Best .177 Caliber Airgun Pellets | The Ones I Actually Use and Trust
I bought and shot 13 .177 pellets through three guns on paper and real pests. Here are the 7 that earned a spot in my lineup, and the one I always keep loaded.
Testing pellets is a pain in the ass. Not because it’s hard, but because it takes real time. You have to shoot a lot, take notes you can actually read later, and be honest with yourself about what you’re seeing instead of talking yourself into a pellet because you already bought the tin.
I bought thirteen different .177 pellets for this one and shot each at least 50 times through three guns: my Daisy 880, my Gamo Varmint break barrel, and my Umarex Ruger Blackhawk. I shot them resting, standing, and leaning against a tree in the woods, at paper targets and at real pests, squirrels tearing up roofs and soffits, armadillos, the stuff that actually pays the bills around here.
There’s a lot of hype in this category. Every brand claims their pellet is the most accurate and the hardest hitting, and most of those claims don’t survive contact with an actual chronograph or an actual squirrel.
These seven made the cut because they held up. Price didn’t decide who made this list, performance did. Here’s what earned a spot in my lineup, and why.
Gamo Lethal
A hard-hitting round for guys who want reach, not just accuracy.
I’m going to be straight with you on this one. The Gamo Lethal is inconsistent. Some days it groups great, other days it opens up and I can’t explain why. My theory after burning through a lot of these is temperature. Cold air seems to mess with them. If you’re shooting these in January, don’t expect the same groups you got in July.
But here’s why they made the list anyway: when this pellet connects, something dies. These are light, they’re fast, and they carry a shocking amount of energy downrange for a .177. You need a high-power gun to get the most out of them, something pushing 800 fps or better, but if you’ve got that, this pellet reaches out and does real work.
I use these on squirrels, and they’ll put one down clean at 50 yards, which is not a distance most .177 pellets have any business being lethal at. My good friend runs these on his dairy farm in Wisconsin for pigeons and groundhogs, and he says the same thing I do: feathers everywhere. They’re not cheap at nineteen bucks, but for what they’re built to do, they earn every penny.
H&N Slug HP
My go-to for anything squirrel-sized and up.
Slugs are a different animal than traditional diabolo pellets, and the H&N Slug HP takes a little getting used to before you’re loading them without thinking about it.
The shape is not forgiving if you’re used to dropping a standard pellet into the breech without looking. Slow down, seat it right, and you won’t have issues. It’s a small learning curve and it’s worth pushing through.
Once you’ve got the loading dialed in, this is the pellet I reach for on squirrels and anything else in that size class. It hits hard. The expansion on impact is exactly what you want out of a hunting pellet, this thing opens up and transfers energy instead of just poking a hole and continuing on.
That’s the difference between a pellet that wounds and a pellet that gets the job done. If squirrels are tearing up your roof or your soffit, this is the round I’d put in the gun.
H&N Terminator
Tight groups, real knockdown power, and I haven’t found anything that beats it.
This is the pellet I keep coming back to, and there’s a reason it’s near the top of this list. Every time I load these, I get tight groupings. Not sometimes, not on a good day, every time. That kind of consistency is rare enough that when you find it, you stop shopping around.
On squirrels, these pellets do damage. They hit hard and they get the job done, no wounded animal running off to die somewhere you can’t find it. Beyond the performance, the value here is hard to beat.
You get a large quantity per canister, so you’re not burning through a tin in a weekend, and the price stays reasonable while the pellet performs like something twice the cost. I’ve tried plenty of other .177 pellets looking for something better, and so far, I haven’t found it. That alone should tell you what you need to know.
Hawk Thunder
A solid pest control option, with one caveat if you run a magazine.
I kept seeing the Hawk Thunder pop up online and finally decided to see what the fuss was about. Glad I did. Trajectory in flight is good, and I was able to pull solid, consistent groupings out of it at short to medium range without much fuss. This is a pellet that does what it says it’s going to do.
One thing worth flagging before you buy a tin. I tested these in a single shot rifle, not a magazine fed gun, so I can’t tell you firsthand how they feed. They’re noticeably longer than your standard Crosman Walmart pellet, and that extra length may not play nice with every magazine out there.
If you’re running a repeater, check your mag’s tolerances before you commit to a full tin. I used the Thunder to zero a scope at 25 yards and it held up well for that job. As for taking down nuisance rodents, these will carry the mass to do it, but like most pellets, how clean that kill is comes down to how much power your gun is putting behind it. Solid pellet, just know your setup first.
Gamo Tomahawk Expansion
I went in expecting to be let down. I was wrong.
I’ll be honest, my expectations were low walking into this one. I’d already been burned by the Lancer, and my history with Gamo’s own “Match” pellets left a bad taste, because there was nothing matched about them.
If random fliers are what passes for match grade these days, count me out. So when I loaded up the Tomahawk Expansion, I was bracing for more of the same.
Instead, I came away genuinely impressed. These pellets are accurate, shot after shot, with only the occasional flier creeping in, and even that is rare enough that it doesn’t sour the group.
For thirteen bucks, this is a pellet that outperforms what its price tag and its brand’s recent track record would suggest. If you’ve been burned by Gamo before like I have, this one is worth setting that history aside for.
Predator Polymag Metalmag
Pricey for a reason. One of the best pellets I’ve ever run.
At twenty-six bucks, the Polymag Metalmag is the most expensive pellet on this list, so I went in with high expectations. It met them. This is not a pellet to play around with. The accuracy is extremely good, consistent enough that I’d put it up against anything else in this roundup without hesitation.
I did notice a few of the polymer tips had worked loose and rattled out in the tin before I even loaded them, which is worth knowing if you’re buying these; handle the tin gently and check your pellets before you load.
That’s the one knock. Everything else about this pellet is exactly what you’d want out of a premium round. On varmint control, it is deadly, full stop. This is genuinely one of the best pellets I have ever used, and if you can stomach the price, it earns every dollar.
Crosman Premier Piranha
Cheap, reliable, and they get a lot of unfair hate.
The Piranha catches flak from a certain crowd of pellet snobs, but at eight bucks, this pellet gets the job done, and I’ve got the dead squirrels to prove it. These are what I reached for on the squirrels that were chewing up my soffits, and they handled the job without complaint.
Here’s the thing you need to know before you buy these. If you want them to actually mushroom and expand on impact, you need velocity behind them.
In my testing, anything under 600 to 700 fps, and the Piranha just didn’t deform at all; it went in and stayed a pellet instead of doing what a hollow point is supposed to do.
Get above that threshold, and they perform the way they’re designed to. I’ve run these through everything I own, spring piston, PCP, all of it, and they’re reliable and fairly accurate across the board. This is not a fancy pellet, and it doesn’t need to be. For the price, it is hard to beat, and it earns its spot on this list on value alone.
Final Verdict: What’s Actually Worth Loading
If I could only keep one pellet out of this whole lineup, it’s the H&N Terminator. It’s the one I keep coming back to no matter what I’m shooting or what I’m shooting at. Tight groups every time, real knockdown power on squirrels, and I still haven’t found anything that beats it.
If I’m allowed a second pick, it’s the Crosman Premier Piranha, purely on price. Eight bucks a tin and it still gets squirrels off my roof, that’s the kind of value you can’t argue with.
Everything else here earned its spot for a reason and is worth having in the truck depending on the job, but those two are the ones I don’t run out of.
Blair Witkowski is an avid watch nut, loves pocket knives and flashlights, and when he is not trying to be a good dad to his nine kids, you will find him running or posting pics on Instagram. Besides writing articles for Tech Writer EDC he is also the founder of Lowcountry Style & Living. In addition to writing, he is focused on improving his client’s websites for his other passion, Search Engine Optimization. His wife Jennifer and he live in coastal South Carolina.
