There’s a shooting sport that I find quite interesting as it limits to a certain extent the typical technology race, forcing the shooter to concentrate on improving their technique and abilities. It’s called “Hunter Field Target” and the World Hunter Field Target Association (WHFTA) is the organization that is responsible for the rules and such. I found it particularly interesting as it gives me the incentive to use a lighter rifle and simpler scope in the pursuit of steel silhouettes to slaughter.
And so I decided to search for an appropriate low budget rifle to dedicate to the pursuit of this sport. The rifle I settled on is the Crosman Optimus. I’d had previous experience with this model as I purchased the last one in .177/4.5mm on Mercado Libre back in 2020 as a project to keep my mind busy during the national lock down that year. After tweaking and tuning and polishing it up it was “sold down the river” to recover the cost of purchase. The new owner was quite pleased with it due to the ease of cocking and decent accuracy it gives.
Recently a used rifle showed up on Mercado Libre for a very reasonable amount (for Coffee Country) with a Tasco 2-6X32AO scope and a hard case. As the idea is to reduce power and clean it up to shoot below 12 FPE in keeping with the WHFTA rules the most important thing was that it be in good shape externally as we’ll be working on the seals, springs and other internals. A bonus was that the rifle was listed as local to us and it turned out that the original owner is an acquaintance who purchased the rifle back in 2011 and hasn’t used it much since.
Shooting at 5 meters yielded an interesting group, but also revealed the fact that the scope was junk. So I pulled the scope and opted for the “irons” (actually – plastics), but the Crosman sights leave a LOT to be desired, to say the least.
Well, no big deal. The original plan was to pull the sights off anyway as the shooting will all be with a scope mounted and I prefer the no snag, slick barrel look on a rifle so equipped. And with the sights being so lousy there’s not much reason or keeping them on as there are other options in the cabinet should I become desirous of shooting with open sights.
So I grabbed a piece of copper bar from the tool chest and a hammer as well. A couple quick taps of the hammer and the front sight was removed towards the front.
Removing the front sight revealed a bit more of the surface rust that developed from our humid climate and lack of good rust preventative from the factory. This cleaned up quickly with a bit of my anti-oxidant concoction and a bit of steel wool.
Next up was the matter of removing the rear sight. Not a problem at all. Just completely unscrew the rear vertical adjustment knob then carefully raise the rear sight leaf being careful to not lose the spring inside. Now you have access to the two Philips’ head screws that hold the sight body to the breech block. Remove those, remove the sight from the rifle, place the screws back in their holes and the spring in its place then secure the lot together by inserting the vertical adjustment knob and screwing it down. Now you can put them all in in a ziplock baggie “for future reference and/or disposition”.
So, once we determined that the scople/sights needed replaced, we dug out an old Leapers 6-24X50AO scope that’s been begging to be put back in the game. Some might refer to it as a “Hubble”, but it’s been fairly reliable and fit the Optimus OK, leaving just enough room to cock the rifle and load a pellet.
I shot down the hall at about 10 meters and after letting the barrel “settle in” with the new pellets things got interesting. I noticed that a difference in feel when loading the pellet often resulted in the group opening up. This is a pellet issue and since I had multiple targets on this sheet I started shooting loose fitting pellets into a former group. So the bottom left group in the picture above is from 5 pellets that fit tightly into the breech on loading. The one diagonally to the right of it has about 7 pellets, the original 5 I shot there and then two loose ones from when I shot the lower left target.
Next step is to check on the general “health” of the rifle via a quick string shot over the chronograph. This is a rifle that was purchased new in 2011, shot until all the assembly oil dieseled off and then stored for ??? until the former owner decided to sell it. So here’s the results on the chronograph.
| Crosman Optimus No 2 | First shots | Altitude | Distance |
| 2022-10-26 | JSB Exact 8.44 | 4135.0 | 0.50 |
| Shot # | FPS | FT-LBS | PF |
| 1 | 778 | 11.35 | 6.57 |
| 2 | 806 | 12.18 | 6.80 |
| 3 | 818 | 12.54 | 6.90 |
| 4 | 804 | 12.12 | 6.79 |
| 5 | 802 | 12.06 | 6.77 |
| 6 | 793 | 11.79 | 6.69 |
| 7 | 794 | 11.82 | 6.70 |
| 8 | 822 | 12.66 | 6.94 |
| 9 | 783 | 11.49 | 6.61 |
| 10 | 799 | 11.97 | 6.74 |
| Min Vel | Max Vel | Spread | |
| 778 | 822 | 44 | |
| AVG Vel | TrueMV | StdDev | |
| 799.90 | 799.95 | 13.84 |
The “True Muzzle Velocity” (adjusted for average and distance from the first sensor) is barely in the WHFTA range. But there were a number of shots over the limit which would put this rifle squarely into the “Open Category” as recognized here in Coffee Country. Note that this is using a typical 8.44 FT type pellet. The factory specs on this rifle claim “1,000 fps” – but never state with which pellet. So far I’ve never found a rifle that really reached the velocity the factory claimed, most being WAY below that speed. BUT, here we’re not about speed. We’re about accuracy and that’s what we’ll be shooting for. (heh, heh, heh). The goal is to get this rifle shooting around 11-11.5 FPE which translates to an 8.4 grain pellet between roughly 768 and 785 fps. We’ll be opening up the rifle to look inside and then we’ll start tweaking it to see if we can reach our goal.
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