The Crosman 760 - a Review

Crosman claims that over 12 million of these little air rifles have been sold during an continuous production run starting in 1964 - that’s well over a quarter a million a year for 45 years - so they must be doing something right with their Crosman 160!

To find out, I did what most people do. I went to Wal-Mart and walked out with one under my arm for the princely sum of $29 plus tax. But then I decided to do what most people don’t : I gave the Crosman 760 an Archer Airguns “Gold Service” test to find out what performance it produces. I also tested it with four different types of pellets to see how pellet sensitive this 760 is.

Crosman claims a muzzle velocity of up to 600 fps with pellets for the 760. I’m here to tell you that my Crosman 760 achieves nothing close to that with lead pellets - it’s more like 500 fps. But using Crosman Silver Eagle lead-free wadcutters, my 760 did manage to average nearly 630 fps.

Amazingly, I’ve never shot a Crosman 760 before, but I here’s what I found...

The gun is overwhelmingly “plastic” to the touch - as most of the parts are made of this material. Personally I don’t like this, but it does make the 760 very light and easy to hold. It’s undoubtedly a big contributor to that sub-$30 price point, too.

Pumping was surprisingly hard and made a loud sound each time the forearm completes its stroke and hits the air tube. This actually seems louder than the sound of the 760 firing! I used 10 pumps for each shot, the maximum recommended by the manufacturer, to achieve the highest muzzle velocity.

I thought the trigger was fine. Mine pulled fairly evenly at about 3.5 pounds. And I had no jams in 50 shots (that’s 10 “warm up” rounds plus four test targets of 10 shots each). Not bad! The factory iron sights are also surprisingly good, although I used a red dot scope for the testing.

The 760 comes in a nice, brightly-printed box and the instructions are in Spanish and English. I can’t read Spanish, but the English instructions didn’t really seen ideal to me, I still needed a little experimentation to learn how to load the pellets into the clip and the clip into the 760, for example.

So how did my 760 shoot? Well, the test targets are below. I simply followed the standard Archer Airguns “Gold Service” test procedure four times with different pellets. Each test was fired with 10 pellets. And each time I called a “flyer” with one pellet that was way out of the main group. You’ll see this below. All the tests were shot using my trusty Leapers red/green dot sight.

First off, the standard Crosman wadcutters. Available everywhere, these shot at an average muzzle velocity of just over 480 fps, giving a muzzle energy of a little over 4 ft/lbs. Don’t hunt any bird or animal with this gun, there’s not enough power for a humane kill in my opinion. Accuracy was OK-ish. Not bad for a sub-$30 gun with an un-rifled barrel.



Next, I tested Crosman Silver Eagle wadcutter pellets. As in every gun I’ve shot these through, the muzzle velocity was excellent - 25% better than with lead pellets. The bad news? That muzzle velocity comes with even less muzzle energy (because of the light weight of the pellets) and abysmal accuracy. I can’t hit the proverbial barn door with these pellets in any air rifle.



Third was the turn of the Chinese “The Peak” pellets that we sell. These produced better accuracy and muzzle energy than the Crosman lead wadcutters, probably because they use a softer lead and have a wider “skirt”. These probably sealed better in the barrel and allowed less air to leak past the pellet than the Crosman wadcutters. They gave the highest muzzle energy at nearly 5 ft/lbs, together with fairly reasonable accuracy.




Finally I tested Crosman Premier Light pellets. These domed pellets are relatively expensive, but wow, what great accuracy! Suddenly the 760 was producing excellent accuracy, vastly better than I expected for this little air rifle. Just look at this test target!



So, the little 760 finally found a pellet it liked, and how!

Overall, I feel that you can’t complain about the Crosman 760 for $29.00. But somewhere around $70 buys a far, far, far better air rifle, such as the QB78 or QB36-1. These guns are all metal and wood and will last a lifetime, they’re more accurate and significantly more powerful, yet still easy to shoot - and they don’t need all that noisy pumping...