occurring at the exact distance you are shooting. Under fi eld conditions, that is not always an easy objective to achieve and in my opinion it should be the goal to not exceed those distances. Pellet guns are no exception. In the case of the Crosman .25 caliber Benjamin Marauder, I would clearly rate it as a 50-yard rifl e. Sure, you could possibly pull off a shot a little farther out, but if you misjudge the distance by maybe as little as 5 or 10 yards, it is likely that you will be disappointed with your shooting results. More out of curiosity than anything else, though, I decided to see what the Crosman .25 caliber trajectory would be at 100 yards. What I found added credence to my earlier statements. At 100 yards, with the ¾ " high 50-yard sighting, the pellet was down about 20 inches. What sur- prised me even more than the amount of pellet drop at that range was the fact that the three-shot group I fi red formed a nearly perfect cloverleaf pattern that measured only about an inch across. While this tends to demonstrate the accuracy potential of the Crosman, it further convinces me that it is truly only a 50-yard rifl e. SHOOTING CONSISTENCY AND ACCURACY
As the Crosman is fi red, each shot
obviously results in a reduction of the pressure inside the rifl e. At the onset, one of the concerns I had was whether a drop in the rifl e pressure would equate to a drop in the muzzle velocity and, concurrently, an increase in the trajec- tory drop of the pellet. To fi nd out if that would be the case, I set up my chrono- graph and began shooting groups off the bench at 50 yards. With each shot I recorded the velocity and at three-shot intervals I checked the pressure gauge on the rifle and wrote down those fi gures. My goal was to draw a perfor- mance comparison between the group sizes, the muzzle velocities, and the in- gun pressure levels. The resulting data can be found in the chart labeled “Cros- man Benjamin .25 Marauder” on page
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