Paintball Gear For You Modern Hunter-Gamers

Paintball Gear For You Modern Hunter-Gamers

With the extreme sport paintball stalking and hunting your opponent assumes new dimensions. Find out how to perform at your top in survival and outlaw competitions, get the right paintball gear, learn offense and defensive skills.

Review and Compare Everything you Need for Paintball

From a pastoral past as an industrial tool to mark trees and cattle in the 1970s, paintball has exploded onto the alternative and extreme sports vista. Look over the best gear recommendations, maintenance advice and safety standards.

Paintball Masks. Opponents' air guns are pushing out rapid-fire paintballs at over 270 mph. Get hit in the face, or directly in the eye, and you've got a serious vision-threatening injury that will stay with you for life. Solution? Specially designed paintball masks ... and this does not mean some low tech ski goggle ... give total face-and-eye protection. Plus, the best paintball masks, designed specifically to be impact resistant to the incoming ammo, wrap around your head to provide additional protection to your ears. Don't take risks with any exposed head-and-face areas.

Paintball Guns. Since the market has exploded due to game popularity, young hunter-stalker-players seeking an advantage can now select from a vast range of paintball gun models. Cheaper low-end guns are injection molded in impact-resistant plastics. Price for plastic are lower, attractive but in the rough-and-ready reality of a game, you'll want a tougher standard. Solution? Test-then-buy an all-metal paintball gun, in the medium range price bracket.

Semi Automatic Versus Rapid-Fire Automatic. Semi-automatic is all about "target acquisition" and shooting skills ... but you'll release between 1 to 3 paintball each time you pull the trigger. Alternatively, fully automatic rapid-fire electronic trigger paintball guns can discharge up to 16 balls per second. Pricing comes into the picture, especially when the temptation of rapid-fire automatics are being considered. Cautionary note; many competitive tourneys and sports fields do not allow fully automatic. Solution? Get a high quality mid-range priced semi automatic ... you can upgrade to automatic later as needed.

Paintball Air Systems. Compressed air drives your paintball projectile. CO2 canisters are the primary propellant. However, when markers freeze and guns shoot inconsistently players turn to the alternative propellant, nitro gas. Yes, you can "correct" mis-firing by looking into expansion chambers and pressure regulator add-ons ... but it may be adopting a "band-aid" stop gap measure to a deeper engineering issue and fault.

Compressed air at around 800 psi, unlike the liquid CO2 canister, is dry gas and can be modulated to deliver consistent air pressure which is crucial for performance. The only "practical" down-side issue with compressed air is the hassle of refilling your canister, especially when many standard air compressors top-out at only 300 psi ... which is far short of what you need.

What About Caring For Paintballs? In order to get the right performance out of your paintballs, you have to pay attention to high heat and humidity in the summer ... which can cause balls to go soft and even fail to break. The other problem is "bouncing" rather than breaking ... no points for bounce-backs. Solution? Keep your paint ball dry and cool, or even drop them in your deep freeze for an hour before playing. Otherwise keep the bags sealed, ball dry and cool however possible.

Other Paintball Gear – Accessories To Improve Play Performance. Besides a safety mask and selecting the right gun-gas-barrel, essential paintball gear focuses on wearing baggy clothes to deflect the force of incoming paintballs ... wearing long sleeve and long pants to permit rolling and evasive tactics ... strapping on a cup for testicular protection ... wearing a neck protector to minimize injury risks ... even paintball gloves to protect your palms and fingers. For guys and gals, consider elbow and knee guards. For the gals, wear a cushioned bra for protection.

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