Baikal IZH-53M Review

Overall Rating

Not easy to shoot well (requires a disciplined hold), easy cocking, good balance

So-so workmanship, wide disparity between POI and POA

There's not a lot of spring-air pistols available in the $50 range, and by and large it's a pretty sad lot. The only ones that come to mind are the Shanghai-built S2 breakbarrel pistol (and variants), and the QS35 underlever. The S2 series generally suffer from unusable sights and poor barrel lock-up as well as triggers that are, shall we say, less than optimum. The QS35 does have a much better trigger and the fixed barrel should help accuracy, but the gun is horribly unbalanced and the grip feels like a 2x3. There are some 30-year-old Predom Lucznik's floating around for about the same price - but that's in a slightly different category.

So that leaves us with the Black Russian. As one might expect the metalwork (and even plasticwork) on this piece is not up to the same standards as a $200 pistol, and it would be unreasonable to expect it to. At this price, there's not a lot of room for spit-and-polish. Fortunately, this applies more to appearance than to operation.

The lockup on this pistol is a bit stiff - the short barrel on any breakbarrel pistol tends to make it tough to open the breach, but a soft lockup will hurt accuracy. But once it's open, the cocking cycle is surprisingly light... even if it is noisy, due to the ratchet mechanism that keeps the barrel from closing until the cocking cycle is complete. The front sight blade has a neat feature - it partially retracts into the muzzlecap when you press on it, so that it doesn't stab your hand. This feature had an additional benefit as I will relate later on.

Firing the gun yields a pleasant surprise, as the trigger is fairly light and positive. It's not quite as nice as the Marksman 2004/Beeman P17 pneumatic, but for a cheap springer - well, there's no room for complaint. Velocity is (obviously) going to be low probably in the mid 300's. But for an air pistol, it's really a moot point - it needs enough power to punch paper or knock over soda cans, and that's about it. Since it is a springer, there's a fair bit of recoil movement before the pellet even starts down the barrel (when the piston starts charging forward), so this pistol certainly takes some careful technique to shoot well. Be a little inconsistent in the way you grip the pistol - and the groups open up by a factor of 2 or 3. With practice and careful discipline, group consistency improve dramatically.

At this point, one might ask - "Why even bother with a spring pistol when the excellent Marksman 2004/Beeman P17 is available for a little less?" And indeed it is a very good question - the Marksman may be harder to cock and load, but it is a positively delightful pistol to shoot. And easy to shoot accurately. Far easier than the IZH, in fact... although I do believe the ultimate accuracy potential of both pistols is comparable.

Well, it goes back to the discipline. I recently tried target shooting with cartridge pistols, and found myself absolutely humiliated! The general opinion I got was that a powderburner pistol requires a lot more technique than the very forgiving 2004, which is not difficult to believe. The IZH, on the other hand, will let you know if your grip or your trigger pull varies from shot to shot... and hopefully, this will force some discipline into my air pistol shooting that will translate into better performance with handguns. Only time will tell, but I'm optimistic.

One last thing - this particular example had the not uncommon problem of shooting waaayyy high at short ranges. Fortunately, the spring-loaded front sight allows for an easy fix... front sight is actually a see-saw arrangement about 2" long, and is pivoted near the rear. A spring pushes the front of the sight up until the rear of the sight contacts the bottom of its holder. If you remove the sight and file a little off the bottom rear, when you reassemble it the spring will be able to push the front of the sight higher. This lowers the point of impact, and can be used to address this problem.