To aid in your quest to find the perfect airgun fior your child to start out on, we have shot, looked at, and reviewed the Crosman Pumpmaster 760 just for you! So, is it the best airgun for a child?
The Crosman Pumpmaster 760 is a great airgun for kids provided they have the strength to pump it. Young children may find it difficult to pump, though the speed and power is great for children to learn on.
These core features make the gun great for a starter marksman, but that is not all there is to know about this gun.
What Makes this Gun Great for Kids?
Again, the two core features of this gun
that make it a good starter are its under powered nature and scaled down size. An errant BB or pellet would have the power to cause an injury, but not a serious one. Because the gun is physically smaller, it is also not terribly awkward for a child to hold.
It even weighs an incredibly small amount, just 2 pounds! It does this without sacrificing any sort of appearance. The gun does not feel like it is cheaply made. You can definitely tell that it is not a PCP, but you can also tell that it was not poorly made.
This Crosman Pumpmaster also is able to shoot both lead pellets and steel BB’s, making simple plinking quite cheap, with BB’s coming in at a few dollars for several thousand BB’s. Honestly, if you or your child are not shooting the gun often and consistently over a long period of time, a single container of BB’s could last years.
The gun is able to shoot both types of ammunition by being a smooth bore gun, meaning that there is no rifling, which in turn means that it will not retain a whole lot of accuracy the further down range that you go, but that is okay because this gun was not intended to be a target shooting champion gun, it was intended to be a fun stater gun, and it delivers that quite well.
The fps of the gun is always asked about, and is quite important, so we shot the gun with both types of ammunition, lead pellets and BB’s. Here is what we found with our chronograph.
| Number of Pumps | Muzzle Velocity in fps |
| 3 | 265 |
| 5 | 375 |
| 7 | 431 |
| 10 | 488 |
| Number of Pumps | Muzzle Velocity in fps |
| 3 | 315 |
| 5 | 415 |
| 7 | 475 |
| 10 | 537 |
The lower energy output of this gun makes it safer than other options, though you should still, of course, be cautious with these guns.
When we shot this gun at 50 yards, it didn’t group very well, probably because of a lack of rifling. This gun is definitely more of a close range gun, indended for making soda cans explode with great fervor.
Loading the gun with your plinking BB’s of choice is also quite easy, as you just need to open up the reservoir near the back, behind the gun’s receiver, and put your desired amount of BB’s inside. While I do not know a rough or exact number of how many BB’s this reservoir could hold, the number would be a lot, several hundred at least.
It would not be good general practice though to leave BB’s inside of a gun, as it is just not good safety for a gun anyway, so just don’t have your child fill the thing up to bursting with BB’s.
After the gun has your desired number of BB’s, open up the queue by pulling that same switch back, and then pointing the gun down, shaking the gun lightly, just be careful not to be too rude to your child’s new favorite Christmas gift. Gravity will then fill the queue for you, and you should be able to see how many BB’s you have there through a convenient slit in the gun.
It’s not as complicated as I made it sound, I promise, in fact it seems to me that everything about this gun is trying to say to me that it was made for beginning marksmen.
The check against these features is the difficulty of pumping it. I had my twelve year old sister try, and while she was able to pump the thing, she had difficulty doing so. If you plan to get this as a gift, be sure that your child is strong enough.
Core Features
As with most multi pump pneumatic guns, the front handle doubles as the pump lever, with a comfortable, ergonomic grip. As is typical with each multi pump, the more pump that you put into each shot, the harder it gets to pump, but it should still be manageable for a kid, especially if he or she doesn’t try to pump full each shot.
Between three and ten pumps is what this gun is meant for.
The safety is actually quite easy to use. One thing that gets me about some airguns is how it seems that manufacturers are trying to reinvent the wheel with each safety, but that is not the case with the Crosman Pumpmaster 760.
Choosing to go with a simple, easy design, Crosman placed a knob that you push from one side of the gun to the other, red for when the safety is off, placed just in front of the trigger, which is my favorite safety style.
The gun comes with open sights, simple and easy, with a smooth dovetail rail above the receiver for a scope of your choice. The gun has no other rails present on the gun, which is just fine, as I don’t need tactical lasers on a starting airgun, though that would be super cool.
The stock itself is ambidextrous, though the bolt is accessed on the right side, which might not be a huge deal for left handed shooters, but something to consider for sure. speaking of the bolt, I find that the bolt is a bit stiff, but that is not a huge deal.
You will find that the gun has a place for a magazine as well, in particular, a long thing one that you slide into position with each shot and fill with the pellets used by the gun. This is admittedly way easier than trying to load each pellet in manually, as I have had to do. Our magazine went missing, and I have no idea where it is.
So don’t lose your magazine; it might make shooting pellets a bit technical.
Shooting BB’s is anything but technical, though. It might be difficult to convey what I want you to envision as I talk about how to load the BB’s, but I’ll give it my best shot, and a picture or two to make it easier.
Behind the receiver is a switch, and that switch has two functions; opening the BB reservoir, allowing you to load more BB’s into the gun or pulling them out if that is your desire, while also opening up the BB queue, the line from which the BB’s are pulled as you cock the gun.
Move the switch forward, and you close the queue, barring BB’s from entering or leaving the queue, while also opening up the reservoir, allowing BB’s to be put into or pulled out of the big pool in the handle. Pull the switch all the way back, and you close the reservoir, but open the queue.
At first, I did not like that design until I learned that there was a middle switch position that closes both the larger reservoir and the smaller queue.
What I Like About the Gun
The light weight of the gun I found made carrying the thing around very easy. Some of the other airguns that I handle can weigh quite a bit, but the weight of this thing was barely noticeable.
The safety was another part of the gun that I liked. The simple, easy design of a little button that you push from one side of the gun to the other is my favorite style of safety, as I said before.
I’m not a huge fan of the wide variety of safety designs that you might find on an assortment of different guns, so the fact that the Pumpmaster 760 has the little button elevates my opinion of the gun.
What I Would Have Changed About the Gun
The switch used for opening the BB reservoir tripped me up for a little bit. It is an okay system now that I understand fully how it works, but I had actually spilled BB’s because I thought that I had to leave the reservoir open while locking the queue in.
If it were up to me, there would have been a latch on the side of the reservoir, and you would fill it with BB’s that way. A small switch would have served to lock the queue in place, making each a separate function, working independent of each other. I’m not sure that I like the two in one function of the current system.
I would have preferred that the pump handle were a bit longer, which would give a child or, well, me, more leverage when adding air to each shot. That is not a huge deal, mostly just me being picky, but otherwise, I cannot think of really anything that I would want to change about the gun.
If only there were some way to easily get pellets into the gun when your magazine goes missing….
Would I Buy this Gun?
The Crosman Pumpmaster 760 is an airgun that I would be willing to buy for a child I knew. I am not yet a father, but if I were, this gun would be heavily considered as a starter gun for my family.
When getting a gun that a child could start shooting with, high performance accuracy and feet per second is not going to be a high priority on my list. Major considerations would be relative cost to keep shooting, and relative safety.
Because the risk of serious injury is low, the gun itself is reasonably priced, it is lightweight, and overall is a great gun that child can learn basic gun safety and skills on, it is one that I would be willing to purchase.
