Crosman’s Icon is a new precharged pneumatic (PCP) air rifle.
This report covers:
- The magazine
- From Part 4
- The test
- Sight-in
- Discharge sound
- First group
- Ten shots
- Silencer
- Report
- Discussion
- Summary
This is Memorial Day when we remember those who gave their lives to defend this nation. Heroes all. We are here because they aren’t.
Today is an accuracy test of the Crosman Icon. The Part 4 test wasn’t a real accuracy test. I was just searching for the best pellets — the ones the Icon likes. That was when we discovered the Icon likes just about anything you shoot in it. Feeding from the single shot tray is a problem, but the rifle is a solid performer in the accuracy department — at least when fired single shot.
The magazine
Today we discover if the Icon likes its 12-shot rotary magazine. Remember, this is a .177-caliber rifle. In .22 caliber the mag holds 10.
The Icon rotary magazine is different.
The magazine loads without rotating the clear plastic top cover. Just drop a pellet into the mag hole nose first and rotate to the next hole. Could it be any easier? I suppose if you could just dump a box of pellets into a hopper that would be easier, but for a rotary mag I think the Icon has it.
From Part 4
In Part 4 we learned beyond the shadow of a doubt that the 10.5-grain Crosman Premier pellet is best for the Icon. Five shots fired from the single-shot tray went into 0.106-inches at 10 meters. The next-smallest five-shot group was 0.26-inches.
In Part 4 the Icon put 5 Crosman Premier heavies into a 0.108-inch group at 10 meters. The shots were fired single shot.
So all of today’s test will be shot with just this one pellet — the 10.5-grain Premier. I loaded 5 Premier Heavys into the magazine and proceeded to start shooting. I had messed with the rear sight since the last test to see how difficult it will be to mount a scope, but the elevation wheel was the only thing I touched. So the elevation could have been off but everything else should have been right on.
The test
I shot the Icon at 10 meters with the rifle rested directly on a sandbag rest. After sighting in I started with five shots for record and then switched to 10. I will tell you at each juncture.
Sight-in
The first pellet hit the target at the top center of the bull. I dialed the elevation wheel down three clicks and fired the remaining four shots. There were two failures to feed in these five shots, meaning the rotary magazine did not advance to the next pellet. I could tell by the louder sound at the muzzle that no pellet had fired. So I will have to watch the magazine to ensure that it advances every time.
The first shot landed high on the bull and three clicks of the elevation wheel brought the group down.
I rediscovered the trigger during the sight in. It’s not crisp, yet I know when it’s going to break. It is a trigger I can use.
Discharge sound
Since the Icon’s discharge disturbed my cat, Dale Evans, I measured it on my sound meter. I was shooting in my living room today instead of in my garage like I did in Part 2, so the some of the sound was absorbed by the carpet and furniture. The discharge registered 95.1 decibels, where in the garage in Part 2 it registered 99.4 decibels. Still, Dale was upset and threw up a hairball at my feet in protest, as she is sometimes wont to do.
First group
The first group was another five Premier Heavys. Once more the magazine failed to advance several times, only now I was watching for it. I believe the magazine is new and stiff and needs to be broken in.
These five shots went into 0.227-inches at 10 meters. They are in a horizontal but still somewhat roundish group that I find reassuring.
The Icon put five Crosman Premier Heavy pellets into a 0.227-inch group at 10 meters when fired from the rotary magazine.
In case you don’t think this group is good, please remember that I’m shooting with a huge front green fiberoptic dot sight that makes precision aiming difficult. When I scope the Icon I bet you’ll see better. I sure hope so. My plan is to mount the Meopta MeoSport 3-15X50 scope that I’m testing, so that should take this rifle about as far as it can go.
Ten shots
We are still at 10 meters and using both the rotary magazine and the open sights the rifle comes with. Now we shot 10 of the Premier Heavys. Ten of them went into a group that measures 0.476-inches between centers. Let’s look.
The Icon put ten Premier Heavys into 0.476-inches at 10 meters when fired from the magazine.
Silencer
The Icon has a threaded barrel, so an airgun silencer can be attached. I threaded on my DonnyFL Ronin silencer and was pleased to note that I could still see the open sights above the 2-inch wide silencer body.
The Icon wears the DonnyFL Ronin silencer quite well. The open sights can still be used.
Next I wanted to shoot a 10-shot group with the silencer mounted. Should prove interesting!
Report
I shot the silenced Icon and nothing happened. Did it even fire? I wasn’t sure. Because I am using the rubber mulch-filled box as a pellet trap I also didn’t hear anything hit the box. Dale Evans was laying in front of me on the floor and she asked when I was going to start shooting. So I looked at the target through the spotting scope and saw a hole in the new bull. Apparently the Icon did fire and the pellet went where I intended. I had to get a sound meter recording of this.
The sound meter recorded an 82.3 decibel report, which is quieter than a cough. In the garage testing in Part 2 with the silencer the report was 86.6. Yep, it’s quieter in my living room.
Now I fired the remaining 9 pellets and got a group that measures 0.538-inches between centers. The first pellet is apart from the main group of nine that measures 0.297-inches between centers. I see great potential for accuracy there!
With the DonnyFL Ronin silencer attached the Crosman Icon put 10 Premier heavies into 0.538-inches with 9 in 0.297-inches at 10 meters.
Discussion
The Icon magazine loads easily but may need a break in to work reliably. The rifle I’m testing seems to be incredibly accurate. The open sights are difficult to use because of the huge green dot up front, but they are also very precise when used correctly.
The trigger has a positive second stage stop, but then a mushy pull to the release. It is easy to get used to.
Summary
I find the Crosman Icon to be full of contradictions. Both the single shot tray and the rotary magazine require some thought and careful operation, but once mastered they work well. The trigger is anything but crisp, yet it always lets me know when the rifle will fire. The sights are not conducive to precision yet the accuracy is stunning! I think when I get a scope mounted we are going to see some incredible results!
BB,
“My plan is to mount the Meopta MeoSport 3-15X50 scope that I’m testing, so that should take this rifle about as far as it can go.” You really weren’t kidding when the cost of good glass would be equal to the cost of the rifle. The Meopta MeoSport 3-15X50 costs nearly twice as much as the Crosman Icon! Then again the Icon just might have enough accuracy to justify its use.
Siraniko
Siraniko,
Yes, this will be a great test of the Icon’s accuracy.
BB
B.B.
Nice gun. For that price I can live with some quirks. I am looking forward to the scoped results.
Very off topic.
I was checking a French painting painted in 1860-1870. There I found these holes. They are appr. 1,5 mm ( 0,06 inch). I have some questions about them.
1. Can this be the impact of birdshot?
2. The impact was made in already dried paint (the blue picture) and in quite thick green paint which was drying, leaving a crater like you see on the moon.
3. The impact was not very violent as the shot did not penetrate the paint in both cases. What was the approximate distance the shot was fired, assuming a percussion gun loaded with black powder? I assume that this was not a direct shot but probably people were skeet shooting as the painting was done at the end of May if you look at the depicted vegetation.
If any of you all has any experience with impacts in paint of birdshot I would like your reactions.
Regards,
August
Second one
August,
I think the velocity is too low for birdshot. It’s more like something blown by the wind, like sand or dirt.
BB
Why do the manufacturers insist on installing fiber optic sights? Are the fiber optic sights just cheaper to use?
Jonah,
Most folks in marketing are not shooters. They look at spreadsheets of response to items they sell in large quantities. Fiberoptic sights do have their place, but not as envisioned by these people. They seem to think that fiberoptics are easier to see/acquire, and their primary buyers seem to agree. Actually they are selling what their target market wants. Real shooters are just a small fraction of the buyers they sell to. So they are doing the right thing.
What no one has seemed to realize is that a fiberoptic that can easily be changed into a plain post sight would appeal to more people. Would it be worth the investment to find out? That’s the big question. I believe it would, if done right, by which I mean in a cost effective manner. But it’s still a risk that nobody has yet taken.
BB
“But it’s still a risk that nobody has yet taken.”
Yet how I wish someone would, B.B.!
The front sight on the Crosman 362 was a bit too thick for my liking; yet at least Crosman was smart enough to put a plain blade on it; hence, it was easy enough to thin it down to suit me, or any other buyer. Had it been a fiber optic on the front…well, I’d not have bought the rifle in the first place. And when my Dragonfly Mark2 arrives, that fiber optic front sight will be the first thing to go! The only reason it wasn’t a deal-breaker on that gun is that I bought the gun to scope it, whereas I bought the Crosman 362 to use with aperture sights, which is why I wanted a thin blade…and no fiber optics! OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now, LOL! 🙂
Blessings to you,
dave
Hey Dave,
Large, colored sights are an advantage in some situations. In low light and low contrast shooting conditions – like an early morning hunt for cottontails in scrub brush – fiber optics let you see the the sight against the game. Some rifles have a gold or silver bead on the front sight for that reason.
As kids we used to paint the fronsight with bright paint/nailpolish. I’ve added a bit of .025 thick “glow bright” to the front sight of my Benjamin 392 so my old eyes can see it better. Works for me 🙂
Hank
“I’ve added a bit of .025 thick ‘glow bright’ to the front sight of my Benjamin 392 so my old eyes can see it better.”
Hank,
With that I concur. On my old Winchester model 94, I had a ghost-ring aperture for a rear sight, and the front sight was a black ramp that had a groove in the middle of it filled with super-white epoxy. In daylight, the outer edges of the black front blade showed up well; but in the dusk, that thin white line showed up great; I took a hog at full dusk, but only as I could see that white line, and put the top of it right behind his shoulder. Hence, bright things do have their place. 🙂
Cheers,
dave
My new Weihrauch pistol (HW40) came with fibre optic enhanced sights.
Boy did they glow brightly! Too bright for my liking.
They’re only little plastic sticks and so I pulled them off with some pliers.
That left three empty round holes, which I didn’t like either.
So I plugged the holes by pushing a toothpick into each and then snapping it off.
This gave me three light dots to look at. Better but still room for improvement. So I dabbed a black marker pen on the outer rear dots.
Now I have black blocks at the rear and one black front block with a light dot in it to line up.
I’ll try and upload a picture to show what I mean – sorry, due to dusk it’s grainy but I still think you can see the effect:
Neat! That’s pretty cool 🙂
If you are trying to hit a target the size of a dinner plate, moving through the woods about twenty-five yards away with a rifle designed to stop a charging rhino and you have almost no experience using a firearm of any sort, fiber optic sights are great.
The dirty truth is, I have purchased fiber optic sights before. I purchased a Truglo hooded front sight and a Williams rear peep and installed them on my grandson’s HW30S. It is an awesome little setup that he really enjoys. Personally, I would prefer a clear iris, but to each his own. Those feral soda cans do not stand a chance around him.
“…my grandson’s HW30S”
RidgeRunner,
That’s an excellent choice; many folk might not have wanted to opt for the HW30S for a “kid’s gun” due to the higher cost. But you got him a rifle that he can use for the rest of his life…good for you! 🙂
Happy shootin’ (but mind those crazy squirrels),
dave
Dave,
Ah, yeah. If I was going to buy it, you can bet it was not going to be from Wally World. If he takes care of it, his grandchildren will be able to shoot it.
Awesome *thumbs up” 🙂
Once FM figured out how to adjust the rear sight of the HW95 after installing the front TruGlo on it, confess it has worked as advertised, though generally not a “glowy thingy” fan. Sometimes the ole eyes need all the help they can get.
Thanking all the brave men and women who are serving, who have served, and especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country so we can enjoy the freedoms we have today!
(Note: my wife’s high school sweetheart never made it back from Vietnam; hence, the flag you see below)
A Blessed Memorial Day to all our veterans, whether they are still with us or not. Their service allowed FM and his family to live most of their lives in a free country. Let your veteran friends and family know you appreciate their service and honor them today.
Well, my dog just added deer to the list of small, furry, woodland creatures she has killed.
RidgeRunner,
Did you find the kill soon enough and in good enough condition to make some use of the meat?
shootski
I saw her kill it. I was going to, but Mrs. RR nixed that. Off to the landfill it goes, I am afraid.
The Gardens of Stone at Arlington were silent but for the click of the Ceremonial Guard’s shoes; a beautiful morning at first light. The trees are in full leaf and the rising Sun made the grass sparkle with a heavy morning dew. I have seen the rows upon rows in every manner of weather on my visits over the years but each time the wonder never fades at the many who have given their all for this great country.
Enjoy the day to the fullest they would want you to!
.
shootski
Shootski,
Sweet, from 2015 the changing of the guards, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4utXb3auOew
And another story
Charles Loxton was a small man, no taller than 5’6”, and was born in 1899. This means that when he fought in the muddy trenches of France during the First World War, he was no older than 17 years old — Delville Wood, where he was wounded, took place in July 1916.
Seventeen years old. That means he would have been a little over sixteen when he enlisted. In other words, Charles must have lied about his age to join the army — many did, in those days, and recruiting officers winked at the lies. After all, the meat grinder of the Western Front needed constant replenishment, and whether you died at 17, 18 or 19 made little difference.
Why did he do it? At the time, propaganda told of how the evil Kaiser Wilhelm was trying to conquer the world, and how evil Huns had raped Belgian nurses after executing whole villages. Where Charles lived as a young boy, however, the Kaiser was no danger to him, and no German Uhlans were going to set fire to his house, ever.
But Charles lied about his age and joined up because he felt that he was doing the right thing. That if good men did nothing, evil would most certainly win.
It’s not as though he didn’t know what was coming: every day, the newspapers would print whole pages of casualty lists, the black borders telling the world that France meant almost certain death. The verification could be found in all the houses’ windows which had black-crepe-lined photos of young men, killed on the Somme, in Flanders, in Ypres, and at Mons.
He would have seen with his own eyes the men who returned from France, with their missing limbs, shattered faces and shaky voices. He would have heard stories from other boys about their relatives coming back from France to other towns — either in spirit having died, or else with wounds so terrible that the imagination quailed at their description.
He would have seen the mothers of his friends weeping at the loss of a beloved husband. Perhaps it had been this man and not his father who had taught him how to fish, or how to shoot, or how to cut (from the branches of a peach tree) a “mik” (the “Y”) for his catapult.
But Charles, a 16-year-old boy, walked out of his home one day and went down to the recruiting center of the small mining town, and joined the Army.
When years later I asked him why he’d done it, he would just shrug, get a faraway look in his blue eyes, and change the subject. Words like duty, honor, country, I suspect, just embarrassed him. But that didn’t mean he was unaware of them.
So Charles joined the Army, was trained to fight, and went off to France. He was there for only four months before he was wounded. During the attack on the German trenches at Delville Wood, he was shot in the shoulder, and as he lay there in the mud, a German soldier speared him in the knee with his bayonet, before himself being shot and killed by another man in Charles’ squad. At least, I think that’s what happened — I only managed to get the story in bits and pieces over several years. But the scars on his body were eloquent witnesses to the horror: the ugly cicatrix on his leg, two actually (where the bayonet went in above the knee and out below it), and the star-shaped indentation in his shoulder.
The wounds were serious enough to require over a year’s worth of extensive rehabilitation, and they never really healed properly. But Charles was eventually passed as fit enough to fight, and back to the trenches he went. By now it was early 1918 — the Americans were in the war, and tiny, limping Private Charles Loxton was given the job as an officer’s batman: the man who polished the captain’s boots, cleaned his uniform, and heated up the water for his morning shave every day. It was a menial, and in today’s terms, demeaning job, and Charles fought against it with all his might. Eventually, the officer relented and released him for further line service, and back to the line he went.
Two months later came the Armistice, and Charles left France for home, by now a grizzled veteran of 19. Because he had been cleared for trench duty, he was no longer considered to be disabled, and so he did not qualify for a disabled veteran’s pension.
When he got back home, there were no jobs except for one, so he took it. Charles became, unbelievably, a miner. His crippled knee still troubled him, but he went to work every day, because he had to earn money to support his mother, by now widowed, and his younger brother John. The work was dangerous, and every month there’d be some disaster, some catastrophe which would claim the lives of miners. But Charles and his friends shrugged off the danger, because after the slaughter of the trenches, where life expectancy was measured in days or even hours, a whole month between deaths was a relief.
But he had done his duty, for God, King and country, and he never regretted it. Not once did he ever say things like “If I’d known what I was getting into, I’d never have done it.” As far as he was concerned, he’d had no choice — and that instinct to do good, to do the right thing, governed his entire life.
At age 32, Charles married a local beauty half his age. Elizabeth, or “Betty” as everyone called her, was his pride and joy, and he worshipped her his whole life. They had five children.
Every morning before going to work, Charles would get up before dawn and make a cup of coffee for Betty and each of the children, putting the coffee on the tables next to their beds. Then he’d kiss them, and leave for the rock face. Betty would die from multiple sclerosis, at age 43.
As a young boy, I first remembered Charles as an elderly man, although he was then in his late fifties, by today’s standards only middle-aged. His war wounds had made him old, and he had difficulty climbing stairs his whole life. But he was always immaculately dressed, always wore a tie and a hat, and his shoes were polished with such a gloss that you could tell the time in them if you held your watch close.
Charles taught me how to fish, how to cut a good “mik” for my catapult, and watched approvingly as I showed him what a good shot I was with my pellet gun. No matter how busy he was, he would drop whatever he was doing to help me — he was, without question, the kindest man I’ve ever known.
In 1964, Charles Loxton, my grandfather, died of phthisis, the “miner’s disease” caused by years of accumulated dust in the lungs. Even on his deathbed in the hospital, I never heard him complain — in fact, I never once heard him complain about anything, ever. From his hospital bed, all he wanted to hear about was what I had done that day, or how I was doing at school.
When he died, late one night, there was no fuss, no emergency, no noise; he just took one breath, and then no more. He died as he had lived, quietly and without complaint.
From him, I developed the saying, “The mark of a decent man is not how much he thinks about himself, but how much time he spends thinking about others.”
Charles Loxton thought only about other people his entire life.
In Memoriam
Hat tip to Kim du Toit
Mike
Mike, thanks for sharing that story by Kim du Toit; I had not seen it before.
Dave,
You are most welcome, Kim is one of my favorite bloggers but a little less than family friendly which is why I just copied his text for this which seemed to be very Memorial Day specific. And also the measure of a real man who stands up and does what needs to be done without regard to the price. I thought it to be a very powerful story.
Mike
You handled it just right. 🙂
Mike
Same. Thanks for sharing. As I get closer to retirement (hopefully in about a year and a half) I keep thinking about it being now. I have to say that story gave me a kick in the butt. Maybe that story should be seen in more places than here on the blog. Thanks for posting the story.
Gunfun1,
You are welcome and I hope you can retire well and enjoy it.
Thinking about the story again I think it is really a Veterans Day story since he did not die in battle which is what Memorial Day is all about.
Mike
Mike
What ever way you want to think about the story it seems whatever point in time it was in his life he did what he thought he needed to do at that time. You just never know what a person has been through in thier time and the sacrifices they made to do what was needed.
About Memorial Day, I personally have different views and feelings that do not involve gratitude or pride. I say this not to offend, judge or provoke any reaction, but merely to say that there are some who are different. Peace… 🙂
hihihi,
I understand more than you think. I have no pride in my service. I do have gratitude for those who have sacrificed. You are allowed to have your views and feelings because of what they gave, as do I and others.
They gave to you a gift. What you do with such is between you and your “conscience”.