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I'm sure some of you could see where all this BB/Pellet gun stuff was leading, right? Yup, after lots of not so subtle hints and months of gun magazines laying around the house, I finally dropped the bomb on my wife this weekend. What happened was that we were doing the family birthdays early since my in-laws are going on an extended "fall foliage" trip to the Northeast starting this week. Mine, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's birthdays all fall within a couple of week of the end of September and beginning of October. So, my wife has been harrassing me about what I wanted for my birthday, which has always been a bit of a chore anyway since my interest tends toward the esoteric.
I finally decided to shoot straight (I know, terrible), and tell her I wanted a handgun. No, not the PPK with a suppressor. My love of all things James Bond only goes so far; not that I don't love the PPK! More on this later. Over the course of the whole pellet gun adventure, she had been quizzing me about my interest in guns anyway. And I had filled her in on my long-standing interest in the things going back to when I actually owned a number of them in my younger years before we ever met. I had subsequently sold them when I was working in higher education and living "on campus" where I couldn't have them. But I've always had an abiding interest in them both from a historical (collecting) standpoint as well as to shoot them....
..... at one point owning a couple of different Ruger Mk II semi-automatics in .22LR and a Ruger Security Six along with a Marlin 995 Semi-auto .22LR and Rossi Model 62 copy of the old Winchester pump .22 design.
Do I wish I would have kept them all those years ago? Probably, but that's water under the bridge now. My interests are less in revolvers and 19th century designs anyway, so on to what's going on now!
At the moment; this is the target. The "Wonder 9s", or more specifically..... modern, polymer-framed, high-capacity, striker-fired, 9mm handguns. There's a lot of them out there, ranging from the rather pedestrian Smith & Wesson M & P (Military & Police) for $350 to $400, to the $800-$900 H&K/Sigs or the ubiquitous Glocks at the middle price-point. features and performance tend to be fairly similar, but the build quality and country of origin. The progression on price/build-quality equation seems to go from import to American made back to import (from Germany, Austria or Switzerland) going from low to high. So, firearms from manufacturers like Taurus, Star, etc. from places like Spain and Brazil tend to be lower. Then we get American manufacturers such as Smith & Wesson in the middle, followed of course, but the Glocks, H&Ks and Sig Sauer being the most expensive.
Then you have a few "out-lyers" in the market such as this Canik made in Turkey which is a copy of the Walther P99 and of excellent quality according to virtually all reviews as well as..
the well-known and well-thought of CZ offering such as the above CZ-75 made in the Czech Republic. So, what am I interested in?
This is the one. The Walther PPQ M1. Why not the Bond-esque P99? Yes, it's a fine pistol, but here's my reasoning.
- The main-line Walther grips feel great in my smallish hands, whether that be the P99 or the PPQ and indeed the compact CCP as well.
- The PPQ is often referred to as the updated and improved P99 with a better double-action trigger system.
- The PPQ has the standard M1913 Picatinny rail that makes it easier to mount laser and such on to.
- The P99 has been out of production for several years and the "first version" (which I like best) tends to be difficult to find and when found tends to be at least $100 (or more), more expensive than the PPQ. This is probably the deciding factor.
However, there's a couple of other possibilities as well.
One is the Canik which of course is a Walther copy, but barring finding a PPQ/P99 at an affordable price, there's also a "dark horse"; the Magnum Research MR9 Eagle. It's a Walther P99 polymer frame, with a Magnum Research stainless slide mounted. This German-American cooperative effort came in two flavors, with the one you see here as half and inch longer than the 4" version. Most critically, they aren't well known and as a result sometimes sell for substantially less than either the P99 or PPQ. No you know. I'll update you guys when I've locked onto a target!
You guys remember that we moved to a new house a couple of years ago. We had wanted to be out in the country a little bit. Yup, we ended up getting exactly the house that we wanted backed up to a "greenbelt" which has a lot of big trees. Of course, when you have big trees you get the citizens there-of as well.
Happily, we have cardinals, chickadees, and we've even started seeing some hummingbirds!
However, along with the birds, we have the neighborhood bandits as well! Unfortunately, (unlike my in-laws), our household pets pay little attention to the little grey thieves. So periodically, we have a big pile of bird feed on the ground and with the fat little guys happily stuffing their cheeks. We scare them off, but in a few minutes, they're back.Unlike my father-in-law who actually lives in the country, we're inside the city limits, so no .22 rifle.....
Since the dawn of time, or at least the first half of the last century, this would have been the answer! The Daisy Red Ryder BB gun, or something along those lines...... Except for one problem. See how Ralphie is holding it left-handed using his left eye to sight? Unlike most Hollywood stars, young and old, I'm right handed......, but I'm decidedly left-eye dominant! This creates a real issue in shooting. If I hold a rifle left-handed, it's very uncomfortable for me. If I hold it right-handed, I can't see a "sight-picture" well enough to hit anything, much less something the size of a squirrel! It was so bad, I had trouble doing my military qualifications when I was in ROTC. I barely qualified "Marksman" which was the lowest level there was.
Later in life, during what I'll call my "gun" stage, during which I actually owned firearms, not just studied them, I mostly bought and shot pistols. Everything from the .357 Magnum Ruger Security-Six depicted here, all the way down to the .22LR Mark II automatic. And if I do say so myself, I was pretty darned good with them. Quite a bit better than average, even when shooting the powerful .44 Magnum. Then I started my career in Higher Education administration which entailed that I live "on campus" for a number of years and my gun days came to a screeching halt. I sold my guns and for the next 20 or so years of my life, I only peripherally paid attention to firearms. But I still loved them deep down inside.
Then, this happened. Let me discuss the parameters of our situation. There are squirrels; lots of them in our area. They are classified as "varmints" (like mice) here in Texas and can pretty much be dealt with any way legally necessary. Which of course, here in town means NOT discharging a firearm! The use of BB and/or pellet guns are legal though. For my own satisfaction, the rather thick woods and underbrush behind our house makes the use of a pellet gun pretty darned safe. Now, on to what I ended up choosing to use.
The Walther PPQ.
No, not the actual Walther PPQ, but the Walther licensed Umarex built in Taiwan, CO2 "air pistol".
Yup, it's a very close copy of the "real steel" 9mm Parabellum firing pistol, which of course if part of the attraction. No it is not the whole story, so let me explain what-all went into the decision making process. These things are in the lower part of the airgun world. The FPS (feet per second) of a fired pellet is somewhere south of 400, which makes them adequate for squirrel out to maybe 30 feet. Coincidentally, that's about the size of my backyard. So that part works out. I wanted something that could fire off several shots one after another, so CO2 vs. pump. Since I wanted it to be lethal on the little critters, it needed to fire pellets. And I wanted to practice cheaply with BBs, that limited my list of candidates quite a bit. What did I want?
No, not Pierce Brosnan,...... the Walther P99 that the Brosnan-Bond typically used. I love that pistol and Umarex makes a very nice pellet gun copy, but it's about $170. This is where working with the (a) wife comes into play. The Umarex Walther CP99 is a really nice copy of the compact version of the P99, but it's a more complex gun as well. Since this is the first time that during my time with my spouse that I've had a gun of any kind; I decided that spending less money was a better way to go. Especially, since the PPQ could be had for $50 or roughly a third of what the CP99 price. But, if I'm a Bond fan, what about the classic Bond Walther?
The PPK? Umarex actually makes one of these as well. This is where practicality meets fun. Unfortunately, the PPK is a BB only, so pretty much unless on our invading squirrels. Will I probably buy one, one day just for fun? Sure, along with the CP99 as well. So, this is where Bond movie fan, meets squirrel fighting home-owner, meets the practical husband.
