If you are a prospective gun owner, you want to know exactly what your gun can do. And, that’s the same expectation with pellet guns. What can you kill with a pellet gun?
There are lots of animals and pests you can kill with a pellet gun. These include small-sized game like squirrels, rabbits, birds, and co. You can also kill medium and big game such as wild hogs and deer. Keep in mind that high levels of accuracy are required to get positive results.
Pellet guns that can kill the aforementioned animals are nowadays common in the market. Whether you need a low-powered pellet gun or a high-powered one depends on your mission in the field. In this article, let’s talk about what you can kill with a pellet gun in detail.
What Can You Kill with a Pellet Gun?
A pellet gun can give you a huge return of kills. You can effortlessly down pesky pests in your backyard including squirrels, rabbits, possums, mice, birds, ravens, snakes, lizards, and many more.
, which comes with amazing features. It takes pests with a blast thanks to the 1170 fps velocity, 2, 10-round magazines among other things.
However, if you need to down medium and large-sized game, your pellet gun must carry plenty of power in it. With the right high-powered pellet gun, it’s hard to miss on fox, bushbucks, deer, wild hogs, and others in this category.
And here, an airgun such as the Benjamin Bulldog .357 PCP will do a great job. This airgun can send pellets at an awesome speed of up to 910 fps and generating a whopping 200ft./lbs. of muzzle energy.
In that regard, it’s important to know what you want to kill before choosing a given pellet gun for the job. Not any air gun can kill any animal. In fact, most pellet guns are targeted for use on smaller-sized animals like squirrels.
Your skill as a gunshot determines what you are able to kill within what distance. You want to make sure that you mark your target well and on point, give it an accurate shot for a perfect takedown.
Always you want to pull the trigger when it matters and within the correct distance. Remember most pellet guns will give better results at shorter ranges of 50-150 yards.
Can a Pellet Gun Kill a Coyote?
A coyote problem can be a really nauseating experience, especially if you live in the countryside. Coyotes can be effectively classified as large animals.
So, would a pellet gun kill a coyote? A pellet gun will kill a coyote if the gun is of the right size and the shooter demonstrates great marksmanship skills.
Your accuracy should be on point. Also, you will need to be as close to the target as possible to have any chance of taking down the tricky coyote.
A powerful airgun like this Winchester Big Bore 70-35 PCP is perfect for your mission. It displays great qualities including fast speeds, easy magazine loading for quick follow-up, and more.
If you will a coyote, you must be a stealth shooter. The animal is one instinctive fellow that will try to sense any possibilities of danger around it.
Can a .177 Pellet Gun Kill a Groundhog?
It all depends on your marksmanship skills, especially patience and accuracy. A standard .177 pellet gun can get the job done if you place the shot exactly in the right spot.
If not, you will not stand a tad chance of taking down a groundhog even though it’s slower than a rabbit and squirrel.
Yet, you need to have some good heavy hunting pellets – whether hollow point or pointed – they need to have enough weight to impound and leave a great impact shock. You could use these Crosman Premier Lead pellets that offer higher grain weight and hollow-point design.
Lighter pellets cannot do anything significant and you will only be left disappointed as the pest darts back into its hole to plan for more destruction on your farm.
Another aspect to pay close attention to is the distance of shooting. It’s extremely vital to get as close as possible, just keep in mind this a .177 airgun.
If these conditions are followed to the latter, you will definitely kill a groundhog.
For better, quicker results, however, finding a higher caliber pellet gun would be of great help. A .22 or .25 pellet gun would blast a groundhog for a clean kill.
How Fast Does a Pellet Gun Shoot?
While speed is not a measure of the killing power of a pellet gun, it’s a very important aspect of airgun ballistics. How fast a pellet travel determines its power and pellet stability.
Experienced shooters recommend average velocities of 800-900 ft./sec. to achieve the desired balance of pellet power and stability.
Notably, different airguns come with different velocities. So, you cannot just give a blanket figure to stand for all pellet guns.
Some pellet guns – the lower-powered versions like .177 caliber offer the fastest velocities. You can have firing pellets up to speeds of 1600 fps. Some .22, .25, .45, and even .50 can shoot pellets up to 800 fps.
The fastest pellet gun is Gamo Magnum offering pellet velocities of 1650 fps in .177 caliber and 1300 fps in .22 caliber. This is definitely an impressive speed but it’s hard to reach this kind of speed due to the effect of wind, elevation, temperature among other things.
The higher the speed of an airgun, the lesser its accuracy becomes. This is due to the typical lightweight alloy pellets used.
Unless you just want to show off the speed of your pellet gun, the highest fps is not the best bet on the quality of an air rifle. The speed also doesn’t reflect what a pellet gun can do in terms of gathering a kill.
Will a Pellet Gun Stop an Intruder?
A pellet gun should not be used as a weapon to stop an intruder. Pellet guns do not come with the power and effectiveness of a real firearm to cause serious injuries or even fatality.
If an intruder doesn’t have any sense of respect for guns, you will be forced to shoot them under normal circumstances. At this point, you notice an airgun will be outright useless.
Giving your attacker a shot from a pellet gun can only infuriate them and make them more aggressive. Unless you are ready to unload your airgun and use it as a club to knock or hit the intruder, it should never be used as a primary weapon.
Even the most powerful pellet gun on the market might still not be enough to stop an attacker. Therefore, you don’t want to risk trusting a gun that won’t help.
If you are thinking about home protection and self-defense weapons, consider buying some real guns – there are plenty on the market. All you need is a license from your local security authority and you will own one for use in such situations.
What Happens If You Get Shot with a Pellet Gun?
Sometimes accidents with pellet guns have occurred. While many pellet gunshots do not result in serious injuries, there have been reports of fatalities.
If you are shot with a pellet gun on soft tissues, you can get injured due to the tissue rapture. A shot in the eye will punch the eye socket and cause bleeding.
The same happens when a shot hits any part of your skin – be it on the chest, arm, butt, and so on. If continuous bleeding occurs, it could lead to excessive blood loss, which is dangerous if not attended to in the hospital.
Final Thoughts: What Can You Kill with a pellet gun?
You can kill quite a number of animals with a pellet gun. From small-sized pests like mice, squirrels, and rabbits to medium and large-sized ones like a possum, groundhog, fox, deer, bushbuck, etc., pellet guns carry the potential.
Note that pellet guns come in varied sizes. There are those designed to shoot small animals and those meant for big game.
Being able to kill an animal, however, depends on the skills of the gunshot rather than the quality of the pellet gun alone.
