Cyril Lyons

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT There’s always a lot of folk spreading misinformation that this style of rifle isn’t legal. Do you really think that a company as big as BRK Brocock would produce a rifle that wasn’t UK legal? Here is an excerpt from a statement issued by Brocock on the matter; ‘Brocock confirms that the Brocock Pathfinder XR conforms with the UK Firearms Act 1968 in that it is an air weapon and is exempt from defining gun length as specified under Section 5 ( 1) (aba). ‘Brocock further defines the Brocock Pathfinder XR as an Air Rifle, which does not exceed a muzzle energy of 12 foot pounds and

Airgun development seems to move faster and faster as the years go by, and the gunmakers who embrace change rather than resist it tend to be the ones who come out on top. Brocock is a brand that most definitely isn’t adverse to progress and adaptation, and to emphasise that point the British gunmaker recently announced its decision to rebrand to BRK, on the same day that it unveiled its latest airgun offering – the subject of this review – to assembled shooting journalists on a press day at Oakedge Shooting Ground in Staffordshire.

The BRK Ghost is the fi first launch under the brand’s snappy new moniker and is a fi fitting way to mark the business’ next chapter.

A highly versatile and adaptable bullpup with variants to cover most airgun shooting scenarios, it sits very comfortably with current tastes for airgun design, whilst accommodating the degree of tuneability that more and more shooters are demanding as airgun and ammo technology progresses.

FUNCTIONAL FRAME
While the Ghost is a brand-new airgun in its own right, anyone familiar with BRK’s sister company, Daystate, will recognise the frame of the Delta Wolf and Alpha Wolf electronic superguns. The synergy between the two brands enables some terrifi c gains through shared research and development, and
the Ghost benefi ts from the
super-rigid, one-piece chassis that was developed for the flagship Daystate’s, whilst running a fuss-free mechanical action.
The stock has certainly been built more for function than form, yet the overall look remains very kind on the eye – especially in the stubby Carbine option featured here, which is just
a touch over 65cm long without a silencer fitted, has a 43cm barrel and tips the scales at 3kg. This model is equipped with a 300cc carbon air bottle, whereas the longer Plus and High Power versions both feature 480cc carbon bottles; the former has a barrel the same length as that on the Carbine, but with a longer shroud, and the latter has a 60cm barrel and can churn out muzzle energy in excess of 100 ft.lbs.

SERIOUS MONEY
Prices start at £1,440 for the Carbine, moving up to £1,500 for the Plus and £1,600 for the High Power. That is serious money but still compares very well with the Ghost’s contemporaries when you take its features, performance and build quality into account.

Starting at the rear of the titanium-coloured stock, the Ghost has a height-adjustable butt pad of simple yet effective design. In front of that sits a cheek support with a curved edge, which makes for a comfortable contact point. The support actually sits on a dovetail rail and you can slacken off its fastening screws and slide it back and forth to achieve correct positioning. That rail actually extends the entire length of the top section of the stock and also holds the Picatinny scope rail, which can be adjusted in the same way to ensure perfect eye relief whichever type of optic you choose to use. BRK has cleverly incorporated a tiny degree of slope into the rail, which should do away with the need to shim mounts when zeroing scopes at extreme range.

HUGE POTENTIAL
The stock incorporates two side rails for accessory attachment and an underside rail for bipod mounting, plus a very nice pistol grip. Contoured in a way that cradled my hand very well, the grip is steeply angled and delivers good trigger attack. Like the butt pad, it can be swapped out for different designs and the range of PRS accessories already available for the previously mentioned Daystate models result in huge potential for customising the Ghost.

Although simplistic, the ambidextrous stock has been carefully designed to function as an effective handle. As with many airguns of its kind, the carbon bottle serves as the fore-end, and even with the small bottle on the Carbine, it provides sufficient room for most holds. I did have to be mindful about keeping my fingers away from the muzzle, which only just clears the bottle – the best solution to that was to fit a 0dB silencer via the thread at the front of the carbon shroud. Apart from really suiting the gun’s styling, the silencer also muted the sub-12 ft.lbs. Ghost’s muzzle report to a whisper.

FULL-ON FEATURES
The Ghost is absolutely rammed with features, and one of the most interesting has to be its huge potential for power adjustment. All models run Huma regulators, and reg pressure – displayed on a gauge on the left-hand side of the stock – can be adjusted by the turn of a knob above the neck of the bottle on FAC models.

Legal restrictions prevent such adjustment on sub-12 versions, but all models feature a power wheel just in front of the top part of the butt pad. This dial tweaks hammer spring tension with no less than 20 settings – that is a lot more tool-free adjustment than most of us are used to on legal limit airguns, and combined with the reg’ adjuster, will facilitate a huge amount of fettling on the high-power variants.
There is another clever trick up the Ghost’s sleeve in the shape of an easily removable barrel, which enables you to swap quickly between calibres. The barrel is held securely in place by an Allen screw at its rear – slacken that off and it pulls straight out. With the barrel out, you then need to swap the pellet probe, which is fastened by an Allen screw accessed via a hole in the side of the breech, for one that corresponds with the calibre of the barrel you are changing to; replace with the correct probe, tighten the screw, slide the barrel back in, tighten its retaining screw and you’re good to go. Expect the whole process to take around five minutes once you are familiar with it.

SELF-INDEXING MAG’
Slick side lever cocking, with a chunky drop-down handle positioned just above the pistol grip, runs a very reliable magazine which holds 13 shots in .177 calibre, 11 in .22,
10 in .25 and eight in .30. Like the Alpha and Delta Wolf, it also features a magnetic ‘double-up’ system, enabling you to load two magazines at once and shunt the loaded one across when the first one runs empty.

The magazine is a gate-loading, self-indexing model. To load it, you simply flip open the gate and turn the interior drum clockwise until it stops. Drop a pellet nose-first into the bottom chamber to hold it under spring tension, and then it’s just a matter of popping pellets into the remaining chambers. When it’s fully loaded, snap the gate back over, and it’s held in place by a magnet, ready for you to push the magazine back into its slot beneath the cheek support and get on with the shooting. The pellet-friendly magazine and positive sidelever mechanism, which can be swapped over for left-handers, work brilliantly together for fast and reliable reloading.

There is a great appetite for airguns that stand out from the crowd, and Brocock airguns usually meet that demand in their own way. The subject of this review goes a step further though, taking the proven reliability of the Sniper XR action and dressing it up in an eye-catching package.

The first thing you’ll notice about the new Brocock Sniper Sahara XR is that ‘distinctive’ sand-coloured finish. That’s perfectly natural, raised as we are in a sporting world where blued and blacked metalwork sits within traditional timber, or its laminated variant, or even the increasingly accepted black synthetic stocks. The Sahara’s lighter­ than-normal presentation can certainly jar an has covered that by offering the Sniper XR in no fewer than six guises, including the more soothing combinations of wood, synthetic and dark metal.
So why the sand finish7 Mainly because Brocock supplies a healthy overseas market, which includes countries where hunting in desert regions is as normal as our own adventures in this mainly green and pleasant land. Besides, Brocock has already offered this colour scheme on its Sniper HR Magnum high-power version, so the shock of this new treatment should be survivable for most of us.

“If you want a reliable and accurate airgun that also stands out from the crowd, the Brocock Sahara XR should fit the bill perfectly,” Mat Manning, airgun journalist.

“Accuracy, power, reliable performance and head-turning aesthetics make the Brocock Sahara XR a very desirable airgun,” Mat Manning, fieldsports journalist.