UNHOLY TRINITY

Gary Wain warms his wax and cranks up the chrono for another round of pellet testing

- Gary Wain

If you’re a regular reader of my articles, you’ll remember how immensely impressed I was with the .22 version of the JSB Hades, and now, with the launch of the .177 version I can finally put it through its ballistic paces.

I can’t just look at the Hades in isolation though, I have to pit it against some potentially worthy competitors, and when I say ‘potentially worthy’, I mean that, because as with all my articles I always write the intro and technical specification before I’ve actually shot and recorded the results. The reason I do this is to remain impartial, and to assure you, the reader that the results I obtain are real-world and relevant. Or, with regards to this month’s ballistic testing, at this stage, as far as I know, and as excited as I am, the JSB Hades in .177 might prove to be utter crud.

CONTENDERS FOR THE THRONE

The first pellet in this month’s batch is the Norica Killer. The 5.8mm long Killer is the lightest pellet in this month’s test at 7.3gr. The Killer doesn’t have the classic waisted skirt design, but instead is of the type I like to call the extended cylinder. By that, I mean there’s a head and a skirt, but the two don’t actually meet – there’s a cylinder of lead separating them. Interestingly, the entirety of the interior of the pellet is hollowed out, which certainly explains the lightweight and may prove to maximise the expansion of the Killer on impact. The question is though, will this lightweight affect stability and accuracy? The head itself is shallow, with a six-point star design determining its semi-hollow-point credentials. At the other end of the cylinder, there’s a skirt so short and tight that I doubt its father would let it out of the house.

EXTREME POTENTIAL