Crosman M4-177 Tactical Style Variable Pump .177-Caliber Pellet/BB Air Rifle

When I first received this pellet gun/BB gun, I was a bit frustrated with it. I wanted to use it as a pellet gun (not a BB gun) and the pellets kept getting stuck in the barrel. PLUS…the pellets were hitting all over the place. I had to keep using a .22 cleaning rod to try to unjam the pellets as I was trying to get the sights adjusted to get on target. But, I didn’t give up.I cleaned the barrel and the accuracy and reliability got a little better. I shot and cleaned some more and it got better still. Apparently it needs some breaking in. So, shoot and clean, shoot and clean… and maybe repeat… until it works well.The sights were another matter. The rear sight was frustrating because I kept getting glare from the shiny plastic around the peephole that kept me from being able to see through the peep.I even tried mounting the sight backwards before I gave up and removed the rear sight completely. I put a $20 red dot on it (from Amazon: “CVLIFE 1X22X33 Red Green Dot Gun Sight Scope Reflex Sight with 20mm Rail”). I really wanted a cheap red dot for it anyway. Problem solved... and more fun to shoot now!Mine was HARD to pump when new. I wore my arm out trying to get it sighted in and broken in. It got better over time, especially after oiling it with some Crosman Pellgunoil.If you’ve had any rotator cuff issues with one of your shoulders in the past, I highly suggest that you change the way you pump this thing to avoid getting a repetitive stress issue that can leave your whole arm hurting… from your shoulder, elbow, and all the way down to your wrist! Avoid reaching to pump.So, to avoid that, I just put the stock between my knees, bend slightly, and hold near the end of the barrel with my non—pumping hand. This way you have TWO points of contact to immobilize the gun and give you something SOLID to comfortably push directly against… (your knees and your other hand). This keeps the gun from moving around as you pump. It kind of feels like when you are bending to pump water from a solidly tightened well pump vs. a well pump where the bolts/nuts have worked loose from it’s mount and is moving around on you.At first, I got better results using the more expensive pellets, but as time went by (I’ve probably shot at least 1500 pellets so far)… I found that I can use the less expensive stuff too! At this point, I’ve found that I can shoot various Daisy, Winchester, GAMO, Crosman, etc. out of it without the jams that I experienced before.Expect to pump this “variable pump” gun more minimum pumps than you might with a Umarex. Think of it as a little free exercise. I find that I need 3 to 4 pumps to shoot most of the time, but, it is worth it (NO CO2 to have to buy, install, and have to use up either)!While, nothing on this gun functions like a MSR… it is molded to FEEL like you are holding and shooting the fun and familiar AR15 American “Modern Sporting Rifle” platform… but, SO MUCH LESS expensive to shoot! Plus, you can shoot it anywhere... even indoors with a good homemade pellet trap! A lot of fun for the money!

I really like this BB gun . It looks so real and it's so much fun to shoot. ( Use only under adult supervision because it is strong)..

The Crosman M4-177 assault-rifle lookalike (inasmuch as an all-plastic air rifle covered with non-functional switches and levers molded into its body can imitate a powerful, semi and fully-automatic firearm made almost entirely of metal) shoots pretty danged sweet, once the shooter gets the hang of using it. Usually, this is just about my one and only personal gauge of the true worth of an air rifle. After all, if you can't hit the point at which you're aiming, the thing is worthless (in my book, at least). Well, that isn't a problem, as the M4-177 turned out to be very nicely accurate, but at a price: simply shooting it takes a considerable amount of effort, at least, compared to any other .177 caliber variable pumper with which I've had any experience. Firstly, you /have/ to use the 5-round clip to shoot pellets, with the one and only clip that ships with the air rifle. Although I read lots of user reviews and professional evaluations before deciding to make a purchase, and after that, even my first pass through the manual, somehow, I still missed the fact that you absolutely cannot shoot this airgun like one does with any and every other .177 caliber variable pumper ever; there is NO way to manually load and shoot this air rifle one pellet at a time (again, as it's done with every other .177 caliber variable . . . etcetera). Interesting. It wasn't until my second time through the manual, with the air rifle in my hands preparatory to shooting it for the first time, that this truly sank in. I somewhat doubtfully suppose some exceptionally dexterous individual might be able to hold a pellet at precisely 90 degrees to the axis of the air rifle, and by using a tweezer or something like it, reach in and insert said pellet through the small side opening otherwise closed in on all sides by plastic and still manage to get it inserted into the barrel, then close the bolt, take aim, click it off safe and shoot, but that would be even more time-consuming than using it as designed. Fine. The clip it is.Okay, now I'm finally ready to shoot. The next thing I figured out was the fact that a 5-pellet clip isn't advanced automatically as you shoot. Instead, you have to pull back the bolt, put the rifle on safe (if shooting safely), reach out and use your hand to push the clip over to the first or next chamber containing a pellet, close the bolt, etc., and then you're ready to shoot: this shot and four more, as long as the clip was full when you started. After the fifth shot, you again pull-push the clip out, refill it with five pellets (certain pellets only, wadcutters recommended), put it back in, make sure it's pushed over to the first pellet chamber, then repeat the procedure as outlined earlier. After the fifth shot, once again you pull it out, refill it, pull the bolt back, put it back in. . . and repeat, and repeat, and repeat ad infinitum with every fifth shot for as long as you can stand to do it, or as long as you planned to shoot, whichever comes first. Since the air rifle ships with only the single clip. I hate to say it, but it wasn't really very long at all before I realized I wasn't having much fun shooting my new air rifle. Never before have I wanted so badly to be able to shoot, reach out with my hand, pick up and drop in another pellet, close the clip, take aim, shoot, etc. You know, kinda just like I do with every other variable pump pneumatic .177 caliber pellet rifle available today? Nope. Ain't gonna happen. So... the lesson I take from this is to make sure to acquire more clips before you buy the M4-177. It's just as tedious to use the clip and change it out every five shots for one freshly loaded as it is when you only have one, but with a little bit of effort beforehand, at least you don't HAVE to refill the clip every five shots! To me, using this old and out-of-date technology designed originally for use with one of Crosman's cheapest and oldest smoothbore variable pumpers adds considerably more time to a shooting session than would be necessary if I were just doing it by hand the old-fashioned (and easy) way.Okay, I've taken a shot and now I need to adjust the sights for accuracy. Looks like I'll need quite a bit of elevation and a smidge of right windage. I grab the plastic tool you're supposed to use as a screwdriver slash hex key driver and try it on the front sight. Hey! It works great, but the windage screw on the rear sight of my new air rifle is pretty snugly set, so my first attempt to use the screwdriver end of the tool to turn it results in the soft plastic out of which the blade is made ripping, rendering that end of the tool absolutely useless from then on. Luckily, I had my handy-dandy Victorinox Officier Suisse pocketknife with phillips and straight-edge screwdrivers in my pocket, which took care of the windage adjustment easily and quickly, but whoa, that tool designed for the job was ruined the first time I tried to use it! Had it been made of cheap metal, or even a rigid resin, no problem, but it's made of the same cheap plastic as everything else on the air rifle and it failed as soon as it encountered a little real resistance, which happened to be the first time it was used, so that was a bit off-putting as well, but then maybe I'm just being too particular about these things. No big deal really, since I carry a tool that can do the job when necessary, but jeezo-flip man, the dedicated gizmo shipping with the rifle should be able to do the job, first time and every time, to my way of thinking. At least the other end still works, so I keep the tool inside the fake removable rifle magazine, in the round hole designed for it (beside the empty spaces for two more clips, which do NOT ship with the air rifle (besides, even three would be too few for target shooting).Okay, enough complaining. Yes, it takes a lot of time to fill a large number of clips (once I finally found a source for any that weren't almost nine bucks each (!!!), I bought sixteen on ebay for about $3.00 per clip) and then manually inserting and advancing a pre-filled clip for every one of the five shots it makes possible, before removing the empty and replacing it with another that's been pre-filled. When finally I was able to really shoot my air rifle and get it sighted in (it took very few shots), I can say with great delight and positivity that it was extremely accurate! Yes! The aperture sights (one for the up-close and personal shooting and another you can flip up for general-use) work very well, and once I had my M4-177 sighted in, it shot every bit as well or better than any other air rifle I own, of any type and in any caliber! Seriously, the pumping is just as easy as most of my other .177 caliber variable pumpers, so discovering how accurate I could be with it pretty much makes up ("pretty much" being the operative words here) for the shortcomings I've found (and I'm too tired to keep typing, or I could add a few more), so, if I go strictly by my self-imposed judging criterion that an air rifle that shoots accurately is an air rifle one should keep (and I have, pretty much), this is a keeper. It does shoot VERY nicely, which does ensure I pretty much have more fun than hassle when I'm shooting it, so I've added it to my collection and actually have become quite adept at its use. Filling sixteen (one was damaged) clips before or after every shooting session remains a major drag when I decide to shoot with this, unfortunately, but that's the cost of entry for this airgun. I have to admit to liking it more than I don't like it, at least, pretty much. :-)Actually, I like my newest air rifle now much more than I did initially. It is a lot of fun, but nearly every time I use it for awhile, I still tend to walk away with somewhat mixed feelings. It shoots great. That's a lot, since not a lot of other low-cost air rifles do, or even can, shoot well and few as well as does this one. Still, being a plastic look-alike of an M4/AR clone, with only a five-pellet clip that has to be advanced by hand for every shot, capable of shooting short range only because it's a smallest caliber, air-powered variable pumper? The idea of the package as a whole just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, unless maybe it's designed specifically to awaken major materialistic gotta-have-it feelings in almost every red-blooded American kid out there. I think it takes a little too much effort, even with the great accuracy, to do a lot with the air rifle, when the best it can do is low-powered, short-range shooting anyway, although I suppose gun-crazy American kids might really enjoy delivering genuine lead down-range, on-target, with what looks a lot like a real assault rifle, down even to the same type of open sights, and a rail on which shooters can add the same excellent optics, for as little as twenty bucks to beyond affordability, as those designed for the real weapon. I've decided to keep it because (one): I love it for indoor target shooting, since it's exceptionally accurate, and (two): my wife thinks it looking like the real thing is pretty dope, so what the heck? For me, it's a keeper.Also, I suppose (keeping a VERY open mind) that if you're an adult with a real M4 or cheap assault-rifle clone, MAYBE it could be argued that this super lightweight and non-functional, all-plastic air rifle that shoots super-cheap .177 caliber pellets will keep you in practice with your real firearm, but that's something of a stretch for me, and I would much rather be able to load this by hand one shot at a time than be forced to use the clips with far too few rounds, but hey -- it really does shoot very well. I've always claimed that this was the one true gauge of the worth of any airgun, and yes, this airgun shoots accurately indeed, so I've decided to keep it. It does add more time to my shooting when I decide to choose it over another from my collection (already an issue with all variable shooters), but what the heck? I mean, it was a super-thoughtful gift from someone I love, it's a well-done model of the real thing and I do love the excellent accuracy, so to me, it's pretty darned sweet. Recommended (pretty much). :-)

great gun. shoots pellets and BBs!!! looks so cool! quality is good. over all great gun!!

If the bolt slides all the way forward it gets stuck and is very difficult to cycle. I corrected this by glueing a piece of plastic into the well to act as a stop. After that it functioned perfectly.This rifle is not as robust at the Air-17 from the 80s. It’s mostly plastic. The bb loading works better but the pellet magazine does not fit in the rifle snug.The rear sight is not adjustable. I changed it so have no way to know if the factory sight is accurate at all.Overall it’s disappointing but it DOES have an adjustable stock that fits a kindergartner.

It was cool I liked it