.177 or .22 for me?

[fabsroman]

You guys want to hear something crazy, my uncle killed several deer with a RWS Model 54 .22 airgun out of his window. Granted, they were 10 feet or less away, but he killed them. I never would have believed it if it wasn't for my aunt swearing about it (i.e., she is really religious) and the fact that my cousin did them same thing when he inherited my uncle's airgun 2 months ago upon my uncle's passing. I am still a little skeptical about it, and know that I am not able to cleanly kill a groundhog at 25 yards with a .177 RWS Model 36 at 1,100 fps. I do know that my airgun will cleanly kill doves out to 30 yards and crows out to 20 yards. Starlings are no problem out to 25 yards. Then again, none of the shots made to kill these deer have been the drop them in their tracks dead type of shots, but I have seen deer run further after being shot with rifles as comapred to how my uncle and cousin describe what the deer did after being shot with the .22.

In the end, I think a .22 at a reasonable range would kill a raccoon. The question is what is reasonable. I think you need to start at 10 yards and see where it goes from there.

As far as a airgun recommendation, I don't have one for less than $200. The ones I described above run about $400.