Great British Shooting Show 2023

What a year it’s been since our last trip to The Great British Shooting Show and what a time it was we’ve seen some new faces in the gun industry as well as some old favourites so we thought we’d go over a couple of interesting things we saw for those of you who couldn’t make it down to show.

Air Arms Kymira

The Air Arms Kymira is a celebration of the heritage of Air Arms, where they are now and where they are heading. This rifle embodies their many significant milestones, spanning four decades and delivers prestige and performance to the shooter. Using their current cutting-edge technology, they are proud to present the Kymira, a limited edition, truly unique rifle that represents our heritage of world-beating performance and our commitment to excellence throughout their 40 years.

The gun is a piece of living history, artistically crafted from Air Arms' most notable models.

We’ve got 8 of these limited edition beauties coming in roughly May / June time so hop onto our website to pre order yours in either .177 or .22 calibre!

FX Panthera

A dedicated, purpose-built air rifle made to win precision rifle competitions

The FX Panthera is unlike any rifle FX Airguns have made before. It is a dedicated slug rifle, purpose-built with precision competition in mind, and complete with airgun innovation that continues the FX Airguns tradition of pushing the boundaries of airgun performance. 

Designed for Competition Shooting

The Panthera stock is designed for competition. It features a 14.75” long Arca rail complete with M-LOK sections and a barricade block nestled next to the breech. Achieve an ideal balance point by adding external M-LOK compatible weights or internal FX Barrel Weights that attach under the shroud

World Changing

Truly the precision rifle world will forever be changed with the new FX Panthera. The rifle feels and shoots like a precision 22LR, enjoying straight back recoil, but with precision and accuracy only found with an FX Airgun!

We should be getting our first batch of these very soon so keep an eye out on our website and social media for updates!

HIKMICRO Alpex Night Vision

Winner of the Great British Shooting Show’s Budget Night Vision of the Year!

The HIKMICRO ALPEX A50T is breaking new ground when it comes to colour night vision performance, offering a true colour image in twilight to no light this pound for pound NV giant bridges the gap between ultra high performance and fantastic pricing. The unique 1/1.18 inch sensor and 3D DNR image algorithm provide clarity images even in low light conditions of 0.001 lux this is what helps you find a clear and detailed image of your target even in the dark and starry skies. The 1440x1080 HD CMOS sensor gives a ground-breaking image in both day and night. Making the HikMicro Alpex the obvious winner when it comes to LOW-LIGHT HUNTING.

The HIKMICRO ALPEX A50T with its advanced sensor technology and image processing delivers a detailed, full-color image throughout the day - automatically adjusting to twilight and continuing to display an amazing full-colour image up until total darkness.

We've already got one of these in store so if you want to see what's so award winning about the Alpex why not pop over and see what all the hype is about!

Air Arms S510 Tactical

Winner of the Great British Shooting Show’s Airgun of the Year!

The S510 Tactical (S510T) is the perfect blend of usability and functionality. The action is built around the extraordinarily successful S510, used worldwide in many disciplines from field sports to HFT.

This versatile action has now been coupled with an ergonomic stock based on the style of choice by governments around the world. The tactical platform offers an almost limitless choice of sizes, handling positions and accessories that make using and shooting this rifle a unique experience.

The functionality of the S510T Tactical air rifle comes from the fact that all mounting points are to international specifications, the grip mount, the M-Lok slots in the fore-end and the mounting location for the butt stock. This means rifle configurations can be adapted to any shooter and indeed changed in minutes to suit changing conditions.

The M-Lok system allows direct fitting of enabled accessories or the mounting of a rail to facilitate the use of equipment you may already own.

The fore-end has M-Lok slots on 3 surfaces, one along the underside and one each side at 90°. Mount a torch on the right, sling mount on the left, bi-pod and vertical grip on the underside, or simply fit rubber inserts to further enhance stability when shouldering the rifle in the traditional fashion.

The scope rail is to the picatinny standard making swap out sights easy and precise.

ASI Accumax

Accuracy has a new name...

The New budget rifle on the block the ASI Accumax is an open sight fibre optic rifle at a fraction of the cost of most other guns these days. Tuned to ASI's specifications this light weight rifle is perfect for both Juniors and Adults with a smooth full power spring. And with a lifetime warranty you won't have to worry about any problems with it either.

We've got these in store now so come down and have a look at the new name in Accuracy available in both .177 and .22

Well that just gives you a taste of what’s out and what’s to come in terms of new Airguns we saw at the show! As always we’d like to thank everyone that came to say hi to the team while we're at the show as well as all our customers who are just as excited as we are for the new Airguns and maybe even some Shotguns down the line… 

Drapers at the Shooting Show

As many of you have probably seen from our post Last Week Team Drapers went all out at the Shooting Show last Sunday. We saw a few familiar faces from the shop and it was lovely to meet you all as well as getting to know some of our suppliers so we thought we’d let you all know how our little trip went.

Starting on Saturday we closed up a little earlier than usual to make sure we all had enough time to get down to the show, the Team quickly getting changed out of their uniforms into something more show worthy. We sadly didn’t catch any of the show Saturday but arriving at the hotel we heard nothing but good things making us excited for the coming day.  That night we went out for a meal with the folks at Sportsman Gun Centre, who had kindly offered to show us around their stall the next day. We all enjoyed some wonderful food, the lads a little annoyed at there being no ribs but quickly switched to burgers instead, and had some great conversation before retiring for the night. 

Waking it up it was a quick hotel breakfast and then off to the show. Starting off we first made our way over to Edgar Brothers, as their wood panelled stall always stands out in a crowd, we were intrigued by their .22lr Rifles, specifically the GSG STG44 and Model 16 both of which offer a nice semi auto 22 at only a £450 price point. They also had a new model of the Hatsan Factor available with a shortened barrel which offered a large capacity and tactical stock for the same price as an entry level PCP, not a bad offering given the looks.

Moving on to what Sportsman had to offer and there was a lot. Given our current interest in shotguns as our licence changes over we all had a good look at the ATAs which we were absolutely shocked at the quality to price difference with these Turkish bad boys offering Italian Level Craftsmanship at American level pricing! Sportsman have even acquired CZ so the Czech are getting in on the action with lots of bolt actions on the way. Sportsman also revealed to us a new Pard Scope along with automatically upgrading the ones we already had on order to the new ones, talk about speed, meaning that Drapers Gun Centre will be among the first to see what this new 008 has to offer.

After talking with both Sportsman and Edgar Brothers we had a chance to wander around a bit for ourselves seeing what everyone else had on offer. BSA had once again put their historical foot forward showing off both the BSA of the past and the BSA of the future. We got a quick look at the new RAWS guns, the new breed of Theobens, definitely something to be on the lookout for those of you wanting to upgrade your old Rapid 7. Umarex had some interesting offers for those out there wanting accurate HK replicas with their blowback PSG1 being an almost exact copy of the real steel variant but at almost a 3rd of the cost of the real thing!

Finally we got to sample some of the smaller stalls, and their cakes!, before Josh had a go on the Tactical Training Scenario although he might need a few more tries to beat the top score. Overall we had a fantastic day out and hope you all did too and we can’t wait to see what next years British Shooting Show has to offer.