Prophet In The Snow

Jim Chapman reports on the RTI Arms Prophet during an extremely cold hunt

- Jim Chapman

It seems like months ago that I was basking in the warm desert sun whilst participating in one of my favourite airgunning events, the Airguns of Arizona Extreme Bench Rest. One of the things I enjoy most about it, aside from crashing and burning in the competition, is meeting up with old friends and making new ones from around the world. One of the airgunners I met on this trip was Robert Polanc, the gentlemen who heads up RTI Arms out of Slovenia. He’d brought his team to Arizona with the objective of showcasing their products, and this they did, taking the

Open class BR competition! This was my first hands-on experience with their products, and I was very much impressed by their new product, labelled ‘the Prophet’.

SHARED FEATURES

The Prophet shares many attributes with the Priest, it is light and compact, being 710 mm length overall and weighing in at approximately 3 kg. The fore stock is a 320 CF buddy bottle that can fill to 300 BAR and is regulated at 130 BAR on my test gun. I was shooting 25 grain JSB Monsters, achieving a very consistent 1030 fps and generating about 38 fpe power. The gun is very accurate, a function of the precision cold-forged CZ barrel combined with a great trigger. As far as I can tell, the Prophet’s major departure from the Priest is that rather than the straight pull-back bolt-action used in this gun, the Prophet uses a sidelever cocking mechanism, which is my preference in a field gun. This sidelever is positioned so that it allows easy, left-handed access without coming off target, but all this is meaningless without accuracy, and this gun is very accurate! As a matter of fact, it is the same gun that Francisco Eiayaga used to win the unlimited class in the 50-yard EBR Benchrest competition.