Here is my question of the day and then I will quit.
Why a pellet gun? You still have to worry about ricochets don't you?
When I did collared dove control at a friend's wheat farm in WA I would use a bolt action 22 and either shorts or CCI Quiet from about 35yds away to pop their little heads off. The CCI Quiet are only moving around 700fps, slower than most pellet guns.
I used a Marlin bolt with a Cabelas rimfire scope on it. It was one of the most fun and useful guns I have. When doing gopher control for a friend near Calgary or in MT and WA I would use a 17HMR, Although fast with only a 17gr bullet moving as fast as it does I think the potential for ricochet may be lessened by the bullet fragmenting if it hits something. That is just a guess as I can't recall ever getting a ricochet wit the 17HMR.
bob
Piggybacking on that, I found that bullets like the 60 gr Nosler partition bullet could not be shot at the low angles of prairie dog shooting without a ricochet. The bullets held together too well and it was darned annoying.
Bang. Whop. Kapweeeeeeng.
On the other hand, 53 grain SX bullets from Hornady never ricocheted. It would seem they would disintegrate on hitting a blade of grass. Well that's an exaggeration for the sake of illustration, but the fact remains that I never ever heard a ricochet from those bullets in .223 Remington.
A little overkill for Ben's usage, but this confirms BobR's observation.
Terry, 230RN