Little about Gamo’s just-released Whisper VH is conventional. This backyard “tactical” air rifle includes a 3-9X 40 mm scope mounted in a one-piece base, a sound dampener, a laser and a white light.

The air rifles, and air shotgun, made by Gamo have expanded the performance envelope for affordability and accuracy in adult airguns. These aren’t the airguns many of us grew up using—and they aren’t just for kids anymore!

By BRYCE M. TOWSLEY, Field Editor

   Like many in my generation I have a long history with air rifles. No, I never had a Red Ryder, but I did start my love affair with things that shoot with a BB gun. My first was a hand-me-down lever-action Daisy given to me when I was probably much too young to have it. It turned out that the windows in our old barn were not acceptable targets, even though it was a “target rich environment.” When my dad found out, he was as mad as I have ever seen him—and rightly so. Among other punishments, I never saw that BB gun again.
   I replaced it a few years—and a lot of responsibility—later with another lever-action airgun that I earned by selling all-occasion cards door to door. A buddy was a couple of years older, and he actually earned a Marlin .22 rifle selling cards.

Gamo pellets include the 7.8-gr. Pro Magnum (l.) the 5.4-gr. PBA Gold and 7.7-gr. Match Diabolo (r.).

   A few years later I sold some more cards and added a pump-action air rifle to my collection. I remember camping out with my buddies and having heated arguments long into the night about which was more powerful—the pump or the lever-action. Actually, not much has changed. I still love to lie in a tent as the night grows old, watching the dying fire through the door and discussing the merits of one gun over another.
   Air rifles were simply part of growing up in our small town, just as they were in most of the rest of America. We roamed the woods with them, hunting for squirrels and any other targets of opportunity. Those air rifles taught us responsibility (hence the “lesson” from the windows.) They taught us gun safety and how to shoot. I spent many hours hitting bottle caps hanging from nails in the back shed. They were an acceptable target according to my father, and believe me, I asked first! But, more important, air rifles provided early lessons about how wild places, shooting and good buddies simply go hand in hand.
   Mine is hardly a unique story, as I’ll bet that most gun guys of a certain age started into the wonderful world of shooting the same way. In those times, before soccer moms deemed everything fun as “too dangerous”—you’ll put an eye out with that thing!—and stopped letting kids be kids, air rifles were a rite of passage for most American boys. They helped kids become young men and women.
   Today I am a 50-something gun guy who has shot just about everything that launches a projectile, and I have come full circle. I am having a ball with the modern version of the air rifle. But, make no mistake, the airguns I am shooting now are not your daddy’s air rifles! These guns are designed for adults with a bit of little boy, or girl, still in them. They are powerful enough to hunt with, accurate enough for serious target shooting and much more socially acceptable in an urban setting than firearms. They are hardly kid stuff, but are serious shooting machines designed for serious shooting.
   The two Gamo pellet rifles I have been shooting are the Whisper and the Varmint Hunter. The way I set it up, my Gamo Whisper might just be the coolest airgun on the market. It’s a “tactical” air rifle with laser sight, a mounted flashlight and a sound dampener. The flashlight and the laser were actually part of the package for the Varmint Hunter, but I thought they just had to be on the Whisper, so I switched them to that gun. It turned out that I was on the same track as the company here because later I talked with Gamo’s John Schild and he explained that it would soon introduce the thumbhole-stocked Whisper VH, shown in the opening pages of this story, with a laser and a light. It should be on dealers’ shelves by the fall. The laser and light with the mounting system are also available from Gamo and can be added to any scoped air rifle.

The Whisper’s barrel-mounted fiber-optic rear sight is finger-adjustable for windage and elevation.

    The Whisper got its name because it features a noise dampener that keeps the report of firing to a minimum. While neither air rifle is very loud when firing a pellet, there is a discernable difference between the Whisper and the Varmint Hunter, the latter of which does not have the sound dampener. Air rifles can be surprisingly loud, but both of these are much quieter than others I have in my collection. The Whisper keeps the noise level down even more, making it pleasant to the shooter and to the neighbors. It will also spook game far less.
   The Whisper has fiber-optic target-style adjustable sights with finger adjustments on the rear sight and well-defined adjustment clicks. The rear sight has two green dots, one on each side. The front fiber-optic bead is in contrasting orange and is protected by a skeletonized hood that allows light into the fiber-optic element while shielding it from damage.

continued on page 2

Airguns For Aerial Targets

   One particularly interesting airgun from Gamo is the Shadow Express, a .22-cal. smoothbore designed to shoot a special plastic shotshell filled with 20 No. 9 pellets. The Gamo website lists the muzzle velocity for this load at 750 f.p.s.
   The Shadow Express is similar to the air rifles with the same stock design. Its polymer, steel-lined barrel is 18" long and is topped with a ventilated rib. While the action is somewhat different looking than those of the .17-cal. rifles, it functions in the same way, and the trigger and safety are identical. A solid rib mounted on top of the action mates with the vent rib on the barrel to align the shooter’s eye with the target. The barrel rib is fitted with a single bead at the muzzle.
   At 10 yds., the pattern averages all 20 pellets in a 6" circle. It is dense enough that most common squirrel-size pests would sustain multiple hits. It also put multiple hits on stationary clay targets at this distance when I tested the gun. Standard clay targets would usually break, but the tougher rabbit targets would not. I found that I could break hand-thrown standard clay pigeon targets with a solid hit. The small patterns required careful shooting, but once I got the hang of it, hitting a gently lobbed bird was easy. But, to break the birds the range must be kept short. Shots past 10 yds. would often put a few pellet holes or marks on the targets, but not transfer enough energy to break them.
   The gun shoots to the left, probably due to the stock’s cheekpiece, which made it tough to get my eye directly behind the rib. A person with a thinner face might find the patterns centered better with the aiming point.
   This shotgun would be a good choice for solving pest problems with small squirrels or birds in a setting that is not well suited to a cartridge firearm. It’s also a fun gun to practice your aerial shooting skills in the backyard with complete confidence about safety and noise concerns.
—Bryce M. Towsley

A plastic shotshell with a 17-gr. charge of No. 9s loads into the breech of the Shadow Express.