Air Rifles

[coke.wit.lamb]

I'm looking to buy an air rifle and I want to know if anyone can convince me one way or another. I'm looking .22 (pellets) rifle that can be used for hunting small game or pest control. From browsing the Candian Tire and Walmart sites, it seems that I can only find .177's that shoot up to 495fps - is that adequate for a clean kill at 40-50 yards?

I don't really care about a scope, but I'm looking for something with reliable fixed sites; a straight shooter.

I looked into the Crosman Phantom and it seems to be a fairly accurate gun and sounds like a good deal for the cheap. It's .177, but one review said I could replace the O-Ring and if I use the right ammo (Gamo/Crosman Premier) I can shoot 200-300 more fps.

Seems like there's a relatively small air gun market in Canada, so any advice is likely to be useful.

[billboa]

ive hade many different air rifles/pistoles and the .22 pellet with the flat tip fucks shit up. i perfer the flat tips over the pointy because i find it does more damage(windows smash easily with the flat tup but the pointy seems to just ricochete off it). the only experinece in acctually shooting animals is small birds, a possum and rats. birds r the easiest to kill, rodents seem to have a pretty thick skull so it may take a couple shots.

the canadian tire and walmart ones r OK but defnitly nothing special but are inexpensive. a hunting store have better quality ones for sure. u can get cool ones, my buddy has a fully auto replica uzi that shoots metal bb's.

[coke.wit.lamb]

Cool, I read that the flat tips generally are more powerful. What rifle would you pick as your favourite (whether you've owned it or not)? I'm hoping to get an air rifle that can make the cleanest kill; hopefully something quiet, too just so as not to scare off the quarry if I miss.