Six Various .22 Rifles, Nine Different Ammo Choices! Which one is best!

[toobaroque]

Very nice post. If I could only have one 22 rifle it would be a bolt action so I could shoot any ammo reliably. Thankfully I can have more than one though. I like the magazine compatibility between my Buckmark carbine and pistol a lot. Probably turn the 10/22 into a project one weekend.

Thanks. One of the nicest features of the bolt action Ruger Precision Rimfire and the other Ruger bolt guns is they take the same magazines as the 10/22. The higher capacity mags can be problematic if you don't modify them, but it is nice to be able to have one pile of magazines that fit a large selection of different rifles!

 

[Hayata]

So it looks like I need to buy some Wolf Extra?

 

[Edog537]

Not suprised the 10/22 with KIdd Barrel shot that well. On a side note I am no longer a fan of the Mini Mag HP ammo. It is ok for plinking but I find the CCI SS HP load to be much more effective on early season squirrels. When the leaves come off I break out my "heavy rifles" shooting the CCI 40gr SGB. I really like how the American Eagle ammo performed across the board. Range envy for sure.

 

[Edog537]

So it looks like I need to buy some Wolf Extra?

Me too!

 

[toobaroque]

Me too!

So it looks like I need to buy some Wolf Extra?

I don't disagree on the Wolf Extra, but I'm not sure the price/benefit favors it. With the relative low cost of CCI SV's it's hard to pass up that ammo and not choose it as the go-to variety.

I've never been a big fan of the CCI Mini-Mags just because they're always over-priced in my opinion. I can pretty much get squirrel-head accuracy from any of them and would prefer a .03 follow-up shot versus a .09 one. Not that I ever miss, of course! Just sayin'

 

[tommyt654]

Good luck on that they quit manufacturing it,Brunos may have the very last of any,everyone else is out.If you see it on a shelf buy some.Here's the real rub on ammo.FPS means nothing,grain weight does In match competitions you will have varying speeds which really mean very little as well.Most competitive shooters are currently shooting Lapua CenterX or Midas+ and either Eley Black Box or Tenex,none are as cheap as the ammo shown and consistently outperform them in true accuracy competitons at 50-100 yards.

Higher FPS ammo is very inaccurate as the higher speed tend to lean toward more inaccuracies due to barrel heating and wind velocities affecting it more. I shoot a 40X and rarely have speeds over 1060-70 do well in competition.

As far as accurate cheap affordable ammo I would recommend SK Pistol+ or the new SK flat nosed basic,both manufactured by the same company as the Wolf Extra and same results if not better and less expensive than the current match ammo most competitive shooters are using and you can still get fairly good results with both.Here's a pic of a recentl target shot in competition in Cedartown Ga. a few weeks back at 50 yards the center is smaller than a dime at 50 yards

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

Nice testing, OP ! I'll have to come back and study these more in-depth later.
My initial impression was that some of the ammo was just better than others, in most of the guns. The Win. M-22 gave big groups in every gun except the Ruger Precision Rimfire.

 

[GAgunLAWbooklet]

Mini Mags did pretty well, and none of the rifles seemed to strongly prefer them nor choke on them. They're my go-to bullet when I have a new gun and have to pick some ammo to try in it with out time to do any testing. That or CCI's "Blazer" plain-lead high velocity solids. They seem to shoot exactly the same as Mini-Mags, but they cost less.

One thing about a 50 yard test: I "hear" that there can be an accuracy-ruining phenomenon that happens when a supersonic bullet goes back down to below the speed of sound. For high velocity .22LR fired from rifle barrels, that would probably take place around 75 yards, depending on the load and atmospheric conditions. So 100 yard groups might be more than 2X the size of 50 yard groups, you'd think.

But my cousin had a bolt rifle that shot very well with CCI's Mini Mags and Winchester Power Points. Those 40 grain bullets would often do 3-shot groups that you could cover with a dime at 100 yards. Almost always you could cover the group with a quarter (just under an inch). So the trans-sonic bullet destabilization theory was busted, or it just didn't make that much of a difference in practical accuracy, in that rifle.

 

[tommyt654]

Anyone can hit a 3 shot group occasionally that can cover a dime or a quarter,but can they do it consistently back to back over a timed event.We shoot silhouette matchs at 50-75-100 yards at different sized animals silhouettes and at 50 yards of bench's across a 25 target match card,big difference than an occasional rifle that might hit a group size like those you mention on a consistent basis.

Trying to say that the difference in higher velocities will give you consistent results is incorrect as they just won't.Having shot hundreds of matchs over 30 yrs of competing allows me to tell truth rather than follow blinded aspects of an occasional lucky groups

A bolt actioned rifle will always outperform a semi-automatic rifle in .22 competitions,Granted the new 10/22's being developed have come a long way in the past few yrs but in true accuracy competitions they fail to win. Group sizing really means very little as conditions will change poi as the bullet of a .22 is so widely and easily pushed by wind and velocity variances

Try going to a sanctioned ARA or IR50/50 match sometime to see how intense and true rimfire accuracy can be,It will spin your head around compared to the rapid fire competitions most are shooting nowadays,just sayin

Here'a pic of 2 five shot groups at 50 yards from a rifle I recently sold that was on here,thats real accuracy

 

[toobaroque]

Well, that's great shooting! I appreciate your contribution to the discussion for sure.

But for me... being the penny-pincher that I am, if I have to think about that $.40 - $.50 each time I pull the trigger it wouldn't be fun and I wouldn't do it. If I can pull the trigger and calculate $.03 - $.08 times the number of pulls, it's a lot more fun and less stress. I shoot for fun and although I can win money with my pistol shooting ability in a Steel Challenge match, I find the rifle .22 accuracy shooters to be an odd lot that are not much fun to be around for a variety of reasons.

I'm not knocking your sport by any means, I'm just saying that it's not for me. I've killed 8 groundhogs this week alone, and I'll guarantee you that's a bigger rush than shooting paper, because I've done both.