The FX T12 Whisper is a PCP that you don't really hear a lot about. I've had mine since early 2007, and she has been a stellar performer on a variety of ground squirrels, as well as prairie dogs.
It's manufactured by the FX Airgun Company out of Sweden. They are known for making excellent quality airguns. I have several others of theirs, and they are some of the most accurate PCP's that I have had the pleasure of shooting.
The Whisper that I own is in .22. She takes a 12 round, self indexing magazine, and I get 36 shots on a fill. The one complaint that some folks have, is the fact that it does not have an air gauge that shows remaining pressure. I have never found this to be an issue. I know I get 36 shots (3 mags) on a fill, so when I've gone through three mags, I know it's time to refill. No big deal.
I took her out yesterday for a romp in the woods, and to see if we could maybe find a few ground squirrels. I haven't hunted with this rifle in a couple of years, and was really looking forward to getting reacquainted.
As usual, the first thing I did, was to put my portable target frame out at 50 yards, and check my zero. I keep a 3x5 information card on each of my rifles. I pulled the one for the Whisper and reviewed the data for this gun.
It showed the best fill pressure to be 2900 psi to give 36 shots. It also showed that the JSB Exact Jumbo in 15.9/16 grains to be the lead pellet of choice, and also showed that I have her sighted in at one half inch high at 50 yards.
I threw my Caldwell Shooter's Bag on the hood of my vehicle and rested the rifle on it. The wind was pretty stiff, so I waited for it to drop and fired one shot at a Birchwood Casey Shoot-N-C bullseye target. The inner circle 10 ring, is one inch in diameter. So I then know, that by holding at six o'clock on the ten ring, it's one half inch from there to the orange dot in the center. The pellet landed just a tiny fraction of an inch from the orange dot. The zero is obviously still good, so I put the target frame away, geared up, and started to hunt.
I was only about 75/80 yards into the forest, when I spotted the first squirrel of the day sitting on a stump at 60 yards. At sixty yards, I put the horizontal crosshair on the top of its head, and because of the left to right wind direction, put the vertical crosshair on the left edge of the squirrels body. I took up the trigger pressure, the shot broke and rolled the furball off the back of the stump. Not a bad start to what turned out to be a fun day.
A little while later, I spotted another squirrel sitting on stump, at a little over 100 yards away, and started my stalk to close the distance some. I shouldn't have bothered. As I was checking the squirrel through my binoculars, to make sure it hadn't bolted, a Red Tail hawk came whistling out of the trees and grabbed that sucker off the top of that stump. I've seen that before, but it's still pretty amazing to see when it happens. Amazing or not, I also knew that a hawk in the area would put a damper on the squirrel hunting for awhile.
I decided to head back to my vehicle for a lunch break, to let things settle down, and hope the hawk would vacate the area that I was hunting in. While eating my sandwich, I could see that there was actually a pair of Red Tail hawks soaring above where I was located. Probably a mated pair. I had lunch, and just hung out for about half an hour. The hawks eventually disappeared off to the south.
Figuring that things had settled down enough, I grabbed my rifle and headed back into the forest. I hadn't gone but maybe a hundred yards, when I saw a squirrel hunkered down on a log, facing directly toward me. The distance lasered at 49 yards. I set the rifle up on my bipod, and holding a bit low for that range, touched off the shot. At pellet impact, the squirrel was picked up and tossed off the back of the log.
Like I seem to manage to do at least once on every hunt, I forgot to put the camera in record mode, so didn't capture the shot on tape. When I got up to the squirrel though, I could see that the pellet entered just under its nose and had passed the full length of its body. Instant lights out.
The afternoon was a bit overcast, windy and cool, but I was able to locate a few more squirrels, and it turned out to be a very fun day.
Below are some video clips I shot during the hunt. They run just a bit over 3 minutes, and may take 20 to 30 seconds to load.
When it comes to PCP's, I think the FX Whisper is kind of a sleeper. It sells for under a grand, and when it comes to accuracy, mine holds its own against my other guns no problem.
I really like the synthetic thumbhole stock, and I also like the fact that with the camera mounted, it only weighs a bit over eight pounds. Even at 8000 foot elevation, I can carry this rig all day.
I've got another area in mind to check out for squirrels, and I think the Whisper will be the gun of choice for that hunt as well.
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