Hello,
I'm new to the forum and would love to have some feedback re: issues surrounding my Gamo Hornet/Swarm....namely those frustrating scopes. My past with airguns has always been with open sights. So, now I find myself trying to understand these Gamo supplied scopes. One day I'm dialed in and the next time shooting (in my garage) it's like a different gun, and I'm re-dialing it in. Since I mainly use them for rat patrol, I need to be spot on or it's a waste. Initially, after I bought them both I had them both dialed in using my garage target and all went well, I couldn't miss a rat. Now suddenly I'm missing not by a little but by a lot. I ran an experiment in my garage and the results were totally unexpected. I have targets set up at about 15 ft. This is okay for now since my sniping position for the rats is about the same distance. So I dialed both my Gamo's in again, a never ending battle, and then set up a small empty yogurt container with a small target drawn on the side. This was set on the floor approx. 15 ft. away. My angle of shooting was downward at 35-45 deg. with about 5 ft. of elevation to my head position. To my utter amazement, every shot was 5-6 inches high. Now, this was totally unexpected since I know I'm not that bad a shot at that distance. So, I redialed in both scopes for bullseye's for the downward firing targets. Then I went back and shot at my usual straight on targets. Now the guns were both hitting the targets 5-6 inches or more below my aiming point. I've read many comments about the Gamo scopes being bad but was hesitant since I was new to using a scope. But because the distances are so close I have no other explanation for these results, especially since I was doing just fine when I first started using them and had them sighed in on my usual garage targets and found I couldn't miss a rat (shooting downward from 6-7 ft.).
I'm looking to upgrade one of the scope's soon and prove my theory but would I'd love to hear from others. I'm starting to feel like the the 9th inning closer who can't throw a strike to save his life.