Benjamin Rogue Bullshit detector ringing!
Does anyone here have a Rogue? Please don’t be bashful, I’m not trying to belittle anyone or call them out for anything. I just want to get some actual information from someone who bought a Rogue retail and hopefully can shoot worth a damn!
As far as I can tell, Crosman (via Chip) has backed off on initial performance claims (though in a mealy mouthed way) and are now all about versatility.
Crosman appears (to me) to have delighted in all the pre-release hype on the airgun forums but is now claiming the lack of any positive reports via airgun forums to be because they market the gun to PB guys.
There are claims that hundreds of guns have been sold and yet the buyers are strangely silent. Oh yeah, the PB guys that bought this gun would never think to ask airgunners about all that airgun stuff like tanks, fills per tank, where to get fills, best prices, best gear etc… no they get all that info from Crosman… a company with one big bore to it’s credit. Right.
I was a defender of Crosman when they announced the Rogue and still appreciate the guts to move into a new market with new technology. In fact, I’d be proud of a company that did that and failed on the first attempt! Taking a risk and losing reveals a far stronger character and work ethic than playing it safe and having mediocre success.
But now, I smell BS and I hate that! I’m not saying that new tech is suddenly bad or even that the Rogue is a bad gun, I’m saying that Crosman appears to have let bogus initial claims stand despite knowing the actual product didn’t deliver per hype. The so called “actual” performance is not well defined but doesn’t appear all that bad (energy numbers only), but it’s not close to original hype.
Way back when, it was claimed that the gun would get 20 shots at 150 FPE and 4 shots at 250 FPE. Yeah, now the gun gets 21 shots at 133 FPE (not badf at all) and 3 shots at 195 FPE. The 21 at 133 doesn’t fall that far short but 3 at 195 is a damn far cry from 4 at 250! The latest explanation from Chip (Crosman’s rep) is not satisfactory. He claims that the initial claims were based on different weight bullets. Right, a gun that shoots 175gr bullets at 250 for 4 shots can only manage 195 with 170gr bullets for 3 shots… I might have been born on a rainy night but it wasn’t last night! Shit, I’ve got more big bores downstairs than Crosman has even seriously considered but they are going to tell me (and you) what’s what?
I’m also curious about Crosman’s claim via Chip that this gun is intended to bring hunters to airguns vice airgunners to hunting. Sounds like a BS strategy to me. You can’t get a airgunner to like the gun but maybe a guy who knows no better will? Let me get this straight, sell a gun that needs air tanks and fittings and fill sources etc to a PB guy and ignore the guys that already have all the gear to support the gun? Yeah, ignore the guys that already have all the gear and are used to the hassles that airguns bring but focus on PB guys that can buy super consistent ammo from big guys or custom reloaders? Got it. It’s a good thing the Rogue only costs double what a match grade varmint rifle with a tax stamp for a silencer would cost!
OK, maybe I’m totally f’d up here, it’s happened before! So, does anyone have a link to a PB site where the Rogue is reviewed by an actual customer? Has anyone in Crosman’s self declared target market actually posted any results? Really, after hundreds of sales to these hunters that routinely post on topics like head space measurements, best powder loads, best powder types, effects of temperature on powders, bullet designs, and every other esoteric thing you can imagine about shooting, shouldn’t there be a few easily found reviews?
BTW, I did notice that Jim (echochap) has a wonderful specimen that his buddy can shoot little groups with off-hand. Yeah, my BS detector has not been silenced! This is where I gather some hate mail… Jim has a habit of going quiet on guns that suck. He also has a habit of ignoring great guns that don’t pay his way. If he ever manages to “find the time” to gather actual numbers on the Rogue, they will probably be reported accurately. However, if the numbers and accuracy are crap, I doubt we’ll ever know that he found the time…
So, I’m looking for retail customers that Crosman was unaware of to relay actual results! Has anyone besides the Crosman team shot anything with a Rogue?
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I know of a chubby fingered fat boy that could split the threads….. 😉
here is a pic I got of him one day wile we were out fishing, I think this was taken at third lunch
Pity all this good discussion on the Wolverine is under the Rogue BS banner! Daystate makes high quality guns and deserves their own thread even if the gun isn’t our or my cup of tea!
I’m kinda guessing that Syn is right. The .303 is a growth of the pellet gun into .25 super magum (as far as the traditional lines go) and not a full entry into long range or true high power big bores.
Not passing a value judgement here but I think it’s going to be a great gun that just doesn’t fit my interests at all.
RC is right, long range (as in just starting at 100 yards) requires bullets with higher BC and sectional density than pellets can deliver. Pellets hit a wall of air and drop like flies, worse, unless you’re retired and can wait on windless days to do your shooting, you’ll find that pellets with their loe BC drift in the wind like confetti.
Yeah, guys like Harry can judge mild winds and use their formidable skills to shoot some amazing groups with pellets (good ones at least). BUT, mere mortals can’t duplicate the results very often because they can’t wait on perfect days or shoot a zillion shots to dope wind to the nth degree. Some of these guys want to actually hunt and that means shot 1 has to count…not the third group of the windless day.
High BC bullets start off slower but end up flatter at long range and don’t drift near as much as pellets. So, if you want to target shoot and can’t pick only perfect days, or you want to hunt and don’t get to pick the wind or range, you probably ought to be shooting a high BC bullet like the LBT or Surefire! Yup, shameless plug but maybe there’s another high BC bullet/slug out there for the airgunner?
Butcher,
I wish I could sell the custom .32 Barnes slugs on the open market (or even all the designs in addition to the Raptor for bigger calibers). It’s freaking amazing how important the projectile is for accuracy!
I find it remarkable that guys will spend a big chunk of change to tune an expensive gun or buy a super expensive gun and then decide it ought to be a long range hunter or target shooting champion with cheap ass ammo! Right, and my hot rod will turn 10s on regular mixed with some off-road diesel to keep the price down 🙄
personally I am betting they are using a standard .30 bore, likely a Lothar Walther to compliment the JSB .30 pellets
they are simply using typically bassackwards Birtish verbage
thing is there is no way to be certain as Daystate does think outside the box…remember their .223 bored rifles which I recall were supposed to be slug guns
on another point its too early to say whether the Daystate valve wouldn’t be able to push heavier slugs
after all guys a few of us have QB .308s using modded valves that push round balls in the high 800FPS range
ditto on .308 Discovery builds and mind you the valve diameter is quite a bit smaller in either a QB or Discovery than the 1.25″ diameter Daystate valve, assuming they stay with their standard valve size on all this
47 grains makes more sense than 40 for a 30 cal projectile, I surfed into some bad info apparently… 😕
I think they are trying to expand the current, 17, 20, 22, 25 caliber pellet line to include a 30 caliber. I have way more faith in JSB than I have in Nosler in producing quality projectiles for an air gun.
Am I correct in thinking that a “.303” barrel shooting .311 slugs would be well suited to shooting “.32” projectiles (which are FAR more readily available in a wide range of weights in cast lead than the .308)?
If so….Daystate made a logical choice……I’ve always felt .32 projectiles in airguns was a no-brainer as opposed to the jacketed, rifle-only caliber of .308 as there is a lot of lightweight .32 out there commonly available in .311-312
Scratch that….if they are going with 47grain pellets@100fpe, it would appear that this rifle shooting regular .32boolits wouldn’t have enough power to utilize them.
I have great respect for Harry in OZ but I used to notice that he would measure 4 out of 5 shots in his long range groups routinely and chalk it up to the design problems with Diablo pellets.
When I started shooting long range with the pellets guns I noticed big problems in gettings those pellets to the target in any semblence of a group. Harry and I exchanged a few posts on this and I have to agree with his observations on the Diablo design.
When I got my 25 LBT project debugged by casterating the choke on that barrel, all that changed. And I could actually see the true and straight flight line of the LBT’s streaking to the target.
And they were doing it at a much reduced arc than what pellets of the same velocity were doing it.
Granted this is a mute point for most air rifle shooters, but if your trying to push a lead projectile thru a pigs skull it becomes all important.
Sectional density is all important for penetration, whether thru bone or a angled chest shot. Sectional density is simply stated, the force of momentum that keep a slug moving thru media, the higher the number the greater the penetration.
Hollow based pellets of large caliber do not have good sectional density.
It is also why the 22 lr is such a good killer, it penetrates well, because it is a solid core of lead.
Now you combine that solid core with weight as in Jerry’s slugs or the LBT bullets, and a large frontal area like both, and you will out perform any pellet of any caliber on both penetration and striking power, but the long range energy retention difference becomes huge in favor of the Surefire and the LBT.
For that reason, altho the Daystate will be a superbly built rifle, I will stick to my 25 LBT.
Regards,
Roachcreek
I’m with you RC. Going to 100 FPE and beyond, I’d much rather be shooting a custom slug or bullet than shooting an upsized pellet. That said, I’ll bet Daystate has hit their design goals dead on and will deliver an accurate rifle that does exactly what they advertise.
The video makes it clear the primary market for the .303 is the US. The first three production lots are all coming here before they even start building smaller caliber UK compliant (non-FAC) guns.
I doubt a 100 FPE gun is going to use .311-2 slugs or be designed from scratch to use PB dimensioned grooves. Don’t know, of course, but I think Daystate is a bit brighter than that.
Tiny, little experience here but… the feedback I have is that DAQ .308 barrels like bullets at .310 or .309 but not .308. The other .308 customer’s guns seem to prefer .308. I’m speculating a bit but I think the DAQs like the bigger slugs because of the lede he cuts. It might be too loose and a snugger fit allows more consistent feeding during the shot cycle. He swears his .308s are exactly .308 but guys going out and actually shooting swear by the bigger slugs. None of the other high dollar or not guns we service with ammo require slugs above full bore size to shoot their best accuracy…
Anyhow, I suspect Daystate might have picked this caliber expressly to discorage loading cast slugs or experimental ammo as the gun is probably built to very clear requirements and isn’t designed for simple hotrodding and heavier slugs. I’ll bet they built a gun that fires a full magazine at a tight velocity spread and very accurately. They probably don’t want to read about 76gr .308’s that don’t shoot a flat velocity curve and aren’t accurate out of this expensive gun!
Just my guess…
In the video they said it was a big pellet of 47 grains giving just over 100 FPE, so it might not work wtih cast bullets unless lead work is done on the barrel. Might also be why they went for the 303 to sell a priority pellet.
As long as it took them to get it going, I don’t feel so bad about taking a few months to get my 25 LBT up and going. And of course a lot less money, as it turned out a couple of molds and a used 18 inch barrel that I chopped to 17 inches for the same power that the 303 gets.
Given a 47 grain 30 caliber pellet or a 25 caliber 57 grain bullet at the same FPE, I would opt for the better Sectional density and BC of the 25 with either the Jerry slugs or my own LBT.
But then I am a long range shooter.
So my take on this is you guys or most of you already own as good or better rifles than the Daystate Wolverine, you just have them in single shots and shoot Jerry surefire slugs, they’re called Condors.
I will take a good bullet shooter air rifle over a Diablo designed large bore pellet gun any time for the longer ranges, diablo pellets have a built in flaw in my opinion tht gives them that notorious corkscrew flight.
Regards,
Roachcreek
Yes, i did. Over on the yellow forum, a guy posted that same video and that was my response. “Kudos to them for doing it right by testing it for 6 years before you release it”. Everybody needs to take the same notes. I mean, after all, the Europeans kinda know what they are doing when it comes to airguns. We should be following suit.
Me personally though, i would want to shoot that gun just the way it is, .303″ and 47 gr PELLETS and all. I bet that valve wouldn’t handle heavy slugs very well and since its made to shoot JSB 30 cal PELLETS, the barrel is probably choked. 47 grs at 1000 FPS sounds damn good to me.
nothing odd about .303 if your primary market is the UK, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia ect…
further it’s not as though there are not molds for lighter projectiles in the .303 ranges if you do some looking
after all the ComBlok “7.62” is closer to .303 than it is to .30
probably a matter of sizing them if the bore is a true .303
land to land Russian bores run .300 versus .311 on the grooves and .312 projectile diameter
Broomhandle projectiles are .309
.303 Britsih projectiles run .311
so as one can see depending on the actual bore and in-lead stats there is going to be no difficulty in true .303 slugs for it
one point, it may be a true .308
consider the .303 Savage uses .308 to .312 diameter projectiles depending who made the ammo and that was in a nominal .309 bore in the 99′
anyways if it is a true .303 I might start with soft cast 88 to 100 grain broomhandle slug sized to .311 or less depending on actual bore demensions
Well, they said in the video that they made a few barrels for the prototypes but the production barrels come from Walther in Germany. Noting on the exact land and groove or if they used the US or old European naming convention.
Just to not stray to far off thread… Did anyone else note that Daystate spent 6 years developing this gun and the guy pointed out that you have to get it right BEFORE you put them in customer’s hands?
47gr pellet…
I’m wondering the same thing about the caliber too. 303 is a bit ‘odd’. I suspect it’s a tribute to the Lee-Enfield.
I think they are hand making their own barrels or something like that. 😕
Did I mention 303 is a bit odd? 😀
edit* Looks like JSB is coming out with a 40 grain 30 caliber pellet… 😯
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Is that Wok having a Hoot ball sandwich? 😆