Any vote I would lodge has already been voted. I like the .17HMR, .204R, 6.8SPC, .260R and .375R. For its intended purpose, 6.5CRM seems to be pretty awesome, too. Second the Hornady/Ruger props.
I want to like the 17WSM, but there are two reasons I find it difficult to do so. It's too long to work in existing rimfire magnum actions, at least that's what I've been told by the manufacturers I've asked. So you're kinda stuck with either a Savage or an advanced custom project if you want to try it, until some other manufacturer gets behind it. If CZ did, I'd buy one for sure.
The other reason is that they don't make it in a .20 or .22 cal. I imagine a 32-40 gr varmint bullet in .224WSM would be a pretty sweet package. Wouldn't make the 3kfps claim of the .17, but it should be more efficient at generating ft-lb at the muzzle (yeah, yeah, that's not all that matters, blah blah blah) and might even have a bigger advantage over .22WMR than the .17 has over the HMR. If it could deliver nearly the same velocities and trajectories as the HMR with double the projectile mass, that would be worth something, and would probably be more interesting to me than a .17 going just a little faster. With the greater expansion ratio of the larger bore, you'd probably get 98% of all the velocity you'll ever get by the end of a 16" barrel, making for some really handy little packages.
Last edited by OlongJohnson; 11/09/15.
