Page 3 - Gamo Viper Express Reviews

I like the guns appearance, weight, handling, and ease of cocking. I use it on squirrels on my birdfeeders at about 15 yards because I know it will chase them but not injure them. I also use it on carpenter bees attacking my wood shed and for that it is lethal.

It would be nice if it was available in a larger caliber and with more power. It would also be nice if there was a place in the stock to store the .22 caliber pellet insert as someone else mentioned. I lost mine almost immediately but then I never really intended to use this as a rifle...

Don't expect much accuracy as a rifle, but then that is really not its intended purpose. You can usually get the best price on the shot shells on eBay.

Weight. Shucks, this thing does on weigh much Cock effort. Not much, easy. Effective, It does have limits.. It is quiet.

Make it in .25 cal Put a camo stock on it. Add another shot shell option

I bought for my self and my son was so jealous he had to ask one for himself (as a gift). The standard shot shell is effect up to 10 yards. I hit inside a shelter (my garage) at slightly longer that 10 yds and was hitting, but this is not practical outdoors. We have done our best hunting with it at 5-9 yds on a quiet night. I thought it delivered what it said it would. You get what you pay for...and that is a good thing. The $20 lower price is needed too. Great value.
My son also plugged a sparrow at 15ish yds with a pellet, so that side of the package does work as well.
The cocking motion of mine is a bit scratchy still but I presume that will die off with use. The aesthetics of the unit is nothing special and the build quality is unimpressive.
The biggest minus is that there is not enough shot per load to be effective past 10yds. I'd like to see this same gun in at least .25 cal, but understand the jump to .25 is not linear for what I am looking for. Bigger is better right ?

The weight, the fun of shooting it. It is nicely made.

Maybe more fps, better stock (not so much plastic), sell the version that already has the nitro piston in it, instead of having to purchase the piston separately........the nitro version is listed in the catalog at 249.00.....but pyramyd air does not carry it......So you have to buy the springer rifle (179) and the piston (99) and have it installed.....

This is a pure novelty rifle....it is fun to shoot

The fact that it's a shotgun. Allows for backyard trap shooting practice when you use water balloons. Shells are easy to reload. Cheap and easy way to practice trap at home for working on your pointing, leading, swing through, and trigger slap. The way I use this is to get those bulk waterballoon filler like Zuru Bunch-O-Balloons. Fill, toss, and shoot to practice for dove hunts right in the backyard.

Stop trying to be both a shotgun and a rifle. As a rifle, it is not good whatsoever. I keep mine as a dedicated shotgun. Ridge in the middle of the barrel for use as rifle gets in the way of sighting plane when using as shotgun. Safety mechanism is not the safest or easiest to operate and does not simulate actual shotgun safeties. Would have preferred a button or tang safety so as to allow for practice of actual hunting physics.

I was wondering if this gun would be able to take down doves on wings for backyard hunting, nobody had any such type of reviews for this purpose. So I got the gun and decided to test for myself. The answer is a big NOOO. The factory shot shells were horrible. Spread was much too wide and velocity of shots too low. Shot spread can be controlled if you reload the shells with #8 or #7.5 shells, but velocity is still way too low. May kill a dove within 10 to 15 yards, but that type of shots aren't easy nor common, even at a sunflower field after discing when doves are plentiful. If taking doves on ground or tree, might as well use a regular pellet gun. The whole desire of a shotgun is to take birds on wings and this won't do it. Still, a good gun for fun trap shooting practice using hand-tossed water balloons. Guests who has never handled a shotgun loves this activity and gives them an idea of what wing or trap shooting feels like.

Very nice stock, lightweight, ability to shoot shotgun shells.

Would have used a choked barrel for a tighter pattern even if it meant loosing the ability to shoot pellets

This gun is fantastic and I enjoy it a lot however it's flaw is trying to be a rifle and shot gun. It's perfect for shooting rats but it wouldn't be sufficient for anything else because the pattern is to large past 10yds. When using .22 pellets it's accurate to about 25 yds before it looses accuracy due to the smooth bore barrel. This gun is a ton of fun as is but very limited in its uses so I'd recommend the buyer thinks about what there expectations are before buying.

the break barrel action is smooth and quiet, trigger is smooth, has some solid impact

some better open sights

i bought this to hunt quail and varmints, however the shot shells are a joke, can't even drop a finch at 8 yards. barely tickles em. it is fairly accurate and fun to shoot within 30 yards with a pellet, and has decent power. Big disappointment as far as the shells go, i would spend the money on another rifle

One of my favorite airguns! Powerful consistent shots. Very accurate.

Nothing. Inexpensive, accurate. Wish there was more variable ammo for shotgun mode( slugs).

A lot of bang for your buck!

My son was super excited about this gun. It is very accurate and very powerful farther than we thought!

Easy to use gun right out of the box. Has two types of ammo for one gun.

This gun needs a rear sight to use 22 pellets.

Don't expect to shoot the shot shells more than 30' and have a tight grouping. My shots at 30' had a 20" pattern

Accurate with pellets for a smooth bore. You can reload the shells and they fit in a standard butt stock ecstatic cartridge holder.

Nothing, so far.

It's loud if you dry fire it. Sounds like a 22! When firing ammo it's not too bad. I saw a bad review about breach seals on YouTube and was hesitant to buy it. Did more research and found mainly positive reviews. The video was from 2009. It's the fourth hit that shows up after 3 pyramydair ads when you Google the gun. So, maybe it should be taken down, revised or a retraction added. I shot the hell out of mine today, right out of the box with no issues. Just lots of fun!

I like that I can take two types of ammo so its just like A real shotgun only the pellets are your slugs fun and good to have around the home

Make a pellet shell and adapter that's rifled

If you looking for a nice gun this is one to take home

Did I really need an airgun "shotgun"? No. But did it look pretty darn cool and something I wanted to try? YES! This is a well-made airgun. It is easy to use, and a nice addition to one's airgun armory.

I was a bit upset that the pellet adapter did not come with the airgun as promised, but a quick e-mail to Pyramyd Air fixed that quick enough.

This is a airgun "shotgun". You need to keep that in mind. The payload is SMALL. Looks like #12 shot - or smaller, and just not a lot of them. I am going to experiment with the load to see if I can maximize it, but this is really only good for short-range targets or very short range pest control. It should be good in an attic if something small (squirrel or smaller) gets up there and you need to take it out without punching holes in your roof. With its diminutive payload though, I would hesitate to try it on anything larger than a squirrel.

Shotgun! Enough said. At 10m all pellets in 8.5" x 11" target. .22 call pellet very accurate with only ball front site. Great looking gun.

Make a hole in stock or butt pad for .22 call insert.

Reload these yourself. Easy to do and results are the same as purchased loads. RWS "Superdome" .22 call come with gun. Work great!

Great gun for the money.

I have only fired it one time. I will be using it in the near future to control english sparrows. It seems well built. I appreciate the info online as to reloading the shells.

It's like a real shotgun in many ways. It's light. Powerful. I can't wait to shoot something with it. I have shot it at paper pattern targets, can't believe the pattern and power. I love it. It's an air gun you should have in your collection. I'd like to see larger shot shells offered. I haven't tried shooting a 22cal. pellet through it yet. I'm just happy for the shot gun part.

Not a thing!

Be careful with this shot gun, it's powerful. It's a lot of fun to shoot.

What a blast with the shot shells , pretty decent with the pellets but hey we all have plenty of pellet rifles around , the fun is in blasting tin cans and .. well pretty much anything , shot high as I was just too close , better out to 10 yards and dead on , a nice 12 " pattern with most of the shot in the cans , plenty of power and just a nice lightweight balanced natural shooter .

Well the price is about twice what it should be going for , and the shot shells are way too high and should be maybe 200 for $5.00 , other that that it's pretyt nice .

Tried some aftermarket reload shells and so far they have been a failure , just fit too loose and have maybe 100 FPS at the most , am working with the seller in trying to get a fix for them , an O'ring on each one orc just a light silicone dip , hopefully we can get it figured out as they were fun to reload and would make it cheaper to shoot than pellets , especially with old useless shot gun shells , one 12 gauge will yield many of these handloads and make it whole lot more fun to shoot , if you get past the price of the gun and shot shells this is a nice gun to add to your brace of guns .

That this is a shotgun, I think there is a lot of room for air shotguns that can be developed. This one fits a very specialty use and for within it's limitations it's been great, one of my most happier buys. I think more shooters might give this gun a try if they have to dispatch rats or snakes in a location where over travel of projectiles would be unacceptable such as around other housing. My experience may vary slightly from others since I built what might be viewed as a free bore choke/air stripper out of pvc and grommets that reduced the shot pattern at 3 yards from 3" to 2 1/4". At 10 yards though it patterned at 10" which with 18 to 20 shot pieces per shell was spread so widely as to be useless for my uses. At 4 yards though I have a very impressive soda can that I like to keep that has a very impressive pattern of 14 hits covering 2/3 of the can. I have dispatched a several rats effectively and a few small snakes.

only the price of the shot shells to encourage a lot more fun with this gun.

I experimented with my own loads using a factory shell and reusing fired ones. Trying to reuse the fired ones
is fruitless unless you can recover one of the plastic cups that go in the back of the shell. Trying different shot
counts with many variations and sizes of shot also proved fruitless Like many things airgun trust what the
engineers have come up with. I could not improve upon the factory shot shells. My longest rat dispatch shot
was done on an overhead wire at about 6 or 7 yards and very effective. I would guess this is the range limit
for my gun. The bore is choked and recovered pellets appear to be swaged down to .20 caliber. Pellets chrono tested at 700 fps at muzzle shot shells at 600 fps at muzzle. I did shoot a couple of shot shells
horizontally out over a small retention pond, barrel about six feet above the water line, the shot landed
in a nice 6' diameter spray about 20 yds out. I don't really shoot pellets but at 7 yds it's a tack driver.
I love my gun.

The gun I have shoots to the point of aim and shoots consistent patterns, even if they are limited to 10 yards for lack of shot density at any greater range.

See my review of the ammo for that information. As far as the gun itself, from the moment I took it from the box I felt disappointment, as I expected much more from a gun at this price point. It may prove to be good polymer plastic, but the gun is plastic at every possible place: The breech block, barrel shroud, barrel rib, sighting rib of the receiver, stock and worst of all, the trigger.

The components of the shotshell were also a let down. See my review of them for the details. The first several times I cocked my shotgun, I believed I would soon be returning it as the action felt as if it were filled with sand. It began smoothing out quickly however, and now several dozen shots later is smooth. The trigger is also smooth but long and rather heavy and the "adjustment" is limited to the presence of a screw that has no effect of the length of pull despite the manufacturers claim. The gun will shoot pellets surprisingly tight as long as the range is limited to 10 yards. At that range mine will stack Gamo Round lead balls on top of each other, but at 15 yards they are spread out to 3.5". Several pellet did similarly, grouping tightly at 10 but limited beyond that range. I do not judge this gun on this as it is intended to use shot, not act as a rifle. In my opinion, it is over-priced by about $50.00. That figures into the over-all rating.

Naturally, what I like most is the ability to hit small, fast moving targets (such as a viper that circumstances require killing rather than removal) and aerial targets while still having the capability of precision marksmanship. It is also lightweight and easy to cock and load, even for those with limited strength. While sights are rudimentary, there is a raised section on the rib that provides a rear aiming point for use with the bead for alignment AND it is grooved for optics. If the chamber adapter is lost it can be replaced for $12.95 from Gamo OR you can simply use an expended shotshell left in the chamber as pellets insert easily. Accuracy and penetration limit effectiveness to LESS THAN 10 YARDS for shot but adequate for a measured 37 yard head shot on a squirrel -1 shot, 1 quick kill.

I would like to see a selection of shot sizes or an offering of necessary reloading components so makeshift plugs to contain the shot aren't necessary as the rather expensive shotshells are easily reloaded. I would also like to see a fitted storage compartment for the brass chamber adapter (a compartment in the stock would work well). I currently store mine in one of the compression holes in the rubber butt plate which does hold it securely but leaves it sticking out where it can get caught on things.

It is light, easily cocked and loaded with minimal effort, is pleasantly quiet and shouldn't bother neighbors, has very little felt recoil, BUT any optics mounted on the rail MUST HAVE A STOP SCREW because loc-tite alone will not prevent the optic mounts from walking off the back of the grooves. The viper actually has a 11mm riser installed over the machined 11mm grooves for appearance and replacing its existing set screw with a longer set screw will provide an adequate block for optics but will be in the way when or if you remove the optics (another reason for built in storage compartment). GET A GAMO VIPER EXPRESS - you will enjoy it!