Gamo lethal lead free hunting pellet extreme penetration and accuracy testing 

Nice review. I tested a variety of lead free pellets for Gun Mart / Shooting Sports some years ago and they were pretty dodgy back then, nothing has really changed, regardless of the materials used. Gotta love the likes of H&N, RWS, GAMO etc for tooling up and trying, but if you can't get reliable, repeatable accuracy then it is just wasted R&D.

good watch .. Thanks .. It'll be all right if we move to 6 inch holes in the HFT /FT targets .. I can see the future having discussions after a course of how we all missed that "killer 3 inch reducer at 15 feet"

Hello Sir, Thank you very much for going to the lengths you do, in your quest to find a good pellet. Everything you do and say makes great sense, and I'm very impressed if I may say, at how thorough you are. I quite agree, I don't see, on the face of it, the sense of making pellets out of plastic, when like you say, it poses one of the biggest threats to our environment. I really enjoyed your film and thank you. Your air rifle looks like a really smart piece of kit. With great respect, the traditional air rifle, walnut stock, edges it for me. Nonetheless, it looks a beauty, and I hope it serves you well, my friend.

Interesting test,They remind me of the old Prometheus,they were shit too 😂,penetration isn’t as important as energy for a humane kill which is why many hunters prefer .22 for that extra punch,totally agree,if they’re not degradable plastic they’re far worse then lead.

The only hybrid pellet I've tried is the RWS power ball which is included with the RWS sample packs. It's stil a lead skirt but has a coated steel head. I tried them out for a bit of amusement but actually found them to be quite accurate.

If they made them out of cellulose plastic it might be worth while. The batch number in the base of the pellet is a nice idea. I like the idea of them being made in batches. From a business point of view they can either be mixed and sold at a cheaper price or sorted in factory and sold for a more premium price. I can see people enjoying sorting each batch number for different type of airguns.

Wow nice shot. Spot on mate

I remember back in the 80's there were plastic skirted pellets called Prometheus and Sabo. Accuracy was an issue due to plastic build up in the rifling.

Cracking job. Completely agree on your thoughts. Plastic shouldn't be used for this. What are your thoughts about full copper pellets ? Or steel ?

I tried them recently and not one of my guns, Pcp's, springers or a gasram liked them. Plus if we're talking eco friendly then, as you say, plastic is worse than lead. In my opinion they are a marketing gimic to try and cash in on the current green trend!

Good video with interesting results started too good then thay started to open up, just shows how reliable the quality lead ammo is.

Wont the plastic build up in the barrel with friction and heat causing plastic particles to possibly melt onto the inside of the barrel?

They flyers might come from too high speed, since with the little weight they might fly into transsonic speeds and tumble from time to time due to little variations. Did you try lowering the power when using these hybrid pellets? Btw.: I would consider making your own ammo type, like e.g. some type of copper/bronze slugs with the help of a small hydraulic press. It is some work to do, but it might be the best choice as long as there is no environmentally friendly "biopolymere/mild steel" hybrid pellets.

I remember Ted’s holdover testing .177 pellets at speed and found out that they were unstable at the kind of speeds produced here. If you could reduce the power and speed of these the groups may start to close up.

Very light to be effective in pest control

Could you please try them out on a smooth twist barrel like a fx impact? Would be interested to see how they perform

I think the numbers on the base is the position on the injection mould. If some are misformed and all the same number ,they can identify the mould that may need attention.

Could it be that the plastic skirts are coming away from some of the projectiles mid flight causing inaccuracy. Some of those holes looked smaller than others on your paper, maybe try superglue on a few pellets and see if it makes a difference.

How about you do another try with the pellets lubed! May make a difference the plastic may be heating up and grabbing in the barrel.

was shooting Prometheus pellets when i was a kid (in 60's now). Nothing much has changed.

I purchased accupels when they first came out and gave them away after about 20 shots, thought they were awfully inaccurate for the hype. Then I tried the Prometheus plastic waisted and found too many ''wire threads'' in the barrel so gave those away too. Eventually I bought a tin of very cheap lead pellets that were triple waisted and were incredibly accurate.

Am guessing that the plastic is clogging the rifling up I had the same problem with Prometheus pellets seemed to work better in very low powered co2 guns.. they were that bad I got little coils of plastic out the rifling.. in a nutshell didn’t really work for me…

I'm waiting to see if someone tries the opposite with some sort of FMJ the technology is well matured, copper outer would run on the rifling get bullet shaped high BC and a hollow point they just need to find a new squishy core that isn't bloody plastic, like a wax or resin full of some sort. Would still be more expensive. Lead in air rifle pellet form really isn't that much trouble just sits around with oxide on I petrol going into the air was terrible, hopefully there will be work arounds for target clubs by just have more catcher targets and then on the plus side the lead can go back to the scrapyard for recycling into more pellets.

Myself prefers lead and the softer the lead the better it kills as it causes a bigger wound channel as it dumps all its energy in the area that it hits unlike pellets that penetrates to deeply

I am a newbie in air weapons, my half a century of shooting being with carbon burners until very recently, but... Might be pushing the over design velocity... they are effectively a sabot projectile, but the sabot staying with the business end means that really fine accuracy is not likely as it depends on every sabot being identical and placed exactly the same relative to the actual projectile. The distortion of the plastic bit on leaving the barrel will never be the same twice in a row.... a bit like having a barrel with a less than perfect crown. With such tiny projectiles the smallest inconsistency will have a big effect on target. Try them a bit slower, and maybe from a smooth-bore.... they should stabilise OK without twist and might in fact be more accurate that way. Discarding sabots are very accurate from smooth-bores (used in tanks these days, but the actual projectiles have fins) but these little fellows stay connected, so a bit of a different scenario. Interesting Video... 🙂

These remind me of Prometheus Pellet from the 1980's these ones dont look as good as them as they were 'spitzer' shaped and more pointy, useless at long range but really good penetration up close - but I would only use them in a British barrel like a BSA or a Webley, as have seen them separate and stick in the barrels of some continental guns not only that the clearance between the skirt and the metal head of the slug was very small so not much margin for error and the 1st batches were made of steel! the other composite slug I remember was the sussex sabot, i never liked those either as accuracy went down the toilet once u have used them a while as they left plastic in the bore too.. I havent shot my left handed hw80 in nearly 30 years I still have it, so am old fashioned lol, I dont see how plastic is eco friendly, I would rather stick to lead rather than plastic going up the barrel having seen stuck Prometheus pellets in a barrel of an old leather washered .22 hw35 back in the day that used to diesel a lot... , the 2 piece pellet had split leaving the skirt in the tight barrel, accuracy suffered after I got it out so had to scrub and polish the bore to restore it, I reckon it was down to a tiny film of plastic left last half of the barrel as the it was choked,

You need to do at least 5 pellets or more per group to determine whether they are grouping tightly or spread wide to then be able to zero the scope.

Hi! Which GOOD pellet would fit my gamo p430 pistol? I Mean, good pellet like "Gamo lethal"

Have you tried predator poly mags .. my fx maverick loved them at all ranges didn’t like anything else… being pointed plastic tips it surprised me out to 45 yds.

Im sure I remember thoben doing un choked barrels for a very similar pellet called Prometheus late 80s early 90s I remember them because they where crap and left plastic in the barrel

Gamo Lethal will actually fit into cartridges of some CO2 pistols, although at first they appear too long, like other ‘hunting’ pellets. They work nicely with Crosman Vigilante - the lighter weight being a perfect match with the lower powered CO2 - gives faster speed and a harder punch.

Blooming hell 5k views in 2 days rock on Tommy

I have found the lighter the pellet, the more it will corkscrew in flight at higher velocities and it will make your groups erratic. The Gamo Redfire pellets have the same qualities and accurate out of my smooth bores.

Mate, (I'm from the US, so I get a real kick out of sayin' that. LOL) Gamo equates with Crapo, when it comes to their pellets. Don't be surprised when you get bad, inconsistent results. I keep hoping that someone will prove, concerning that particular brand, that the consensus among airgunners is wrong, but it never seems to happen. If it weren't for the newbies that don't know any better, I don't think they would even have a market for their pellets, honestly. I'd like to point out that, because I'm a bit of an old fart, I have been trying out these two piece, non-lead and plastic, hybrid, speedy as hell, gonna save the world from lead poisoning "pellets"/"bits of excrement" since the 1980s when the Prometheus brand was introduced. Trust me when I say that no significant advancements have been made. It apparently is very hard to produce a projectile, from a SINGLE material, that is free of voids and is of a consistent density to produce tight groups at appreciable ranges. When you try to BOND two differing materials, in a consistent manner, to achieve the same goal, I have come to think it isn't practical at a reasonable cost. IMHO SYS (Save Your Shillings), Mate. (I really love that term of endearment!) One other thing to be aware of is, here in the US where we get to run ++++12 fpe guns if we like, the plastic causes a lot of fouling at high velocities. I appreciate your efforts and you spending your money to do these tests saves me from spending mine, so I thank you for spending your cash to educate the rest of us. Cheers!

Any pellets will or won't be accurate depending on each specific rifle and barrel etc.

Interesting as always 😉. Zan have released a new lead free slug. No .177 yet. Soon though 🙂.

Great video and incredible information. I did look at some research from the State of CA about MPs in raptors but it was inconclusive as to toxicity. Raptors and predators that eat wounded or dead game birds or varmints shot or killed with lead pellets, ether from a shotgun shell or any other form of lead ammo (like a .77 or .22 Cal projectile) only need ingest a micro dose of lead to die a very painful and slow death, from which most cannot be saved unless found very early on. I am desperately searching for lead-free .177 Cal. ammo for pest control around my house because I prefer to feed the carcasses to the other wild animals and do not want to contribute to lead poisoning, nor have lead waste in the yard due to misses. Just a little more info on the trade-off between lead and plastic. Statistics and field info will show lead to be highly, highly toxic and the worst of the two. Thanks again for a great video!

Interesting as always. Thank you for doing all this pellet testing. On the subject of lead / plastics - last time I checked lead was a natural element in different concentrations. Plastics are chocking the world in a much shorter time than lead. How long have we been using lead for bullets, pellets and shotgun cartridges, pipes etc.

what was the velocity of these pellets , did they exceed the sub12lbft limit ?

Here's a theory, barrels are relatively rough inside, lead fills the imperfections (hence the need to lead-in a barrel), I've a feeling the plastic leaves minute fibres in the rifling (as you found when you pulled through the barrel afterwards) which can break off and affect the next pellet that passes over. They may perform differently in an FX smoothtwist barrel. The over-penetration doesn't bode well for humane kills either.

while lead is legal I'm sure we will see many chancers like these wasters from gamo, designed for close shooting i bet. Great point re the micro plastics and yes wild life is sure to nibble that pellet over lead as i doubt the copper/metal tip stays intact so potentially wildlife with broken teeth too. pellet catchers at the club is the future and that means lead will be available so no panic just yet.

Do you think barrel companies should be doing more to make lead free pellets work, because at the moment they don't do they.

Well those Suck bring back the old Prometheus Pellets I used them decades ago in my springers and never had problems like that they were very accurate out to 35yrs no problems

I always found plastic pellets foul the barrel and found spaghetti plastic spirals in the barrel when cleaned out, this affected the accuracy badly.

Have you tried them in the katran?

Thing is lead isn’t biodegradable either, to get any sort of group with non-lead pellets. I have to clean the barrel every 10 shots ! They are getting there, but at the moment they’re useless for me as a target shooter..

I'll be sticking with JSB Hades for dealing with rabbits here thanks.

Tommy, what if you can slow them down to say 750-850. Wonder if the accuracy would improve?

The impact looks like they are hitting sideways, like the pellet its unstable/tumbling in flight.

Is there any lead free pellets in .177 that hold any degree of good accuracy ?

Do they group with fac rifles? Thing is I totally agree with your comments regarding how plastic will degrade over years.it doesn’t matter if you change from lead as you create another pellet/slug that will not be good for the ground.not sure what the Soloution is? Just another step to stop shooters really like it always has been.not allowed a lead pellet soon but will be ok for my son and daughter at school to use the same toilet? Some people have serious mental health issues……but good test again Thankyou

would imagine plastic would deform under pressure however hard it is causing unstable flight trajectory.

These pellets came out in the 1980's and were called Promethius. I used them and they were very good, then they vanished?!

they performed about as bad as i expected, so far i've yet to see any lead free pellets actually perform decently out after 10 yards.. Btw Zan slugs have just dropped some lead free slugs :P pricey but worth a look as an alternative to the plastic-but-not-fantastic junk offerings out at the moment

Nice review and well put together, don’t know why you are so impressed with penetration, a six inch nail and a hammer has good penetration but you can’t shoot them through an air rifle either. I’ve spent a fortune on lead free ammo over the last 18 months and it’s all crap and renders my guns useless, unless your happy shooting tin cans at 10m. I’m not happy unless I’m trying to hit 24mm chalk discs at 45m. So basically my guns are scrap in 5 months time.

The chemist that creates a biodegradable, lead free, accurate, affordable pellet that works just as good as lead, will become instantly rich and famous. But we aint that smart folks. We cant store antimatter either... But good video.

Have you tried Baracuda Green yet?

They look injection moulded, that's what the numbers are for. Need micrometer for size and accurate weight per cavity number to get mode, median and mean.

transonic speeds cause instability unless you change the pellet cross section

*Most of Gamo best sellers are based on the novelty aspect...* People are big fans of the red fires but to me they just look like bad quality polymags. I never had the chance to try the Lethal's yet but for the price I've seen them in the past it will most likely never happen. _I still need to test them tho... Them fancy penetrators are so expensive I won't shoot them 🤣_

Looks like these pellets started keyhole-ing really badly. Most likely getting plastic buildup in the rifling preventing them from getting a good stabilization.

Ahh the good old eco friendly plastic. And lead a natural element.

First time ive heard of plastic being eco friendly

Have you figured out whether or not they are actually biodegradable yet? I'm trying to get on their website and determine what the material of the plastic is made of but I cannot find much

Objects traveling at transonic speed (just under/over the speed of sound) will lose stability behave in unpredictable ways. Especially if the object wasn't that aerodynamic to begin with. This is because even though the object itself isn't traveling at supersonic speed it may still create localized supersonic airflows around it. Aviators learned about this phenomenon the hard way back in the 40's. It was known by arms designers long before that. Try a weaker (or stronger) rifle or pistol. There might have been some leftover barrel gunk that slowed down the first two shots.

I really hope they get it right - manufacturing a non-lead and biodegradable pellet/slug that has accuracy.

Iv'e watched the development of lead free pellets with interest over the years; and once again they are not up to any kind of standard. I think that the plastic needs to be nearly as hard as lead to grip the bore? For they are going down the barrel far too fast- possibly not gripping the rifling as well as harder materials. Just a thought! Remember they will only be needed when shooting near food stuffs or if the animal is going into the food chain (rabbits are shot in the head will this count?) this is all up to B A S C and other bodies, in the future. BUT remember that they jumped the gun with Wildfowling, a year before before any one was really ready. So to all you shooters out there STOCK UP ON YOUR FAVORITE PELLETS.

These pellets are not new I used them in the early eighties in a 22 hw 35. They were called Prometheus. I still have some and they were definitely more accurate than the gamo you are now using. Phil

So plastic will be 5 times more expensive than lead. Must mean somebody is buying up plastic shares.

JSB best bullets

Totally unsuitable for pest control and plastic all over the environment. Brilliant progress!

Well I won't be spending any money on those then! I bought my pellets in bulk about 4 years ago as I was told there would be issues and the prices would go through the roof. I have enough at 74 years of age to see me out. I've saved about £6 per 500 tin average (.177 and .22) on current prices.

If they are banning lead pellets why don’t they try making them out of the same material as the split shot used in fishing just a thought !

38% more accurate than what? We may ask. Throwing rocks? Using a sling? 😏🤷‍♂️ good review mate. 👍👏 And what’s the point of using a fancy complicated pellet as inaccurate as these are!! What a waste of money. 😏

Im am sorry but ok remove the led witch will be bad for us all but don’t replace with plastic that will be even worse micro plastic is already getting into the food chain we need a valid salutation and plastic is not the answer. Great content we need to come together as a community to find solutions

I've never seen any of the gamble poet that were worth a crap as far as accuracy

Seems like if you are gonna go green.. then just get sone good quality produced lead free standard pellets

They should make lead free slugs. The light metal should produce slugs at a weight around the level of pellets. So they should shoot at sub 12ft/lb but have the ballistic benefits of a slug. Haven’t seen any .177 slugs that would shoot well, so maybe this is an option.

It's like playing football with a penny floater.

hmmm. not the best mate . don’t think they would win me the 25 yard bench rest 😂😂

Won’t be getting those anytime soon 😮

There is no such thing as bio-degradeable plastic. Despite the commercial claims, the plastic is still the same, only the solution element dissipates faster than on the regular plastic. So, the bio-degradeable plastic creates micro plastic particles faster than regular plastic does. BUT, you can make actually bio-degradeable material that is as good as plastic, using wood fibers such as paper or cardboard. Adding a bit of candle wax coating, the end product is water proof and forms better air seal than lead. Depending on the pressure where the shape is formed, it can hold as much pressure as lead pellet. They shoot fairly heavy slugs with hard powder loads using paper mash wads.

The old Prometheus plastic skirted ammo worked well but pathetic at sub 12 ….. so the “green” skirts plastic (made from oil)and the tips coated with copper (strip mining) neither are environmentally friendly

I like rockets or a pointed style all lead has the best penetration and stability. These pellets are too light and speedy and FPE will drop tremendously at 30m. They're too long as well but too light. Predator GTO's or green labels pellets are better options!Other options are way better! Been doing this over 40 yrs!

Not sure how eco friendly these are given that copper is poisonous to trees. Any missed or through shots lodged in a tree will do harm. Hammer a copper nail in to a tree and it will kill it in a matter of months. Plus the last thing the environment needs is more little pieces of plastic littering the countryside. There is no such thing a biodegradable plastic. I bought some Gamo for 10m shooting .177. Nice for making clovers or smiley faces. No consistency in point of impact.

Even the 'biodegradable' plastic isn't very biodegradable. It only degrades in the environment of an active compost heap. (PLA aka Poly Lactic Acid)

Drop the reg pressure, Untill you get them lined up.

Don’t matter what you do, won’t replace the lead, nothing else is good enough

I tried these in my weihrauch hw77 & the grouping was terrible.

like the phrase "comedy pellets"

Wait..... how is plastic better for the environment I'm sure it's worse. Copper is less inert and extremely toxic to invertebrates, you literally use it to wipe aquariums clean. These are much, much worse. A classic case of trying to fix something that wasn't broken. Lead is salvagable with a metal detector on high sensitivity settings too, and actually have a salvage value to motivate a clean-up

I recently bought a gamo wildcat whisper rifle and have been using gamo tomahawk expansion 7.56g pellets. Such garbage. Yesterday, after a good rain the fields were soaked and so I set my Target down in the fields that way I could see where the pellets were hitting when missing the target. Well... Is interesting because some of them were hitting like 3 ft to the fucken the other side. If that kind of s*** is that bad then that is fucking dangerous. Just ridiculous..

You may have a very plasticky sticky barrel now! At the ranges you shot the accuracy is very bad. I shoot R8, R10 and a brocock in 22.

It doesn't matter what penetrative Power it has if ain't accurate it'd pointless

Only problem with plastic is it will eventually wear the barrel

Bio degradable plastic is a marketing term. It does not work in nature. These plastics need a commercial compost facility to be degraded. They will rub down to micro plastic just like their "bad" oil based plastics. As for the pellets I was very surprised about the first two shots. I could barely hit an A4 sized piece of paper 10 meters away with mine through an FX Dreamline.

Plastic foiling ?

Gamo can make very nice tin cans for pellets.Pellets inside suck tho😄

Biodegradable or not think of it this way, would you rather drink out of a glass made of plastic or lead, I think I would rather drink out of plastic than lead, just my opinion

There is no good and there will be no good alternative for lead pellets, period. Also not for .22lr rimfire ammo. I bought for almost 1000 pounds JSB Exact, Jumbo and King pellets the last months to be sure that i can continue with airgun shooting😁Also good to have the same batch number. I won't touch them as long as i still can buy lead pellets. I thought better to spend money on lead now and have fun later than dump my HW's, FWB, Diana's and S410 in the lake or shooting alloy and plastic with them. Cheers!