Why do I occasionally wax so eloquent about airguns? They simply offer the best opportunity I know of to keep your shooting proficiency up to hunting and target-shooting standards. And without noise or recoil, the whole family can enjoy the shooting sports along with you. Well, hold on to your hat, GAMO just raised the fun level with the introduction of a fascinating air shotgun.

Air shotguns have been around a long time, but from a shooter䴜s point-of-view, they䴜ve been difficult to find, expensive to buy, complicated to operate and weren䴜t easily repaired.

That䴜s all changed with the 2007 debut of the Viper Express. Made by the Spanish firm, GAMO, the largest airgun manufacturer in Europe, the Viper Express is readily available and carries a retail price of $229. Based on the simple, spring piston design, the new shotgun is utterly reliable and consistent in performance. Frankly, I was amazed how well it did perform, both with shotshells and .22-caliber pellets. GAMO really deserves our kudos for the superb engineering and esthetic design details crafted into their air shotgun.

The Viper Express has ‰¥þpresence.‰¥ÿ This is no wispy, little wand of an airgun. The Viper looks, mounts and feels like a real single-barrel shotgun. When shouldered, your eye is nicely aligned along a ventilated rib tipped off with a brass bead. The over-molded, gray synthetic stock features comfortable, raised checkering panels on the forearm and grip plus a soft, dual cheekpiece suitable for right- and left-handed shooters. GAMO‰¥ús Viper Express even sports a ventilated recoil pad, giving the stock a length-of-pull of 14". More importantly, the gun has a weight-forward balance I found conducive to a smooth swing on moving targets and a stable sight picture when taking deliberate aim.

The power plant of the Viper Express is the massive, spring piston system used in the GAMO 1000 rifle 䴊 a .177 caliber rifle moving pellets along at 1,000-1,200 fps. It䴜s a lot of power, but the effort necessary to cock the new break-open shotgun is only 30 pounds. While we䴜re on the subject of airgun power and to indicate the company䴜s versatility, GAMO just introduced the Hunter Extreme, spring piston, air rifle with a muzzle velocity of 1,600 fps.

Ammunition

The GAMO shotshell is a small, plastic cartridge, 7/8" long, holding 17-grains of hard No. 9 shot. That equates to an average shot charge of about 20 pellets. The shot charge is retained at the front by a thin, breakaway plastic wad and pushed from the rear by a soft plastic, cupped wad. Over a PACT Professional chronograph, the muzzle velocity of the shot charge averaged 560 fps. Don䴜t let the thin pellet count or the modest muzzle velocity fool you though. The Viper Express turned out to be a very lethal shotgun at surprising distances.

My first test was to shoot some patterns at 10', 20' and 30', measured from the end of the muzzle to get a feel for the shotgun. To add some realism to the exercise, I selected Champion Target䴜s VisiShot prairie dog version. The prairie dog stands 12" high and 5" in width at the target zone. In size, it could be any number of hairy critters.

At 10', all 20 pellets grouped in the 2-3/4" bull䴜s-eye. At 20', I had 8 pellets in the kill zone plus an additional 8 body hits and the total pattern spread was 5". At 30', I still had 6 pellets in the bull䴜s-eye, 7 body hits with 2 of those in the brain and a total pattern size of 8". That little 22-caliber choked barrel was really delivering the goods, and it did it quietly. Noise is not a factor with the Viper Express.