Gamo Hunter 440 Review

Overall Rating

Good quality, fit and finish. Beautiful, lightweight wood stock. Good, consistent power.

Typical creepy Gamo trigger. Tru-Glo sights are gimmicky, bundled scope was worthless for a springer.

Last Fall I took advantage of a sale through Cabela's, and bought a refurbished Gamo Hunter 440 package which included a 4x32 scope and mounts. The package cost all of $110 US, including shipping. Pretty good, all in all.

The Gamo Hunter 440 is a .177 calibre, break-barrel pellet rifle with a spring-piston powerplant. The grossly exaggerated press would have you believe it develops muzzle velocities of 1,100 feet per second -- the true, real-world performance is more in the range of 800-850 fps, which is more than enough, anyway.

This is my first Gamo longarm; having been "burned" (repeatedly) by the Gamo pistols I have purchased over the years, I had practically written the company off as 2nd-rate hacks. My mistake! They can, and do, make excellent rifles!

My rifle arrived with minimal protective packaging; a couple blocks of high-density foam at either end inside an oversized cardboard box. Luckily, nothing was damaged in shipping, as I have heard that Gamo Customer Service is an oxymoron in the US... Mine, however was in great shape. The metal was clean and bright, with a medium-deep bluing. The wood stock is, frankly, gorgeous, with a light, chestnut colored wood highlighted with nice checkering at the pistol grip and forearm. There is also a nice rubber buttpad with a white spacer; both are attached firmly to the stock and there was no overlap of material. The stock itself is an ambidextrous Monte Carlo sporter with a medium-sized raised cheek and little or no palm-swell.

The internals were a little greasy (of course) and the barrel was so dirty inside that it looked like it had previously been used to pump mud. A few dozen patches, initially saturated with J&B Bore Compound, took care of that. The muzzle of the barrel has a shallow crown, which could definitely be improved (in depth only, the crown is concentric and there were no burrs).

The open sights are a simply horrible tru-glo arrangement, and are pretty useless. The included scope, also useless (for a springer), was a poor quality 4x32 on thin, tiny mounts that used 1 screw ( ! ) each for gripping the scope rails. This scope, by the way, sits on one of my Crosmans (a pump-up Remington Airmaster77) where it is in no danger of getting trashed by spring recoil.

My Hunter 440 shoots very consistently in the mid 800's (fps) with JSB Exacts and is a tack-driver at 35 meters (the length of my backyard range). The trigger was predictably horrible (from what I've read), and I installed a replacement trigger - a GRT-III drop-in, that improved the trigger feel immeasurably. This add-on was about $30, but well, well worth every penny.

For the money, I don't think I could have got a better rifle. Ironic, considering I assumed I was gambling $100 on what I figured would be another in a long line of disappointments from Spain.