"A long time ago (I think close to two decades), my family and I were having dinner at the home of our good friend, John Coningham, at this home in Campinas, Brasil, and after dinner the conversation moved towards guns. I can only describe Mr. John, as we cal him, as a renaissance or maybe encyclopedic man, due both to his abilities and broad interests and field of knowledge. In over seven decades Mr. John was a non-commissioned officer in the Brazilian Army (first Coastal Artillery, then Cavalry), a technician at the Winchester Ballistic Laboratory, cattle manager at one of the largest ranches in the world (Fazenda Bodoquena), bridge builder in the Amazon in the 1970's, languages teacher and nowadays a tourist guide in the Brazilian Pantanal do Mato Grosso. Besides all that, he is a great writer (his books are finally available at Amazon Kindle), sketcher (the cover of the superb "Bodoquena - An Odyssey of the Brazilian Pantanal was done free hand with color pencils), accomplished artisan in both leather and wood, and a better than average naturalist. But let's go back to our distant dinner conversation. As we were discussing guns and ammunitions, their designs and uses, Mr. John made the point that at that point in time, every gun that needed to be invented had already been invented, with one exception: a very precise gun that had enough power to kill a fly, but not enough power to damage walls, windows or household furniture. And it is difficult to disagree with Mr. John. By the late 1990's, and to be truthful, much before that, the standards by which every other guns are measured were already mostly in place, and in my opinion they are the following: Revolver: the Smith & Wesson K-38. Semi-Automatic Pistol: the Colt 1911 Governmental Model. Hunting or target rifle: Mauser "98" action (the Blaser R-93 has great merits, but I just don't see it unseating the Mauser "98"). Shotgun: here things can get a little more complicated depending on your personal preferences. There were no breakthroughts in side-by-side (lets select the Holland & Holland sidelock action, but from a functional standpont we could also pick the much simpler Anson & deeley boxlock), over-under (the Browning Over-Under, Beretta 680 or Perazzi MX-8 are all great examples), and pump-action (Winchester Model 12) shotguns. The exception is that the Italians continue to be particularly successful in developing the semi-automatic shotgun, and I am particularly fond of the Beretta A-400 design. But back to the "fly gun" concept. The one downside of Mr. John concept is that he called for a highly accurate gun that could consistently hit a fly at one or two meters, but the problem is that not every user would be able to do so. Accurate rifle shooting requires training and technique, and that really limited the potential market. We eventually took different paths, Mr. John relocated to the Brazilian hinterlands and I moved abroad, first to the Netherlands, and then to United States, where I live today, and the "fly gun" became a distant memory, until early this week. During a business trip to Georgia, my colleague Bill Bridenbaugh told me about a Christmas gift that his son gave him, a plastic shotgun that shot table salt to kill flies or other pesky pests. That immediately got my attention and I had to find out more about it. This "shotgun" is the Bug-A-Salt (www.bugasalt.com). Basically it is a pump-action single-stroke pneumatic airgun with a magazine that is loaded with table salt. Everytime you pump the action a pinch of salt is loaded in the barrel or chamber, air is compressed and a safety engaged. When you shoot the gun that pinch of salt comes out like a minuscule shot charge, and depending on the distance puts a pattern a couple inches in diameter over the intended target. Since it is much easier to hit a close target with a shotgun than a rifle, the Bug-A-Salt designer effectively by-passed the "rifle training" issue and presented us a concept that can be used by basically anyone with minimum hand-eye coordination. I just ordered one and will eventually report on its performance, but I already foresee that this breakthrough gun can have siginificant impact on our future: Obama and Feinstein will want it banned due to its 80 shot magazine capacity, ATF will want to regulate it because it has a barrel under 18 inches and overall length under 26 inches, PETA will try to impose a ban on fly, in particular, and pesky insects hunting and culling in general, and the states DNR's and Fish-and-Wildlife will want to regulate "fly season"! In the mean time, I just wanted to congratulate Mr. Lorenzo Maggiore for bringing us the gun that needed inventing! Follow me at the A Wild Beast at Heart blog."
BUG-A-SALT 2.0 (Compare Deals from $49.99)
"I was introduced to the Bug-A-Salt at a friend's home and had a blast picking off flies with my oldest son and had to have one. Two days later mine arrived and about the first 10 shots went off without a hitch but then the Bug-A-Salt started having issues and the safety would remain off after each shot instead of returning to safe after the shot (not too big of a deal) and would only fire intermittently, getting worse with each attempt until I was unable to get it to fire at all. I was disappointed in that I had planned to take my Bug-A-Salt camping where we could have a field day busting horse flies. The problematic Bug-A-Salt came along camping in the hopes that I could figure out what gives. I worked with the action and found when I pulled the slide fully to the rear and then applied significant force (~20-30 lbs) to the slide the Bug-A-Salt would properly cock and fire. After doing this a dozen or so times the force required to successfully cock the Bug-A-Salt started to drop to a reasonable few pounds and now it has worked flawlessly since. Now on to engaging pests! I found that the large flies at our campsite in the high Sierra Nevada could be completely downed at 12-24" and stunned enough for a follow up shot or hand-to-hand engagement from about 24-36". Back at home we don't have much of a fly problem but we do have quite a few Black Widow spiders and Solifugae (aka Sunspider, Wind Scorpion, Camel Spider) that roam our yard along with the occasional large Grasshopper that we find chewing on one of our trees. Black Widow spiders: WOW!!! The Bug-A-Salt is incredibly effective! I often hunt these spiders in my backyard at night with a headlamp to keep their numbers and size low enough to reduce the probability of a bite to one of my young children or any friends that we may have visiting. In the past I've used wasp spray, butane lighters, sticks, or my foot, each of which has it's negatives. With the Bug-A-Salt I've never tipped off a Widow to my intentions and can blast them from 12" and they fold up like a tent! I sometimes find webs with a few Widows (usually a mature female and a few males) and I can blast one and the others won't scatter so one-by-one they fall. Solifugae (Sun spider, etc.): Incredibly effective! Mature specimens can grown to 3" here in the upper Mojave Desert and they are numerous in the 2"+ range. These critters appear scarier then they really are but mature ones will often stand their ground and can be somewhat aggressive. Well, the Bug-A-Salt puts a severe hurting on them even out to 3'. My guess is their soft bodies are easily penetrated by the "shot". When you try to use your foot you have to be very quick since these critters are very agile. I've also found that they can sense an incoming jet of wasp spray and can often avoid the poison unless you're right on top of them and even then it takes a while for the critters to succumb. With the Bug-A-Salt you can place the muzzle often to within 12" and they suspect nothing until it's too late. Very, very effective! Grasshoppers: We seem to attract the occasional really large grasshopper (3-4") to our Palo Verde trees and I've used an air rifle (without a pellet in the tube) to get up close, blast them (which only temporarily stuns them) and then follow up with hand-to-hand. The Bug-A-Salt really doesn't pack enough punch to do much more than annoy these armored foes. The most effective path seems to be to hit them in the abdomen at point-blank range and then resort to a boot to the head. You'd need a high-powered version (rock salt version, anyone?) to really topple this formidable foe! With about 200 shots on the clock everything seems to be working well except for the safety that doesn't always reset but aside from the initial issues in cocking the Bug-A-Salt, I'm a satisfied user!"
"Update 7/16/15 Received replacement product today and this one DOESN'T WORK any better then the first one did. Although product appears to be made well, for what it is anyway, it just doesn't work properly. It takes one pump to load the gun and than a simple flick of your thumb releases the safety and a trigger pull fires the gun...except the trigger pull more often then not does nothing at all. The gun literally fires maybe once out of every half dozen or more attempts to fire the gun...or well after whatever you were going to shoot has long flown off. If you shoot the gun aiming up in the air, it will fire once in three times. No effort to shake it better or prepare for the shot better has any impact one whether it will fire or not and most of the time it flat out doesn't work. A cute idea that if it worked would be fun and even useful, but they haven't figured out how to make this work correctly on any dependable basis, so I classify it is junk. Maybe they'll have the 'bugs' worked out in version 3.0, whenever that happens, because version 2.0 is nothing more then $50 worth of frustration. Before deciding to ask for a replacement instead of my money back, I called the company directly and spoke to some guy who said 'he didn't understand the problem, because he has one that works', that made fell a whole lot better. Original Post: Received today the 2.0 version and it does not function properly out of the box. Only shoot once in every 12 or so attempts. Called Skell Inc directly and they offered to send a return shipment label and replace. I will give it one more try before returning permanently if I encounter another dud, but do appreciate their willingness to quickly attempt to correct the problem. If the replacement works as advertised, I'll be sure to update this review. So believe all those bad reviews, they must be shipping a lot of duds? After talking to stepson who has his since Father's Day and has used it frequently without issue... decided to try a replacement and see if I just got a lemon. Will post additional comments after replacement arrives and has a chance to prove itself :)"
"So my wife is convinced that in the 1/100th of a second a fly has spent on food it has laid 1 million eggs and spread Ebola and SuperAIDS. I can't tell you how many times she wouldn't touch a bite if she thought a fly had landed. Enter the Bug-A-Salt which I received last week. As mentioned you load the top with some table salt and you are ready to go. Of course I did the only thing a responsible adult would do, I shot myself in the hand to see if it would hurt. It did a little, definitely not want to get this in the eyes. Also not something I would give to the kids (who are older) without direct close supervision. On day 1 flies no longer stood a chance, I was easily plinking them at 3 to 4 feet. The pop up sight is pretty accurate, at first I was shooting a bit low and compensated. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this, it is a bit pricey for what appears to be a plastic toy, but has worked as advertised. Yesterday really firmed up the decision to purchase. I looked out the patio door and there stood my wife, the gun cocked and ready to go as she stood just waiting for the next fly to come her way. Take the plunge people and hats off to the inventor!"
"It's awesome. It kills flies dead (although if you're a poor shot it wounds them, causing them to feebly drag their half-dead carcasses around, and, depending upon the type of person you are, makes you feel bad for doing so). When you get a one shot kill on a big one, it's a great feeling, though! I watched a review on youtube about this product and how you can shoot your own hand without injury. However, I wouldn't recommend it - it stings quite a bit. This weapon has enough power to kill a fly, and that's for sure. It also has great range for a 1-pump exterminator. I bagged a 2 pointer from at least 5 feet the other day. My kill count is only about 25, but I could easily devote a few hours to the great hunt. The only downside, obviously, is using it indoors. Eventually, no matter how bad you don't want it to happen, you will notice salt accumulating all over your window sills. A minor caveat. I actually purchased this for my Dad for the upcoming Father's Day, but one day just decided I had to try it on a pesky lugger who was lazily whirling around my kitchen. After this churlish brute's inevitable demise, I kept the Bug-A-Salt for myself, and ordered another one for my Dad for Father's Day. This is quite possibly one of the greatest contraptions known to man. My only regret is not thinking of inventing it first."
"Too much fun (aside from the horror of having flies entering your house)! FL summers bring about flies, and grilling and smoking attracts them like, well, need I say it? What was once an annoyance - chasing down flies and dealing with a nasty swatter, has been replaced with "hunting expeditions" by the kids to find the fly and shoot it with salt. Biggest worry I get from my friends when I discuss owning this product? "Man, isn't there salt all over your house?" Nope. It shoots such a small amount of salt that you don't even notice. Besides, if you vacuum your house with any regularity, you'd be hard pressed to fin any. Aiming takes some getting used to as the sights don't actually line up the shot very well. You will learn what to aim for, and soon, you will be a one-shot-one-kill fly sniper like me!"
"Alot of fun, but there are a few design flaws that I hope Skell Inc. will address in 3.0: 1.) To shoot, you have to pump, then release safety, then squeeze trigger. You have to release the safety everytime you shoot, it's rather annoying. Skell should make it so that once the safety is taken off you can shoot as many times as you want. Another problem, is that once you take the safety off, you can't put the safety back on. This is probably my biggest complaint. 2.) There is a small peep hole window on the side of the gun to look at how much salt you have left, but it's completely useless since, the loading flap is clear and you'll have just look at that to see how much ammo you have left. You will never look at the small side peep window. It's completely useless. 3.) More range & more power. I hit a fly from a two feet away and didn't kill it instantly, it died a few minutes later. More power and range would be great. 4.) For around $50, and the designs flaws I mentioned above, it's not that much value, sorta overpriced for what it is in my opinion. As it's currently designed, I think it should be a $30 product. I've used this for a few weeks now...thanks!"
BUG-A-SALT 2.0 (Compare Deals from $49.99)
