Sargan "Stalker" pneumatic speargun

There is a new pneumatic being produced in Russia, the Sargan AK 7.62 "Stalker" 444 mm. Here is what their publicity announcement says about it.

"The first air rifle in the collection "Stalker" gives rise to a whole family of pneumatic guns AK Series 7.62 "Stalker". (It has) passed all the tests.
The barrel made from stainless steel 14/12 mm in diameter - a guarantee of reliability and durability. Displaced upwards inside the receiver, relative to the longitudinal axis, resulting in improved accuracy of fire "at random".

The handle has a well thought-out ergonomics to fire "in Macedonian" (translation?), which facilitates intuitive aiming from various positions for hunting in dense thickets of aquatic vegetation. Size and shape of the handle, trigger guard and trigger allows you to comfortably and effectively hunt in the cold season, using the thick mittens and gloves. Trigger guard has a special "landing rail" under a set of regular coils "Triton." In the integrated handle is the loader, unified with the handle of the pump. Now it will be hard to forget it at home.

Harpoon diameter of 7.62 mm is best suited in hunting for most of the fish medium and large size. To improve the accuracy and shooting guns "AK 7.62 Stalker" is used with harpoon three-blade stabilizer (and) new improved hydraulic dampers. Optionally provides the possibility of using the harpoon diameter of 7 mm and 8. Line dumping placed on the left hand side of the handle above the trigger finger guard, making it much easier to set the nominal coils and barrel-attached flashlight. The original solution design line relief, virtually eliminates the influence of winding effort of the spear line on the trigger pull. Muzzle has a special feature incorporated to secure full-time under-barrel flashlight "Owl." The new design adds hydraulic dampers, reduces noise and increases the longevity of a shot across the shaft and piston group."

The new gun has generated some controversy with respect to its price and reliability judging by the comments posted here http://podvoh.ru/ipb/lofiversion/index.php/t7066.html. Russian spearfishing forums seem to have a "take no prisoners" ambience!

An article about the new "Stalker" gun being discussed at a club meeting earlier this year with a few photos of it being shown to those present http://apox.ru/weapon/zavodgun/1126-ak-762-stalker-podrobnosti.

It has been a long time, but forum member "Adept6" on apox.ru has dismantled and examined the "AK 7.62 Stalker" 555 model. You can see photos of the opened up gun in his post here: http://apox.ru/forum/topic/10891-ak-762-stalker-555/page__st__40

The "Stalker" has a side-mounted line release located above the trigger position on the left hand side of the gun. It is interesting to note that this line release has a rear mounted tab that you push on to reset it for the next shot, therefore there is no ambiguity about whether it resets automatically or not, you definitely have to push it back.

The stainless steel inner barrel of 12 mm ID and 14 mm OD is mounted high up in the gun body which has a 40 mm OD alloy tank. The muzzle shock absorber is of a hydraulic type rather than the usual rubber sleeve damper element mounted on a tubular "top hat" anvil body. The metal line slide on the spear is also the muzzle centralizing ring and has ports for water to exit the muzzle during the shot as well as the muzzle nose which has two sets of ports, larger forward ones and smaller rearward ones. The line slide has stabilizing fins which are cut away where the line slide inserts in the muzzle, hence I assume the small ribs rearward of the fins index the line slide in the muzzle so that the ports on the line slide coincide with those in the muzzle (P.S. after looking at the port spacing on the line slide compared to the muzzle nose in some photos I now think they don't line up, so any water flow may be through the circumferential gap created by the reduced height ribs at the rear of the line slide sitting in the cylindrical recess in the front end of the muzzle).

The sear lever is a miniaturized version of the "see-saw" tipping action sear levers we see in the Mares rear handle pneumatic spearguns and their clones from other companies. The sear tooth is located very close to the sear lever pivot pin which means it moves through a smaller displacement for a similar travel arc and consequently the sear tooth is not very high compared to those found in other guns. I don't see the benefit of doing this unless the idea is that the trigger pull is less affected by friction between the sear tooth face and the mushroom head of the piston tail as the sear tooth is on a short arm compared to the long arm where the trigger transmission pin pushes up on the sear lever's tail.

The "Stalker" has no power regulator and is a wet barrel gun in this version, but as we know muzzles and their damper systems can be changed if a manufacturer decides to make a different version of their gun. The "Stalker" looks to be about the same price as the other new Russian speargun designs now appearing in their market, i.e. around 10,000 rubles. Given the cost of the tooling needed for dedicated injection mouldings and metal components this is probably not surprising, particularly with the increasing use of plastic body components as the pressure bulkheads in their pneumatic spearguns which allow them to float after the shot provided that there are no heavy items in the rear end of the gun.

I should mention that the muzzle has a third set of larger ports behind the other two sets that are the muzzle relief ports which allow water to flow out of the inner barrel before the piston nose hits the shock absorber anvil. The other two sets seem to be for the shock absorber function. Note that the line slide is of the hydraulic damper type where the stop diameter on the spear tail fits into a short tubular recess that functions as a water pump. A photo of the gun from the original reference shows the sets of ports with the gun viewed in profile and is attached here.

I just found the "Sargan" web-site: http://www.sargan.ru/catalog/product-3760
At 12,685 rubles the gun is expensive for its size. The "Sargan" web-site lists a range of other dive equipment as well as some band guns.

The ability to make pneumatic spearguns which are light enough to float after the shot is what is driving the move to this type of design. The inner barrel is the main structural element and the "rocker" or "see-saw" sear lever offers a compact mechanism that sits entirely within the inner barrel tube and is easily connected by a short pin that traverses the wall of the pressure vessel to an external trigger. If the Russians are going to use this type of gun then they might as well make their own versions rather than buy imports. Given the size of their population the price should reduce as more guns are sold, although this is unlikely to reduce to the level that has been achieved by Chinese manufacture of some "Italian" speargun components.

Found one for sale here https://sportmarket.su/catalog/prod/52777/ruzhe_pnevmaticheskoe_sargan_ak_7_62_stalker_888.html
Price is 17622 rubles, a "Predathor" is 11134 rubles! (approx.85 cm). That works out to AU$364.00 or US$262.60 which is not too bad, so Russian buyers' purchasing power must be relatively low, yet a 'Predathor" standard gun is only US$166.00!

The Sargan "Stalker" is an expensive gun, in the Russian market, that may have priced itself out of that market as it is basically a wet barrel pneumatic speargun of one shooting power. Nothing wrong with that, but you pay a lot for the pleasure of owning it which is certainly a factor in gun buying as looks play a big part in decision making. The gun uses a hydraulic shock absorber in the muzzle and the additional tiny holes in the muzzle are bleed holes for the shock absorber to channel some water out rather than squeeze it all out through the muzzle opening. I would have thought one would want maximum braking, so why let some of the water out by providing an additional flow path for it to escape?

Another quirky aspect is the line release lever needs to be reset after each shot, so the designers have made sure you don't forget to do it by having a large ‘press button’ wedge-shaped element to push the lever back into its locating slot.

The sear lever is of the Italian rocker style, but is rather minimal as can be seen in the photos where it hooks onto the piston tail.

The trigger, safety slide switch and line release lever are shown here. The quality of their manufacture looks very good.


The Sargan "Stalker" tank OD is 40 mm and the inner barrel diameter is 12 mm, so comparable to the Pelengas guns. Inner barrel tube is stainless-steel turned down on the exterior to lose weight as is done with the "Taimen''; other gun body components are either plastic moldings or alloy.

I have since read that the hydraulic muzzle damper does not always do its job properly and pistons have jammed in the muzzle or broken. Evidently the damping requires the tolerances and clearances to be correct so that the damping is effective.