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?
All Replies
That would be RockinBBar. Real cool guy….he was the first to kill a predator with one of my open reed calls.
However, it is only fair to mention that RockinBBar is also a Crosman Pro-Staffer.
Here is Chip’s statement…
The Benjamin Rogue .357 is going strong among the its target market: traditional gun hunters. That’s not the Yellow crowd so we here in Bloomfield are not as surprised at the lack of reviews showing up here.
Our courtesy calls to customers reveal they have no idea this forum exists and in fact learned of the gun through Outdoor Channel’s coverage of SHOT, from their predator magazine and the Predator Masters forum, our own sponsored tv shows, Outdoor Life, Field and Stream and the NRA’s top new guns of the year articles.
Production of the Rogue has been a daunting endeavor, without a doubt. And we have checked off issues as they come up. That early leaking you heard about? Done, fixed. Computer glitches? No more. The magazine not centering rounds? The new design is done on that too. The Rogue is far from “an unmitigated disaster”, it’s just the folks around these parts are not the ones buying them.
Off the shelf vs. Quality Checked: We check every gun, not just the ones that go to writers or on-air personalities. The goal of bringing traditional hunters into airgunning is that important. Any suggestion that an off-the-shelf gun from Cabela’s is different is flat wrong. Consider the fact the Rogue is available as an online-only item from Cabela’s and we drop ship them direct to the customer.
There are some false recollections about the Rogue’s performance claims so I’ll clear that up with our most current research:
Grain/Power StartPSI EndPSI FPE PSI/shot #shots
170 HIGH 3000 2600 195 173.0 3
170 MED 3000 2100 171 115.2 9
170 LOW 3000 1550 133 73.1 21
145 HIGH 3000 2700 181 122.3 3
145 MED 3000 2300 158 88.9 9
145 LOW 2700 1600 132 69.1 16
100 HIGH 3000 2400 147 110.2 6
100 MED 2600 1700 111 68.3 13
100 LOW 2200 1250 80 54.1 18
The Rogue is most at home still hunting for predators and hogs. It’s a big gun and not for a walk through the woods.
Nosler has seen such success with the Rogue they are expanding their airgun offerings to .22 and .25 caliber.
SHOT Show’s Media Day at the Range had a record number of attendees, all media representatives, and the Rogue got a lot of attention from hunting shows and periodicals. They held it. They shot it. They wanted it. And every request for a review sample will be honored because that is the goal: reach traditional hunters and bring them into airgunning. It is not to bring airgunners into hunting.
It is so full of misleading information it’s no longer even amusing..
Note the whole part about the off the shelf and magazine guns. Did the magazine guns leak like the four or so incidents posted on various forums? Why is the accuracy so poor on the off the shelf guns if they are exactly like the magazine guns?
I think Crosman is employing the ‘if you repeat a lie enough people will believe it” doctrine…
He claims this forum is the one where all the folks are getting into this rifle… http://www.predatormastersforums.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=cfrm My web search skills aren’t up to snuff enough to search for posts and their results frankly suck, Palin going Rogue is in the top three to five results…
Here is a Rogue kill at a whopping 12 yards…
http://www.predatormastersforums.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2044910
See guys, this thing is accurate!!!!!! 🙄 🙄 🙄
Here is another with a 1″ (possibly larger group) at 50 yards…
http://www.predatormastersforums.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2039940
There are more reviews by different users on the fucking Yellow forum than the very one Chip claims to be buzzing with Rogue users… In fact the same guy on the Predator forums wrote ALL the fucking posts on the rifle for the forum.
The Rogue isn’t for air gunners to get into hunting? What the fuck man, that has to be the most fucked up thing I have ever read in my life.
And get this the guy who wrote the posts has other airguns too. Even Chips own example fails to support his claims…
WHAT A LOAD OF BULLSHIT AND A HALF. 😀
Butcher,
You silly boy. We don’t need no stinking variations! You got a “breakthrough” right there!
Here’s another link to the discussion spred over several forums.
http://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php/topic,11514.40.html
BTW, has anyone here seen the Rogue discussed on any PB forums? I did some rookie level searching and found nada. I’d think a PB customer might want to tell his buddies about the new airgun that lets him hunt more often… Unless, it a POS and embarasing to even think about…
I still think the Rogue was a neat idea and that some future variant will be OK. Crosman just screwed the pooch on the implementation.
I don’t have time to read this whole thread right now. I will read it thoroughly tonight, and respond again at that time. I haven’t had time to respond to Chips’ reply to my post on the GTA, either, but plan on doing that tonight as well.
My Rogue BS detector went off a long time ago….and goes off on a regular basis (pretty much every time Chip posts something about the Rogue). It becomes more and more obvious that Chip has no real experience with bigbore airguns, and/or believes in the old saying “never over-estimate the intelligence of the general public”.
I will quickly say here, that I did some quick figuring from an old shot string on low power (one of only two I have ever done at low power), and found out that my tuned 909 also gets 18 shots at low power averaging 600fps (600fps….big whoop!). Only mine is .45caliber. (edited to correct the incorrect fpe average).
Sound impressive? Hardly! Like Chips’ claim, you haven’t seen the fps spread on it.
Here you go Mom… 😆
http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/thread/1328145474/What+happened+to+the+Benjamin+Rogue+-
About ten to fifteen posts is Chip’s “…they get answers from us…” post below his revised claims.
And.
Tof’s hands on session…
http://www.talonairgun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21371&sid=2102216150c94a2c594d94dbe4f7c837
Ladies
Please post a link so the rest of us can see what you are talking about. 😛
So it sounds to me that the Rouge and my Rigid shop vac have something in common….can you guess what? 😆
I went to Mac1 last Monday and he had one sitting in a gun vice. It was a customers and leaked. Pretty ugly gun and cheap looking.
Syn,
With the shroud and baffles on the barrel, at 50 we got roughly 5″.
At 100 though, with the shroud on, you could not get 3 or 5 shots on a full 8 1/2×11″ of target paper 😯
When we pulled the shroud and baffles off the barrel, at 100 yards you could then get all 3 or 5 shots on the paper but the groups were still atrocious. Maybe 4-5″ MAX. We saw no signs of clipping but, the shroud and baffles did affect the groups for sure…100%. The baffles were horrible in effectiveness as they were just CUPS butted up end to end. Some folks talk about being quiet………BULLSHIT! Its louder without the baffles and shroud but, you definitely get a loud FWOOOOOOOOOOMP!!! when you shoot it with the shroud on. A guy on the big bore forum did some night vision hunting with his Rogue on PIGS and at the muzzle blast, you can hear the blast echoing in the video. But he claims the gun is QUIET! YEAH, COMPARED TO A 223 PB, YES, IT IS QUIETER. But, it ain’t quiet. That’s why the neighbor showed up to tell us our BB guns were loud (even though we had the shroud off at the time, he heard ALL THE SHOTS and his house was a waaaaaays off).
UPDATE: The guys Rogue that i shot that day, FINALLY sent his Rogue back to Crosman for a REPLACEMENT. Last i heard from STEVE N LA (here on the TAG), he has since RECEIVED…..SHOT and returned the 2nd Rogue back for a full refund. SteveNLA can verify that story BTW…lol
Jerry, while your being honest, i will too then.
I believe that ALL NEW airguns lack proper testing. My Corsair was one. It’s been in and out in the PROBLEMATIC closet. Believe most issues are now resolved but again, that should not be the case for 700 bucks. It has soured me to no end and i hate that. I love guns but i don’t like continous problems. The Rogue was another one. Waiting to see how the mechanics in the Evanix Speed is gonna pan out.
New gun are great for our industry but my GOD, you fucking gotta put em through the ringer before you release them. And you can’t be truthfully testing them when the average consumer gets one and its shit right from the get go.
I simply see airguns NOW turning into a MONEY MAKING scheme rather than it being a fun hobby/sport. It’s all about spending money and who has the newest coolest gun in town. I already see it happening. I mean, look at how much new and unproven airguns cost. Evanix is a prime example as well as Crosman. They both went from 400-600 to now up to 1500-1600 bucks IN ONE GUN, just because they looked around the market and saw that Rapids, FX’s and Daystates were in the 2000 dollar range. So WOOHOO!!!!!!, lets come out with our shit and sell it for the same 1600-2000 bucks and pray the damn thing holds up while being shot. And just to fool everyone into buying our guns, we will send em all to our PRO STAFFERS and anyone else who writes and does videos (except me…lol. I tell the truth…lol). And at least the EVANIX is proving itself on paper and in the hands of the average Joe as well as the pro staffers. The stories MATCH. But Crosman, come on man, POST UP GROUPS and VIDEOS of groups and the NEW AND IMPROVED Rogue being put through its paces. Not just pro staffers wearing Gilly suites and shooting coyotes at 12 yards!. Unless you shoot YOTES with a 12 gauge, i’m seriously not impressed that you got one at 12 yards. Of course a fucking airgun can kill a yote at 12 yards! So could a 177 cal to the brain. Not impressive and that kill sais nothing about the accuracy of the gun. A snub nosed 38 is accurate at 10 yards. Not impressed!
Lastly, Chip claims that he markets the PB guys. Then why does he always post SUCCESSFUL ROGUE and MARAUDER hunts on the YELLOW? Anytime his pro staffers have success in the field, he shows it on the Yellow. Why is that?
There is also a HUGE discrepancy between the production rifles and ones that were set up by Crosman…
With the trend being the set up rifle being of greater accuracy and shot count than the production rifles.
Can you say bait and switch? 😕 😯
10 shots into a quarter at 100 yards, that’s a sub 1″ group with 10 shots… 😕 😯
What did Tofaz get at 50 yards? 2″, 3″ more?
Roachcreek, I can’t argue with the truth. The truth is, nothing about the Rogue has lived up to the hype that was put out. The guys I know that bought one said: it’s heavy, inaccurate, won’t shoot the power advertised, the magazine only works with small pointed bullets, and when cold, it takes several shots to get up to speed. The first shot only goes a few feet and after 5-6 it makes it 50 yards.
Like I said, an interesting concept, but you can’t fix those problems after taking $1500.00 from people. They needed to be fixed before the first one ever shipped out.
I know the next new rifle Crossman brings out, is going to have to prove itself before most guys will buy it. Your name is only as good as your product.
Plasticman,
Well that is the problem isn’t it, they did not test it.
Or did they?
They had no problem dumping a shitload of bad barrels on their customers. What makes us think they are above dropping a rifle they know that does not work and they have no fix for.
No wonder it is called the Rogue.
Regads,
Roachcreek
The Rogue is an interesting concept that appears to have not been fully tested before being brought to market. The time an money required to build a new design was probably cut short by some bean counters that said either sell it or shelve it.
Too bad, Crossman banked on their name to sell it and then be able to overcome the problems after it was released. It’s hard to say whether it’s a design flaw or manufacturing quality, or a combination or the 2. Regardless, it’s hurting Crossman’s brand a lot more than they know.
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That post by the PB guy mentions 145gr Noslers going 900fps plus… yeah, doesn’t really square with the numbers from Crosman does it? Someone bought the hype!