Quoted:
Quoted: They make 9mm and .50 air rifles that are effective for hunting large game.
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This sounds interesting. Got any examples?
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Some early examples of airguns packed quite a punch.
"The variety of early hunting airguns reflected the variety of hunting. One 18th century specimen in the Beeman collection is a solid .39" caliber carbine, only 40 inches long, perhaps intended for use in heavy brush or on horseback. Another, made by Hass in Neustadt, Germany about 1750, has a beautiful 33" shot barrel, about .33" caliber, which can be unscrewed and drawn out of the gun to reveal a very menacing .46" caliber barrel with seven extremely deep rifling grooves. In just moments, the owner of the gun could switch from doves to deer! One of the fine-cased English air rifles (made about 1850) in the author's collection was regularly used for deer hunting as recently as 1950. It fires a 265-grain, .44" caliber bullet!
Perhaps the most historically important American airgun of all was an air rifle carried by Captain Meriwether Lewis on the famous Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803-06. The most recent research (6) fairly conclusively indicates that this was a .31" caliber, flintlock-style, pneumatic rifle built by Isaiah Lukens in Philadelphia. It served Captain Lewis well, both for hunting and to astonish the Indians.
Certainly one of the most famous of the butt-reservoir guns was the Austrian military air rifle designed by Girandoni about 1779. Its buttstock also is a detachable air reservoir which could be quickly unscrewed when empty and replaced by a full one. Each reservoir held enough air to fire a series of 20 heavy lead balls fed from an ingenious rapid feed magazine. These formidable weapons could put out their 20 smokeless shots in a minute; it is reported that the .51" caliber (13mm) balls were deadly to 100 yards! A corps of 500 soldiers so armed had a potential firepower of 300,000 shots in a half-hour - incredible for military rifles of the late 1700's! During this same period, and for almost a century to follow, big bore airguns were extremely popular with the wealthy sportsmen of Europe. Among the ancient airguns in the Beeman collection are beautiful specimens of air carbines, about .45" caliber, apparently for boar hunting from horseback, long rifles for deer hunting, and especially beautiful English cased sets with richly engraved receivers and interchangeable rifle and shot barrels for mammals or waterfowl. The ultimate in mechanical airgun development was the fearsome air canes with their jewel-like internal locks. Evidently no well-dressed English gentleman of the late 1800's would be seen without one of these weapons-which ranged from almost .30" to .49" in caliber and had perhaps the power of a modern police revolver!"
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