The Official Guinness World Record Air Gun Longest Target Shot Has Been Set!

[UpNorthAirGunner]

It is time for me to finally let the cat out of the bag! It took me almost a year to plan this shot and another 8 months for Guinness World Records to scrutinize my application, but I can now say that my long range shooting efforts are now officially in the record books as the Guinness World Record Longest Air Rifle Shot! Watch here:



Drum roll please….. Wait for it….. 150 yards is now officially the Guinness World Records Longest Air Rifle shot. When I say it out loud – I have to chuckle a bit after spending an entire year shooting golf balls at 300+ yards over and over and over again. 150 yards for the Official Guinness World Record – really?

But there is a story behind this shot so here it goes…. The conditions under which I was required to attempt this shot were stringent and I will tell you this…. I earned all 150 of those yards and if you want a Master Class on micro spectrum / small caliber long range shooting ballistics – let's chat.

I had to forget everything I had learned lobbing pounds and pounds of big bore airgun lead hundreds of yards with high BC projectiles over the last few years. I had to go back to school and re-learn and un-learn quite a few things when it comes to long range airgunning.

Big bore airguns are a totally different beast as compared to .177 at long ranges and I had to go back to the drawing board and re-learn how to effectively shoot and control projectiles that were about the size and weight of the .177 BBs I grew up shooting in my backyard at tin cans at 10 yards with my Crosman Pumpmaster.

A little back story to how this all started…. After the AirGunDepot.comLong Ranger Challenge, I wanted to find out if there was an official Guinness World Record for long range airgun shooting.

Well there is and they approved my application, but they didn't approve my 600 yard AirgunDepot.com Long Ranger golf ball shot or any of my other shots attempted with my big bore airgun. More on that later.

First off, my self made YouTube videos for the Long Ranger Challenge didn't cut it. Guinness required that I have a nationally recognized shooting organization judge this attempt and I could have no personal or professional connection to the judges.

So after quite a bit of Googling and searching for airgun specific shooting associations, I approached Chris Martin from the Southern Michigan Gun Club (SMGC) with this crazy idea. I told him that this all started after I won the AirGunDepot.com Long Ranger Challenge last year and he was fully onboard from the get go! A HUGE thank you to the board of directors of the SMGC for hosting this Guinness World Record attempt.

Chris was the match director of previous American Airgun Field Target (AAFTA) shooting competitions so he was about as legit as it gets for an airgun competition judge. When I got Chris to agree to be a judge he also got his buddy John Ayers to participate as a judge as well. John was also an official judge for the United States Air Rifle Benchrest Association. Conveniently, they were both members of the SMGC and in recent years had launched an effort to build one of the best airgun specific shooting ranges in the United States and they were just a few hours down the road from me in Mattawan, Michigan!

I went into this thinking it was going to be a very simple shot after I learned from Guinness that the baseline World Record was only 100 meters. I actually laughed when I first heard that as 100 meters was roughly the distance I zeroed my rifle at for long range airgun shooting for shots over 300 yards.

But then they gave me the full list of all the parameters I had to follow. The biggest hurdle for me was that I had to give up my dream of shooting over 1000 yards with my big bore airgun for this record attempt. They made me not only use a .177 caliber pea shooter, but one of the smallest and lightest pellets available for that caliber. They made me use a pellet that is basically only good for a 10 meter pistol shooting competition. Ughhh!

Furthermore – I couldn't use any magnified optics (no scope) and I couldn't use any wind measuring instruments or visual wind indicators during the shot attempt. DOUBLE UGHHH!!!! The target size was only 6.25 inches so that was at least an easy target to hit. I had my head in ballistics calculators for quite a long time and I knew that these parameters they were setting was basically putting me at the total polar opposite end of the ballistics spectrum that I had been accustomed to with my previous long range airgun shooting attempts – larger caliber and much higher ballistic coefficient projectiles was my comfort zone – this small caliber stuff – not so much.

I had proven the long range capability of my AirForce Texan big bore airgun with my 600 yard golf ball shot and 1250 yard gong target shot, but having to shoot open sights with a .177 pellet with a horrible ballistic coefficient was harder than any of the other long range shots I had attempted. For you ballistic geeks like me out there reading this you will get a kick out of this analogy…. This was basically like taking a free throw from a regulation basketball free throw line with a cotton ball in the wind!

Shooting at a 6.25 inch target, the pellet Guinness World Records made me use has an approximate ballistic coefficient (BC) of 0.014 which basically means that at the final 150 yard Guinness World Record distance, the pellet was dropping out of the sky with over 12 feet of drop. Furthermore, with a straight right to left slight wind at a mild 3 MPH – I had to hold for wind by almost 3 feet!

When we first starting shooting that morning it was dead still and super HUMID! The smallest swirling and inconsistent wind picked up just enough where it made any further attempts just stupid to try after 150 yards. Part of the requirements of this shot was that I couldn't use any kind of wind indicator markers on the range. It was all hairs on the back of my neck guestimation for windage.

So in the end, I was able to successfully hit the 6.25 inch target at 110, 130, and 150 yards. The vertical stringing with such a light pellet from an unregulated airgun was pretty bad and even the slightest wind was pushing the pellet by feet – not inches.

So there it is airgunners – the bar has been set. Records are made to be broken and you are just plain stupid if you think I am done. So before you go trolling this post about the 250 yard shots you have made with your airgun – use this post as an opportunity to go do your homework and take a deep dive into your Chairgun Ballistics software or other shooting software of your choice to learn about the environmental effects on projectiles and more specifically – very tiny ones with horrible ballistic coefficients.

If you think I am going to stop at 150 yards – you haven't been paying attention to how addicted I am to pushing things as far as I can. I learned a lot from this shot – some of that I will share, some of it I will not. I will tell you this – unregulated rifles with bell shaped velocity shot curves aren't the greatest when shooting such a small pellet at long distances. That is all I will say for now, but there has been a lot more R&D after I completed this shot.

*(&^ – the red tape I had to cut through before I pulled the trigger once was harder than the shot itself – HA! Remember – Guinness World Records will only recognize open sights (no scope) and you can only use a .5 grams or less .177 pellet. So go take your shot at this World Record in a monitored and judged setting with nationally recognized judges, impartial witnesses, and a licensed land surveyor to measure the distance to your target and elevation / grade of the shooting range (note in these photos that I had to shoot from an elevated utility trailer to get the required maximum 1:1000 elevation "flat-ness" from shooting location to target. The no wind indicators and NO magnified scope part of this was a fun wrinkle in all of this let me tell ya. UGHHH!

[ranchibi]

Chris, congratulations on such an incredible journey! LOL..I can only imagine the look on your face as you read the parameters...and what you said! Talk about “lobbing” a pellet..my goodness...you were right, it was like a free throw with a cotton ball in the wind outdoors! Hope you are successful in stretching that distance! Good luck.

[Piranhaboy]

Congrats!

[Back_Roads]

 At least they didn't make you use a low powered SSP like they use in 10m competition, Nice shooting !

[A.K.A. Tommy Boy]

Wow........Congratulations.....Chris !     



Best Wishes - Tom

[Seanh]

What?  You're allowed to shoot from a bench, not prone with a sling?...CHEATER...lol. In all honesty, amazing shooting...congratulations on the great accomplishment

out of curiosity, why not put the front sight out at the end of the barrel for the longer sight radius?

[dk1677]

Congrats Chris!

[robertr]

 Congrats and excellent shooting.

[Wayne52]

Big congrats to you Chris, I had already watched this video but I just watched it again here, I always find out about your video's through my subscription.  I couldn't believe all the hurdles you had to do it but you got it bigtime.

[cobalt327]

Excellent job. Chris- congratulations! I can only imagine the difficulty at that distance. I can hit a similar sized target at 65.8 yards (longest so far)shooting a modified Daisy BB gun offhand, but it took a lot of practice to be able to do it even 25% of the time. But 150 yards? No comparison- just unreal!!

[Pandur_HR]

Congratulation.

Great shooting.

[rsterne]

Congratulations on getting Guinness on board.... My Dad broke the record for the most race wins held by Stirling Moss, but Guinness said they would not recognize it because he was not a Professional driver....  …. The record was later awarded to Richard Petty....

Guinness make up their own rules, often because they can't be bothered looking at all the submissions they get.... so they set the bar so high with restrictions 99% of the people can't be bothered.... Glad you beat them at their own game.... 

Bob

[bantam5s]

Way to go, a big congrats on the world record.

I'm in there somewhere for a WW my school set back in 4th grade ( at least they told us we made it  )
But this is a real accomplishment.

I'm an iron sight guy all the way, but then I'm just a backyard plinker who wouldn't dream of such a shot.