
   Ever wonder how to increase the damage potential of your .177 caliber
pellet gun? I recently discovered a few tips:


   1) Shotgun load. Both this and the item below work only in pneumatic air
      guns (pump). Start by loading a pellet, and closing the bolt. Now re-
      open the bolt and put in a BB, and close. You will have to push a bit
      to get it to close all the way. Re-open and add another BB, up to 5.
      Now you have 1 pellet and 5 BBs in the gun. Pump it up a good 10-12
      times. This will make a 5 or 6" spread at 25 feet away. Pretty im-
      pressive.


   2) Backwards hollow-point. Dum-dum pellets can be purchased, but they're
      hard to find. Instead, try a regular pellet, but load it backwards.
      This takes a technique in most guns, and you'll have to figure it out
      for yours, but once you do, it's simple. The damage is impressive. It
      keeps the .177 entry hole, but the exit wound looks like a .25 or even
      .32 was used. Even in a test I conducted with a beef stick, the exit
      wound was huge, and one pellet even fragmented inside. In a soaked book
      penetration test, the pellet performed fairly well, getting through
      the equivilant of about 1/2 to 3/4" of "skin".


Both of these are pretty safe, and in both cases, you lose VERY little accu-
racy for the improved damage factor. Also note in the shotgun load, the space
between the BBs acts as dead air space, and silences the shot. A shotgun load
pumped 10-20 times sounds like a BB pumped ONCE. Handy...

--hack
