I've had enough hunting experience to know that an exactly placed .22 LR bullet makes a clean kill on squirrels and rabbits. I also know that a .38 Special wadcutter from a handgun kills well. But I don't have enough experience to say any more than that. Marlin didn't sell enough M-1894 rifles in .218 Bee, .25-20 and .32-20 to keep them in production for long. The new M-1894 in .32 H&R Mag is being marketed to Cowboy Action Shooting folks, not to us small game hunters. I haven't seen any mention of the M-1894 in .357 Mag being used on small game. A few writers, among them Francis Sell, Bob Milek, John Wooters and Al Miller have written about using centerfires for small game. Despite several articles over the years, nobody brought John Wooters' .25/222 Copperhead to market, and that's a flexible squirrel to coyote round if ever there was one. Does anyone here have enough experience to tell the rest of us how and why centerfires ranging from, say the .25-20 through the .45 provide enough increased performance on small edible game to justify their increased cost? I assume semi-wadcutter or wadcutter bullets at 700 to 1500 ft/sec. Even handloaded, centerfires are more expensive to shoot than the .22 LR, especially for fumble-fingered folks like me who don't dare to cast bullets. I haven't mentioned the .22 Rimfire Mag because I have no hunting experience with that round.
