Video: Benjamin Bulldog .457 PCP Air Rifle Review

*** TRANSCRIPT ***

Welcome to the Pyramid Insider. I'm Tyler Patner. And today we're going to be talking about the Benjamin Bulldog in 457.

So the Bulldog in 457 comes to us straight fresh from Shot Show 2022. And really you could see the writing on the wall for Benjamin and Crossmen. They wanted to get a bigger boar gun in there. That 35 cal. 357 Bulldog was always a great gun for them, but needing to go bigger kind of keeping up with the rest of the market.

So we're going to run down the features, take it out to the range, put it over the chronograph, do everything that we normally do and see if this Bulldog 457 is one that you need to have in your hunting Arsenal. Now, starting at the front of the. 457 Bulldog, we have a threaded muzzle. Now this is an M 18 thread. So obviously you got to go bigger because you have that larger bore on the gun.

So if you want to thread on a Donny OFL or something like that, you certainly can drop him back just a little bit. We have a slightly longer air cylinder. This is 440 CCS compared to the 340 CCS we see on the 357. Now moving on back, you'll notice we do have our front sling swivel stud here. There is one in the back of the gun as well.

Now, we don't have a piccatiny rail on this one, which is a little disappointing for me personally because obviously it's nice and easy to add a bipod there, but not a huge deal. You can if you want to Mount an Overthetop mounted rail bipod onto the Picatinny rail up here. And speaking of this Picatinny rail up top, you have 26 inches of pick rail here to work with. So whether you want to add a smaller scope than this and maybe go with some other accessories, lights, lasers, whatever you think you need out in the field, you have the ability to Mount it here, which is awesome. Now dropping down, we do have your traditional pistol grip here.

You also have the same two stage trigger, which is real solid right around three and a half pounds or so and the same manual safety that's very easy to operate, nice and conveniently located. Working our way back, you do have your pressure gauge here. This gun fills the 3000 PSI, which I like a lot for those of you that are hand pumping or maybe working off a tank and you don't have a compressor or a shop local to you that can fill your tank. You're going to get a lot of fills on this guy. And I like that 3000 PSI fill pressure quite a bit as we see the rest of the industry kind of go higher than that.

So this is a nice little feature in my opinion, that they've been able to keep that 3000 PSI pressure. Now working our way back, just a hair further is the side lever. What I will tell you guys about this gun from an operational perspective, this has a heavier hammer spring in it. That's how they got more power out of it. Part of the reason, anyway.

So when you're operating this from your shoulder, it is a little bit difficult to cock that back every time, but it's not unbearable. This is very doable, but just a little bit awkward. So something to keep in mind there. You may have to take the gun out of your shoulder to cock it. Now, as we work to the breach of this gun, a little bit of a departure from the.

357, which has a five round Mag. This is your three round gravity fed magazine clip, whatever you want to call it, just drops right in. Now, what you will notice here is that you can't push a slug in from the top and that's to prevent them from falling out when you do have them loaded in. So Loading. This is really simple.

You're just going to take your slugs and stick them in, right like so until you have three stacked up like that. And again, the nice thing is I'm going to dump them over here. You can't actually drop that out. So when it's in the gun, if you do flip it over, you're not going to lose your rounds. That's a really nice, easy feature.

And I can tell you this works like a charm. I was a little skeptical of this at first. I wasn't sure if it would work so well, but no feeding issues. Using it for our accuracy testing. All of our pre testing as well.

And really nice and easy to just slip into the breach there. Dropping down from the breach. We do have our mail quick disconnect fill fitting right here. Obviously, everybody knows quick disconnect fittings all the rage. Way to go.

No fill probes makes it nice and easy to fill this gun up to that 3000 PSI Mark. And you just replace the cover by pressing it in. Pretty easy to do. They're a little bit finicky to get off for what it's worth. Rubber butt pad at the back.

Other features here you have a 28 and a half inch rifle barrel. Seems to be doing quite well in our pretesting. But I think it's time we head out to the range and go see what she's got.

All right. So accuracy at 45 yards. Obviously, the Bulldog and. 357 does quite a good job out to these distances. Let's see how the.

457 does with the new Benjamin. 279 grains an inch and 8th. Not bad. Certainly hunting friendly at that distance, but by far better. Those air Venturi 300 grainers are a stud five eight inch.

That's like zero six inches. Great grouping there at 45 yards. This is going to probably do very well. A little bit further out. Also, one thing I should say is we did not have the new Benjamin 350 grainers at the time of our testing so we didn't have an opportunity to test those but we went through pretty much everything else that we currently offer in this 457 size and these were the two best so let's see what they do over the chronograph.

We're also going to chronograph one of our heavier slugs of 400 plus grain slug to see what the Max energy of this guy is. From a full 3000 PSI fill, the 279 grains and the 300 grain slugs you're looking at about 364 to 366 foot pounds of energy and just for kicks, we shot those 405 grain slugs as well. We're topping out at 415 foot pounds well short of Benjamin's rating of 450 foot pounds but still plenty for medium and big game, there's no doubt about that and I definitely agree that three shots is the absolute maximum you're going to want to do from a full fill with the Bulldog 457.

Let's wrap up the Benjamin Bulldog 457, one that I'm really happy to see Benjamin and Crossman finally come to market with. It was time they did something bigger than the 357 and I think this fills that niche nicely. I'm not getting quite the 450 foot pounds of energy that they're rating this gun for but for what's out there those 300 grain shoots phenomenally well at the 50 yards and you're going to get plenty of power. You're talking three good solid shots that are going to be capable of taking game. This gun is a stud and one you definitely need to check out Especially if you're in the market for a shorter, big bore gun that is going to be much more size friendly if you're in a blind or a tree stand when I like a lot, check out the Benjamin Bulldog 457 next time you're on Pyramid air.com for the Insider, I'm Tyler Patner as always.

Don't forget like Comment Subscribe Check us out on Facebook and Instagram as well and we'll see you at the next one.