Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires At what price would you buy .22LR ammo?

I wouldn't hold my breath. The gophers and chipmunks will keep hoarding whatever they find whether they will ever use it up or not. It's disease just like those folks buying hundred rolls of toilet paper, many sticks of deodorant,..... because it is on sale. I have bought five 325 packs of Federal .22lf ammo and that is more than enough for my needs.

you got it ace...........

Well, I've gotten to the point where I look at it like this....I can get a centerfire round together for 25 cents. With the centerfire I won't MISS. Three rounds of Thunderturds or whatever -- kinda breaks even that way, so I figure until I see the good stuff coming in under 8 cents a shot -- I might even end up casting and die-stamping something for a light load rather than buy rimfire.

About a year ago Academy got some of these in.

http://www.gunbroker.com/All/BI.aspx?Keywords=remington+bucket+o+bullets

I paid 60 something bucks. They function fine in my guns. Accuracy is a mixed bag.

Power Points and stuff
Mule Deer asked about other experiences with 22 LR ammo. So here goes:
I picked up 20K rounds of WW Power Points (PP) at the White Elephant in Spokane about 10 years ago.
Price was something like $14.99/brick. These were the 40 gr HP bullets in the grey box. Also ordered a new Annie 1710 about then. That gun shoots most anything pretty well, but has been on a steady PP diet until this year, when I got to the last few bricks of my PP stash.
Had been working abroad for a few years, but was home in the Gallatin Valley enough to know there was a 22 LR shortage. Would pick up what 22 ammo I found when the price was palatable. Also started shooting my 17 HMR more.
Been around these parts most of my life, and shoot a lot of ground squirrels for local ranchers. Most of this “work” is done right out of the pickup window. HMR is awesome, but gets hot and rumor has it barrels can be shot out, my 1717 HB is a friggin lazerbeam and while I know they make new barrels everyday, have been kind of babying the original one. Plus, shooting ground squirrels at < 75 yards with a good shooting HMR is fun and spectacular, it somewhat lacks artistry?
So, I started to wean myself off the Power Points and search for an available and cost effective alternative. Had a pretty good supply of CCI Min Mag HPs and Rem Golden Bullet HPs. Here is what I found:
The CCI Mini-Mags worked fine. Accuracy was not quite as good as PPs, but acceptable. Had more “flyers” or unexplained misses, but only a few percent. Biggest issue seemed to be failure to expand – gophers would take a center of mass hit, but without the usual auditory conformation of contact, and they would often require a second shot, or get underground before a follow up shot could be executed. As my ammo supply dwindled, I started to shoot a few of my single shot target 22s; mainly an Anni 54 MS, Kimber 84G * . Have to say going back to a single shot was kind of fun, other than my 50-yr-old eyes do struggle a bit to focus between loading and then back to the scope, but a guy can sure kill a lot of ground squirrels one shot at a time…
To my surprise, the Golden Bullets had similar accuracy as the Mini Mags. Still a few percent of flyers, but definitely less failure to expand issues. That plus the fact I was able to find some of those 1400 round buckets for $90 made them my new go to ammo in the PP-less world we now seem to live in.
Best prices I found were $0.090/ round Mini-Mag compared to $0.063/round Rem Golden Bullets.
Then, around May, the guys over at Shedhorn in Ennis came up with some of the Winchester 42 gr Power Point HPs (1330 ft/s). These come in a black box and are loaded in Australia. Price is steep – about $0.12 - $0.14 per round. However, in my guns they are everything those older Power Points were and more. As accurate as the old grey box PPs, and the terminal effectiveness is wicked. They retain the soft HP expansion/lack of ricochet characteristics of the old PPs, and hit noticeably harder. They do not turn a 22 LR into a WMR or an HMR, but if you like to shoot a 22LR, in my experience these are the best. Yes, I have shot stingers, yellowjackets etc, and those have great terminal performance, but stingers in particular do not chamber well in some guns, and the accuracy tends to be sporadic. Plus, I cringe at the thought of cramming those old, extended case stingers into my precision chambers…
It seems like this 22 LR supply/demand thing (lunacy?) is here to stay. I will get by with the Rem Golden Bullets for those 300 round + days and try to keep a supply of 42 gr PPs for late season when the squirrels get bigger, smarter and the grass starts to get tall.

You can shoot out a HMR barrel .... really .... wow. That is the first time I've heard that. Makes sense I guess. Just figured they'd last forever too. hmmmm. Anyone have a guess how long it takes to toast one? Got me a wondering.

g

daveinmt,

Thanks for the follow-up. Very interesting about the Power Points!

You probably already know that the original Power Points were made specifically for culling non-native rabbits in Australia, where shooters wanted a .22 Long Rifle wound that would hit 'em hard--and of course they were very accurate and also worked on small rodents. Kind of nice that the new Winchester stuff is made Down Under. If I see some will pick it up, as am down to a little over two bricks of the silver-box stuff.

My experience with the CCI's and Remingtons is similar to yours. Did find the Federal Champion bulk-pack HP's also work pretty well on gophers, and have some of those around too.

As for shooting out .17 HMR barrels, I ran into a retired guy at a gun show 2-3 years ago who apparently does nothing but hunt gophers for the several months it's possible in Montana. He has a golf cart with more than one .17 HMR, shoots at least 10,000 rounds year, and claimed to have toasted four CZ barrels before he started having his rifles fitted with some custom brand, I can't remember which. He said CZ barrels are soft, and the custom barrels last noticeably longer. He wanted my card to contact me about going gopher shooting together but I never heard from him. He was getting along in years and maybe he ended up in the big alfalfa field in the sky.

The barrel on my own CZ .17 HMR is still doing well after over a dozen years, but when I go gophering there are rifles in several chamberings along, from .17 Mach 2 and .22 LR to .17 and .22 Hornet. I also don't have time to spend almost every day shooting gophers for several months each year! Don't even know if I could do it without getting tired of it after a week. But some people get obsessive when they retire. I knew an old guy from Billings who retired from the Laurel refinery, and every day drove down to the Bighorn River and fished the same pool all day long from the shore.

Hey John,
I forgot to mention that the Mini Mag RN ammo pretty consistently shoots more accurately than the HP. I shoot squirrels around cattle most of the time, so just do not want to deal with the RN pass through/ricochet phenomena.

Works great for plinking though. Also have a stash of std velocity CCI stuff in the blue box. Bought that for shooting out of pistols and indoor target - quite accurate, but that stuff has been harder to find and more expensive than the MiniMAg HV RN. Go figure. Guess that is why it's called the "Law" and not the "Concept" of Supply and Demand...

On another topic, when and where did that prairie dog town north of Helena along I-15 come into existence? I do not recall seeing them there when I was a kid, but they seem to be doing well over the last 10+ years or so. Seems to me that may be the westernmost PD town in MT?

Dave

Dave,

I've been seeing that PD town north of Helena for longer than 10 years. Can't remember for sure, but seem to recall it being there when we moved to Townsend 25 years ago. Certainly not long afterward.

There are supposed to be some PD's over around Boulder somewhere too. Or at least that's what I heard some years ago. And there are PD's a ways west of Great Falls.

I'd bet that town really got going once the subdivisions started going in on the north flat. Didn't that used to be like the Fort's arty range? Pretty scruffy ground if left to itself without irrigation.
PETA should be gearing up to save them any time....

My limit would be $60 a brick for either CCI SV or Blazer. Of course if I were totally out most likely would pay more.

Finally found some American Eagle for 1.99/ 50 and some Federal bulk 325 packs for $16.95 in our local Bimart. The American Eagle has always worked great in my rifles for squirrels and other game so I had my son buy the 2 box limit of them while I bought the 1 box limit of the Federal bulk target.
Hopefully get my stock back up where I'm not concerned about running out on a 2 day sage rat hunt. Sure wish I could find some Power Points, though.

Bob

I can say this much, and I've said it before, to get caught short handed on 22 was not prepping well, at the cost of said 22 ammo...

BUT I am caught needing something I never needed prior, IE DURING the shortage I found use for a particular CCI that worked really well suppressed. almost 2 years back I bought 5 boxes and have been on multiple email update lists and have been looking weekly for that specific ammo and have NEVER seen it again.

I don't think anyone is sitting on it, and metering it out.

Its simply that it doesn't sell as well as others and since they are making as much as they can and people are still trying to make a buck as the 2nd middle man, its going to stay that way.

Oh yeah, what price would I buy it?

The stuff I really need woudl be almost any price. At least for 2 bricks or so.

Regular plinking stuff? Likely I'll never have the need again since I"m 50 with no kids. But only when the market is saturated and I think folks have all they can deal with and or need, and the price falls to what I figure is about as low as it'll ever get again.

The RWS SS HP I like is about $7-$8 per box, and I'm okay with that. I would like to find a good practice round that hits the same place and is as accurate or nearly so. I stay on notify lists and check the usual sites regularly just to keep abreast of the situation.

I just bought 500 Remington Thunderbolts because of wanting to know if they work as bad as some people say, or as reasonably well as some other people say. Plus the price was right....

Just bought A brick of Win sshp for 50 dollars and Win 42gr sshp for 57 dollars for 500 and I was happy to find it almost excited. Pappy348 cci stander ammo shoots to just about the same spot as RWS SSHP in two of my rifles at 34 yards on the back yard range.

I'm on Notify for that at least one place.

Missed my chance on the Aguila at Midway. I'm still well supplied, but don't want to get in a pinch. I just joined a range about two miles from my house and expect to burn up a lot more than I have been.

Ya know, we all came to this Forum and continue to return because we have similar interests.

This place we all enjoy so much is really a BBS. That stands for Bulletin Board Service. They've been around since the internet started, and the theory behind them is, was, and always will be "Share what you know, Learn what you don't", as described to me by a long time good friend who has forgotten more than I will ever know about this stuff and is a Texas version of a Billy Ray Cyrus look-alike biker.

I thought it was a heck of a thing when I first discovered them back in 1992 that a nerdy little Paki network engineer guy that I worked with and happened to like was able to communicate in almost real time with his brother on the other side of the world who was doing contract work for our own U.S. of A. gub'ment.

It's a given that some here are more proficient with the innanet than others. I guess I'm probably one of those people by default of my spending so many years in the field. But, you know what? I'm betting a lot of guys here could tear down a 327 or 350 ci small block Chevy engine, rebuild it way better than it ever was and put it back together a hell of a lot better and faster than I could.

My point is this. Nothing to gain beating anybody up for what they don't know. They may turn around and teach you something you didn't.

Here's something for the whole crew.

Good ammo. Decent price. Schitty pricing on shipping. Comes out to about $.0817/rd for my zipcode after shipping. No tax.

http://www.natchezss.com/federal-automatch-22-lr-40-gr-sld-rimfire-ammunition-325-box.html

Cheers.