TargetTalk

Ok folks, please put me out of my misery quickly, I always thought you were supposed to shoot heavy pellets for rifle and light pellets for pistol. I still have some pellets left from a whole bunch from our old friend Don Nygord. They were good pellets, much better than I deserved to be sure! Don said “here shoot these.” And I did, a whole bunch. For some reason it occurred to me that I never checked to see if they were heavy or light. They say 4.49mm on the tin but do not give the weight either in grains or grams. I don’t have a reloading scale anymore but I do have an electronic laboratory balance that works to the tenth of a gram I use for weighing violin and viola bows ( talk about stuff that costs more than target pistols!) I put ten of my pellets on the pan and divided by ten. I get .53 grams or right on the weight for heavy pellets. Have I been screwing up all these years or am I completely missing the point??

Please help the old and confused!!

Thanks,

Dwight

The Nygords we still have are all heavy...roughly 8.2 grains. We have about 2 tins left. Ours are 4.51.

Since Don himself told me that pellet weight doesn't matter, and H&N (who made Don's pellets) claim they don't package their pellets by weight, but by accuracy, I guess that leaves just me to tell you what to use.

I'll kinda just whisper, since everyone else on here knows what I'm going to say:
RWS Basic from Neal Stepp at International Shooters Supply (ISS). Phone only.

The whole "heavy for rifles, light for pistols" may harken back to the days of single stroke pneumatics, where you could get more power out of a larger rifle piston system. For PCP pistols especially, you will never know the difference in group size (if there is one).

The college pistol team I help coach shoots RWS Basics, (which are "light", 7.0 grains) because they are quite accurate AND inexpensive. We've had students shoot close to 570 with them. There are a bunch of small advantages: We still practice on paper targets, and the higher velocity with light pellets makes tidy holes. If I need to adjust the velocity on a pistol, I usually find it is much higher than spec with light pellets, and I can crank that down and save air.

An awful lot of fine tuning with pellet weight & size is an issue for air rifle, where tiny groups are critical (and achievable). The wobble of pistol shooters completely swamps out any minor accuracy differences with any decent pellet. Spend your time (and money) working on training & technique, and don't worry about finding the perfect pellet for your pistol.

Some people do find that smaller pellets are easier to load in their particular pistol. If 4.5 mm is a bit tight and you want to spend extra money for 4.49 mm, that's up to you.

So most folks with PCP pistols use heavy pellets?? HN or the like??

Thanks,

Dwight.

Sure do miss Don, such a a kind guy. He told my how he used to cut up the nice walnut plaques the NRA would send him for setting records and use them fix people’s grips! What a mensch!

May his memory be for a blessing.

Most people don't care what weight they shoot. You shouldn't either. Pick one & stick with it. You definitely don't want to change pellet weight at random. Going from 8.2 grains to 7.0 grains can produce between a 10 to 15 m/sec change in velocity, and that is enough that it will make a slight shift in impact. Depending on your pistol, it might be one click or less, so even that isn't a huge deal.

K38 sez, "So most folks with PCP pistols use heavy pellets?? HN or the like??"

Naahh!