CMP Daisy 853: Getting Serious

(See also Part I and Part II of my Daisy series. This is Part III.)

A new scope finally arrived, and soon after that a box of Daisy Avanti competition pellets, the ones recommended in the manual, so I was ready to test the rifle for real.

Mounting the scope took some time - the rails on the receivers turned out to be quite out of whack with the barrel, so it took two pairs of Burris pos-align inserts to compensate: a 20MOA pair in the front ring to adjust for windage, and another 20MOA pair in the rear ring to adjust for elevation. I have to say, I LOVE Burris Signature series!

The scope was soon set up, and I fired a few trial shots, but then I had to leave town for a vacation trip to Montana so the project had been interrupted. I actually took the gun with me but never found an opportunity to shoot it.

But today I was back and finally able to allocate half an hour to test it out. And here are the results. All the testing was done at 15 yards.

First it took me a bit to adjust. The barrel is not floated on these, so making rifle's position on the bench consistent took a little bit of time. The opening group was 0.63", and the one that followed was 0.46", and then 0.42".

After that I sort of got a hang of it and the groups continued shrinking: 0.33" was followed by 0.34...

...and then 0.22" and 0.26"

Just for kicks I pulled out my old Crossman air rifle - the first rifle of any sort that I owned - if I remember correctly, I paid $50 at Fred Myers for it - and fired it from the same position with the same pellets.

As you can see, Daisy is perfectly capable of holding 10th ring on the standard 10 meter target at 15 yards. I am not sure if extrapolating the results to 50 yards is correct, but it seems to be comparable to a decent - not competition - 22LR at this range. Next I am going to mount the peep sight on it and see how good I am.