AOA Blog

To ready the Wolverine B for shooting, pop the cover off the foster fitting under the forestock and fill the 500cc reservoir (that’s the displacement of a decent-sized motorcycle engine!) up to bar using a high-pressure hand pump or a SCUBA tank.

The underside of he forestock showing the Wolverine insignia and the cap over the foster fitting.

Next, pull the bolt all the way back so that you can slide the rotary magazine out to the left. Loading the magazine is pretty straightforward. On the back side of the magazine (if you see a full width horizontal groove, you’re looking at the front side of the magazine), there is an indentation at the bottom through which a pellet bay is visible. Push a pellet nose-first into the hole and then rotate the pellet holder portion of the magazine one click to the left (about a quarter of an inch). Load another pellet, click the magazine to the left again, and so forth. Pretty soon, you will have ten pellets loaded (they will be visible through small holes on the back of the magazine).

Slide the magazine into the receiver from the left side, slide the bolt handle all the way forward (this pushes a pellet out of the magazine and into the barrel), and you’re good to go. Take careful aim, flick the safety off, and ease the first stage out of the trigger. This requires just 8.3 ounces of effort. At 1 lb. 15.7 oz., the shot goes down range.

The Wolverine B with the shroud/moderator assembly dismounted.

Now, before we get to what happens next, an enormous digression. You’ll remember that I mentioned the Wolverine B arrived with the shroud/moderator assembly not mounted on the air rifle. Further, I had heard very good things about the Huggett moderator. What better opportunity to find out how effective the Huggett moderator is than to shoot the Wolverine B with just the naked barrel, then mount the shroud/moderator and shoot it again to observe the difference.

The Huggett moderator is extraordinarily effective.

So I shot the Wolverine B without the shroud/moderator, and all I can say is: DON’T! Without the moderator in place, this is one loud airgun. Even though Harper valve is efficient at metering the air through the action, the report is loud (not as loud as some of the Korean pre-charged pneumatics that I have shot), and it has a sharp crack to it that reminds me of a .22 long rifle shooting high-speed ammunition.

Slide the shroud/moderator over the barrel and screw it into place and shoot again, and you’ll find all that noise simply goes away. What was a loud and neighbor-annoying report becomes a soft “ping.” It is remarkable, and even more remarkable in an air rifle of the Wolverine B’s power. Take a look at the chart below. The .22 Wolverine gets at least 85 shots out of a fill-up and generates over 30 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle. That’s more than enough power to take whatever game you might reasonably want to take with a .22 caliber air rifle.

The Wolverine easily produces dime-sized groups at 100 feet, and I’m willing to bet that, with care and optimal conditions, it will produce similar size groups at 50 yards. The state of the art in today’s pre-charged pneumatic air rifles is so high that it is fairly rare to find a PCP rifle that won’t do dime-sized groups at 32-33 yards and well under an inch at 50 yards.

In the end, I liked the .22 Wolverine a whole lot. It is a big, powerful, accurate, and incredibly quiet air rifle that would make any airgunner proud.

Til next time, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott

The Daystate Wolverine is an air rifle that does a lot of things well.

What technology is doing with the latest generation of airguns is pretty amazing.

Recently, the good folks at www.airgunsofarizona.com sent me a .22 caliber Daystate Wolverine B for testing. The gun arrived with the barrel shroud, which incorporates a permanently-bonded Huggett moderator, uninstalled. The user has to slip the shroud/moderator assembly over the naked barrel and screw them together. And what the Huggett moderator does for the Wolverine B is pretty spectacular.

The walnut stock is ambidextrous.

We’ll get to that in a little while, but first let’s take a guided tour of the Wolverine B which stretches nearly 44 inches long and weighs 8.1 lbs. without a scope. At the extreme aft end is a soft rubber butt pad which is attached to an ambidextrous Walnut stock crafted by Minnelli in Italy. The hand-finished thumbhole stock features a cheek piece on either side, a nearly vertical pistol grip with the Wolverine insignia on both sides, and a landing pad for the shooter’s thumb on either side in case you want to shoot with your thumb in opposition to your trigger finger.

The trigger, bolt, and breech.

Just forward of the pistol grip, there is a black metal trigger guard that surrounds an adjustable silver metal trigger. Forward of that, the underside of the forestock is adorned with the Wolverine insignia, and forward of that, there is an inlet in the stock that contains a black metal knob. Remove the knob, and you’ll find a male foster fitting for filling the air reservoir. Above the foster fitting on the left side of the stock is an air gauge that tells how much pressure remains in the tank. On either side of the stock, just below the receiver, you’ll find the Daystate name and logo embossed into the wood.

At the front end of the forestock is the air reservoir, a 500cc black metal bottle. Above that is the barrel, which is silver metal, and the matte black shroud and moderator assembly slides over it. At the aft end of the barrel is the matte black receiver. The breech, which holds a ten-shot rotary magazine is located roughly in the middle, and there are dovetails fore and aft of the breech on top of the receiver for mounting a scope. At the aft end of the receiver is the silver metal bolt handle, which can be mounted to the right or left side according to the shooter’s preference. Just under the bolt handle is a sliding-switch type safety.

The Wolverine B is equipped with the Steve Harper designed patented “slingshot” hammer and valve train. It uses inertia to mimic the operation of a solenoid-powered valve hammer and, therefore, eliminates the phenomenon known as “hammer bounce.” Hammer bounce is common in conventional PCPs and involves the valve opening and closing after the main discharge, wasting air long after the pellet has zipped down the bore. The Harper valve delivers extremely efficient use of air, a very high number of shots per charge, a flat power curve, an ultra-fast firing cycle and a relatively quiet (for the power level) muzzle discharge. The slingshot system is also remarkably simple and reliable. As a result, Daystate offers the Wolverine B with a three-year warranty.

Next time, we’ll take a look at how the Wolverine B shoots.

Til then, aim true and shoot straight.

–          Jock Elliott