With the clear cover facing you, rotate the cover about 15 degrees short of a full turn clockwise.To load the magazine, involves three steps. With a little practice, it’s not hard to do though, and after you get the first pellet loaded, you no longer have to fight the magazine spring, which is nice. The magazine is pretty simple, but surprisingly difficult to load without first reading the instructions. With the magazine, I can just rack the bolt, and keep shooting. I could put the pellet tin to my left, on the next higher step, but I’m right-handed, so that really doesn’t work well. I didn’t think I really needed a magazine-fed air rifle, but when I started shooting in the basement, I remembered that it’s rather difficult to load a rifle when I’m sitting on the stairs. So the end user ends up paying a gunsmith $20 or so to get them installed, or pays about $30 to purchase a kit for installing swivel studs. The studs only cost a couple dollars each, retail price, but are usually not included with factory rifles or aftermarket stocks. The buttpad of the 2289 was several inches too high, and what would be the cheekpiece was more than an inch too low for use with a scope. I was hoping that it wouldn’t be like the Crosman 2289 Backpacker (discontinued basically a 2250, but a pumper rather than CO2 powered).
They seem to have put some effort into getting the ergonomics right, at least for a tallish American. Although I’d prefer an adjustable buttstock and cheekrest, and a vertical grip or AR-15 pistol grip, I find the rifle to be much more ergonomic that I had expected. The ventilated buttpad is at about the right height I’ve heard complaints about the grip being too large, but it places the pad of my index finger on trigger, where I feel that it should be, so I’m not complaining. The cheekrest feels like it’s too far to the left, for this right-handed shooter. The rifle is meant to be scoped so the cheekrest is appropriately high, though somehow sort of uncomfortable. It’s a half inch, maybe an inch, too short, but not short enough to be uncomfortable. The stock fits me (6 foot, 2 inches), pretty well. lumps, in the finish, and a dent in the top rear of the cheekpiece that’s about a quarter inch in diameter and about an eighth inch deep. It’s got a matte finish, which I can see offending those who like their stocks mirror polished, but I don’t mind it at all. I could live without the cheekrest on the right side of the stock, but otherwise, I don’t think the stock is as bad as some have opined. Still not as bad as the B21 springer (Chinese RWS side-lever clone), that weighed about 9 and a half pounds without a scope. It does hang pretty steady on the target though. Walking the field target course, it starts to feel pretty heavy. The Marauder weighs about 8 pounds, and felt a bit light to me, at least until I put the heavy 10-40x scope on top.