2024 is winding down and quicker than I can perceive. My, how time does fly. 2025 will be here in no time and eventually it will be time for some airgun competitions. In reality, there’s a good 7 months between “now” and “then”. And in reality there will be plenty of projects, things to do, minor emergencies, snow days, rainy days, and such to fill in the calendar in the time between. I would lying to say that I would not be shooting my .22 caliber Zelos quite a bit in this off-season time.
The Zelos is a pure joy to shoot. Yes, I do have a dog in this hunt, but honestly, this isn’t just my honest opinion. We’ve heard and seen gobs of positive feedback on this rifle in the brief time since it has been made available on the market. Some shooters are just shooting the rifle as it comes out of the box, and some hitting the mod vendors and breaking out the Allen keys and screw drivers for fine tuning.
At this point, I’m in the out-of-the box crowd because I was very happy with the performance I was getting with one particular pellet, the JSB Exact Jumbo Monster Light 20.83gr, but not being one to let well enough alone, I am open to doing a bottle conversion to increase shot count for events like steel challenge or 50 yard benchrest. I’ll also try out some tuning options for heavier pellets while I am at it. Who knows, I might be able to get my Zelos sorted out for 100 benchrest in the various desert and cornfield ranges where these events take place. We will see.
So what is cooking on the aftermarket front for the Zelos? The biggest buzz on the interwebs at the moment is the bottle conversion. This is done using the appropriate bottle size of your choice paired with an 18mmX1.5 regulator that allows for a hot swap (taking the bottle off under pressure). While this solution does give the shooter a much larger air capacity, it does eliminate the factory bi-pod mount.
This is where 3-D printers like Buck Rail, BlackArts Design, Bravo3D, and DonnyFL come into play. We’ve seen some custom machined metal rails already, too. There are already pump actions made to fit Zelos. Depending on how you feel about barrel bands, there are several options out there for use with the factory tank configurations. It stands to reason that there will be barrel bands made for the bottle conversions as well.
This does make me wonder, what else does the aftermarket have in store for the Zelos? Not only this, but where shooters will show up with it? Will it take off with the small game, pesting, or iguana hunting crowd? Maybe we will see more Z-guns entered in sanctioned competitions? I also wonder which caliber will sell more, the .22 or .25 caliber version. Only time will tell.