American Airguns Blog
The Random Ramblings Of An Airgun Addict

Last Saturday I had to go back to my hometown of Goshen Indiana to attend my nephews wedding. Like me, my dad enjoys going to gun shows and there just so happened to be a gun show in the nearby smaller town of Nappanee. I have been to this show before and found it to be small but chocked full of interesting guns. There is one gentleman that is always there that has a table full of older airguns. He buys them locally and repairs them and then sells them at this show.

The last time I attended the show I bought a really nice Benjamin 317 from this gentleman and it has been a really reliable shooter. On this trip I wasn't really looking for anything but an old classic caught my eye. There was a really nice older Crosman 760 sitting in one of his gun racks. The metal work had very little wear and the wood was in good shape with the exception of some marks around the butt area. I had wanted a 760 when I was a kid but never had the chance to buy one back then. I almost bought a vintage 760 recently from an on-line auction but I was out bid in the last hour by a couple of others who drove the price up over $100. This one was priced right and I bought it.

Since I was staying with my parents over the weekend, I didn't have any of my usual pellets to test the 760 with. My dad had a box of Crosman pointed pellets so I decided to give them a try. I started at about 15 yards with a soda can and found that with just 4 pumps the can would jump and roll around. That became too easy pretty quickly so I moved the all metal sights up and pushed the can out to 30 yards and on top of a small tree stump. Bam, first shot with 8 pumps and the can went flying. So I walked out and put the can back on the stump but on its side with bottom facing me. My next shot went high so I went down to 7 pumps and the can went flying again!

I got a few more cans out and put them out to 35 and 40 yards with the bottom of the can facing me. This was a bit more difficult for the 760 since the wind was starting to kick up a bit, however with 8 or 9 pumps I could hit the cans more times than not. I decided to really test the accuracy and put an old pizza box out at 50 yards with about a 2.5" bull drawn on it. With 10 pumps in the rifle, I sat in my FT position and put five rounds down range and into about a 3-4" group. I was pleasantly surprised! The rifle wasn't shooting half bad considering the very heavy trigger pull, the less than match grade ammo, iron sights and my old eyes!

It started to rain as I finished my long range test so I gathered up my targets and put them all away save one can. I threw it out around 10 yards and loaded the 760 up with BBs. I blasted away at the can for a while and made Swiss cheese of it. This brought back the memories for me of sitting on my parents back porch with my Daisy Buffalo Bill Cody BB gun and shooting for long periods of time.

It's no wonder so many kids I knew growing up had a 760. The older guns are just wonderful to shoot. It is a shame that the newer models are all plastics and cheap looking. However, my new toy will be fun to shoot for a long time to come. I may just have to give it a try on some 10 yard minisniping targets!