Very nice rifle, Henry. Much nicer than today's billet aluminum pre-charged pneumatic match rifles.
Nota, I love my pumpers - both a 1963 and a 1979 Sheridan Blue Streak, and a new Benjamin 392. All three are modified by Tim McMurray of MAC 1 Airguns into what he calls his "steroid" pneumatic. They will now take up to 14 pumps with no ill affects, and all generate over 20 foot pounds of energy when you want them to. For plinking in the basement/garage, four pumps tones them down nicely.
It is, however, a good deal of work to pump these things 14 times. The RWS 48 matches them for power with one relatively easy stroke of its cocking lever. It's a trade off, in that the RWS cannot be toned down for quiet indoor, close range work.
And speaking of airgun "power", there sure is an awful lot of advertising hype out there. "1000 fps" seems to be the holy grail of .177 air rifles. The vast majority that claim to achieve that magic number only do so through the use of unreasonably light pellets, with plastic skirts and such. Standard weight pellets typically fall several hundred feet per second below the advertised velocity. A good example is my RWS 34, which claims 800 fps in .22 caliber. My chronograph reveals it does more like 570 fps with the "standard" weight .22 pellet - 14.5-ish grains.
That's one of the pleasant surprises with the new model 48 - RWS claims 900 fps in .22 caliber, and it actually achieves 840 with standard pellet weights. That effectively doubles the muzzle energy of the model 34.
I do like the .22 caliber springers for hunting; I feel that the larger pellet, even at lower velocity, simply hits much harder. The best hunting pellet I've used so far, though, is the .20 caliber (5mm) 14.5 grain pellet used in the Sheridans. They are more of a cylindrical shape, with a solid front half, instead of the hollow pellets with the deep waists. They seem to penetrate much better because of those design features.
As far as scopes, I do much prefer my rifles (even centerfires and rimfires) without them. Alas, my rat blasting is done at night, with a green LED flashlight illuminating my bait station. I just can't see the little buggers well enough to hit them without a scope. When they are audacious enough to show their ugly little mugs in the daylight, I grab a peep sighted Sheridan, but spotlighting them demands a scope.
Oh, and what the hell - I've posted this before, but here's a pic of my favorite air gun, my 1963 Sheridan Blue Streak. Found underwater in a ditch when I was 12 years old. Check out the wood on this old girl - they don't even make centerfires with wood like this anymore, and this was no more than an air rifle:
