Airguns at the 2017 SHOT Show – Day 4

Even though the number of new airguns at the 2017 SHOT Show is considerably less than the number of new firearms, there’s still lots of them and it’s tough to find them all!

Today, we’ll take a return trip to Air Venturi and pick-up on some more new products that we didn’t show you before…

Kral is a Turkish manufacturer that manufactures a range of breakbarrel and PCP airguns. It’s the PCPs that looked among the more interesting new airguns at the 2017 SHOT Show as they offer good looks and – says Air Venturi – good performance at attractive prices. Be prepared for $500-ish prices on the PCP models. Some may even be lower…

Here, Tyler Patner of Air Venturi shows us a Kral Puncher full-length air rifle. Our heading photograph (above) showed him holding the bullpup version.

Typler also showed me a very interesting new accessory product that Air Venturi plans to introduce in the near future. This is a spring compressor for break barrel airguns.

As you can see from the photograph above, the new Air Venturi spring compressor clamps on to the scope rails machined into the top of the compression tube. The long, screw-threaded “pusher” can then be rotated to compress the air rifles’s mainspring, enabling the gun to be dis-assembled safely.

Commercially-available spring compressors are a very rare product. Most of us – including me – have built our own from scratch in the past. So the availability of this product at “around $100” looks like it would be a great buy for many spring/piston air rifle enthusiasts who wish to undertake their own maintenance.

Now back to airguns at the 2017 SHOT Show…

Air Venturi were also displaying their “Lil Duke” starter air rifle. Although this lever action model is perhaps not the most exciting of the airguns at the 2017 SHOT Show for most HAM readers, it certainly attracted coverage from the non-specialist media. It was featured prominently on a network television report on airguns at the 2017 SHOT Show by one of the big news channels. The “John Wayne” branding is a big attraction for this, and other Air Venturi products using the Duke’s name.

Here it is below, along with a selection of somewhat higher-end air pistols…

Right opposite the Air Venturi booth, Evanix was showing a very early engineering prototype of their new bullpup air rifle. This looks interesting – as the CAD drawings previously revealed in HAM show – but it looks like this new platform won’t be ready for prime time until the 2018 SHOT Show.

We’ve already reported a couple of days ago on the slew of new airguns at the 2017 SHOT Show being shown by Umarex USA. But I missed one!

Below, we see the new Umarex Strike Point air pistol.

The Strike Point is a single-shot, multi-pump air pistol with built-in silencer. There’s a bolt action and fiber optic sights. Different numbers of pumps give different muzzle velocities, of course. Think of a grandson to the Crosman 1377 and you’ll be with the program…

Strike Point is said by Umarex to be the ideal backyard plinker. They’re claiming muzzle velocities of up to 650 FPS in .177 caliber and 520 FPS in .22 cal with alloy pellets.

Umarex were also highlighting a large new range of rifle scopes that they will be marketing under the Axeon brand name. I don’t have a full list of the different models, but there’s a whole lot of them – as you can see!

And yes, I know the last photograph today doesn’t exactly fall into the “new airguns at the 2017 SHOT Show” description, but who could fail to be interested in a 50 Cal BMG on its tripod! It’s just one of the many such sights that abound at the SHOT Show, particularly in the Law Enforcement/Military areas of the show.

There’s one more report still to come on new airguns at the 2017 SHOT Show. That will include some new Hatsan PCPs and a number of other products. Check back soon for more interesting news from Las Vegas!