Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Winchester 40 grain Power Points

Pre-hoarding/Obama days, my go-to rimfire bullet was the Winchester copper-plated HP 40 grain Power Point. FPS was in the range of 1275. They shot well and killed even better.

Anybody shot these in the last year or so? I seem to remember reading something where the the Power Points aren't as accurate as the PP's of 10 years ago. Any truth to that or are they just like they used to be?

I have quite a few of them and they both shoot very well out of my Cooper 57M and CZ 452 sporter, they will group 10 shots into a 1/2" group at 50 yds out of either rifle. Sometimes a flyer will open the 10 shot groups up to 3/4" inch but not often enough to be concerned about. I have shot a lot of gophers with them this spring and they do hit hard, most anything within 100 yds is DRT.

drover

One of my favorites too. Shoot ungodly accurate out of my Mossberg Model 44. Heard somewhere they were developed for the big rabbits in Australia?

drover, so can I assume the PP's you shot recently were a current batch and they shoot and kill just like the ones from 10 years ago? What was the going price you paid for PP's? The PPs I have still carry $12.99 and $13.95 per carton written on them and I'm pretty sure those prices are long gone. Thanks for the current info.

orion, I heard the same thing, that the PP's were made for the Aussie market. They do kill well.

I think the current batch is just fine. The left group was first on paper. The right group was after scope adjustment. You will notice a pulled shot on the right side group. A braked monster gun went off two benches over just as i was applying the final pressure on the trigger. I have a good supply of the current PP.

Ratholed about a brick of those last fall on sale. Haven't shot them because of some bad reports.

Might dig them out just to see if they shoot as well as everything else does in the 452.

Saw some 1280 fps at BassPro today. They were on a "sale" rack, but didn't bother to check the price.

Was too busy trying to figure out how I'd been so f'in stupid to lock my keys in my truck. Buddy Mr. Mannlicher baled me out with his "Gold" AAA card.

I hope others had better luck than I did. I've been a fan of the PP's for years and saved them for target work with my best .22's and sage rat hunting.

Finally had a chance to buy some of the recent vintage, which are made in Illinois, I believe. Shot like crap in my Win 52, Rem. 40X, and several other rimfires. These rifles usually shoot most ammo into .2 at 50 yards pretty easily, but the new PP's were lucky to be .75".

Bob

I picked up 500 of them somewhere last fall, so I am assuming they are current manufacture. I really don't remember how the ones from 10 years ago shot and killed so all I can speak for are those. However, there are at least 400 dead gophers that would testify that they kill well, if they were able. I can tell you this, there is a noticeable audible thump when one hits a gopher.

I spent quite a bit of time in the southwest last fall so I don't know where I acquired them but I can tell you with certainty that I did not pay over .10 cents per round for them. I have enough 22 ammo that .10 cents per round has been my limit even during the darkest days of the shortage. I am sure they were acquired prior to the election because I haven't purchased any 22 ammo in the last few months.

drover

I believe the big difference noted has been the old 50 round silver box powerpoints VS the new plastic tray 100 round ammo. Several posted the plastic versions shot under expectation compared to the silver box stuff. My only comparison is a kidd barreled 10-22, 2 cartons of the old 50 rounders, vs a mess of the new 100 round ammo. Both shoot the same, ragged hole groups at 100 yards.

It has also been seen, by myself online, for sub $10 A 100. It seems a mess have been released, or produced, in the last few months. My batch of good, plastic tray ammo was maybe a year ago.

Allen

Don't have any pictures of recent plastic box targets, but don't see significant difference between their performance and stuff from the last century.

Lonny: I have been shooting these bullets for quite some time now in a variety of Rifles and a couple of my heavy barrel Ruger Mark II, Mark III and now Mark IV pistols along with several heavy barrel Browning Buck-Mark pistols.
These ARE wonderful bullets in that they are VERY lethal on small game and Varmints along with them being impressively accurate.
These are my "go to" bullets in my Kimber H/S (Hunter/silhouette), Remington 40X, Kimber 82-G, Ruger 77/22 V/T and my Remington heavy barrel 541-T.
I have been using these bullets for much in excess of 10 years and have NOT noticed any diminished accuracy over that time.
They are hard to find at times but worth the searching IMO.
Hopefully "hoarding" has diminished of recent?
Again - they ARE worth it!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Thanks for the info gentlemen.

I happened upon some PP's today in the 100 each plastic packs and I bought a couple hundred. All the older ones I have are the 50 per in paper cartons. One of these days I'll shoot them side by side and see if they are still the same.

One thing I noticed in the store today was even though the description on the Power Point plastic 100 packs appeared the same, some packs said "1280 FPS" and some said "1300 FPS" They appeared to be the same thing though?

I don't know if this is the ammo that you're speaking of, but www.ammunitiontogo.com has 40 grain PPs, SKU X22LRPP1, on sale for $179 for 2,000 rounds in 100 round plastic boxes.

Got a few cases pre-Obama and still feel like I'm running short. Not seen a box on the shelf for about 6 years now. Thinking of taking the rifles out of the safe and putting that ammo in.

That's exactly the one I was talking about.

I got some great groups with power point 15 years ago.

They are cheap now

http://vizardsgunsandammo.com/win-s...0-per-box-super-x-high-velocity-rimfire/

Dicks has them on sale for $7.99 per box of 100
No limit. 4/9/17

Lonny,

A few comments on my experience with the Winchester Power Point ammo:

The box you saw that said 1300 fps are solids, not hollow points. The boxes look identical unless you look close. The HPs are labeled as 1280 fps, (and actually shot 1314 fps out of my Ruger 77).

As several posters have pointed out, the wide-open hollow point bullets are much more effective on small game than the standard-type hollow points we find on Mini-Mags and others. The wide point doesn't feed well in a few rifles, which is a trade-off.

The original Power Points came out in about 1995. My friends and I who were shooting many ground squirrels with our 22s believed we had received a gift from heaven. The PPs hit much harder, and they were as accurate, or more so, than other 22 ammo that we had been using in most of our rifles. Fewer squirrels hit made it back into their holes. The difference was noticeable.

Then, a few years later the paper box graphics changed, and the load changed, somehow. We were told that they were being loaded in a different factory. The bullets were just as effective when they hit, the bullet itself was the same. But accuracy in most rifles was not as good.

This caused me to switch back to Mini-Mags in one of my rifles. Most rimfire rifles prefer certain ammo over others, accuracy wise. Now only some rifles shot really well with the newer Power Points.

My scoped Rem M-121 shot the old, original Power Points so much better than anything else, that I set aside a brick of the old ones just for it. I still have about 4 boxes of those.

Today we have the Power Point ammo in the plastic boxes. Whether this is the same second generation ammo or a new generation, I do not know.

I have only tested this new plastic box ammo in one rifle, the Ruger 77 test that I reported on in the other thread ("Tested Some More Ammo Today"). The Power Points finished #10 out of 14 loads, with a 10-shot group of 3" at 100 yards @ 1314 fps (factory claims 1280 fps). The accuracy winner was American Eagle at 1 1/2". For reference, the CCI Mini-Mag did 2 1/8".

Of interest is the fact that the new, plastic-box Browning BPR high-performance hollow points appear externally exactly like the Win Power Points, except for the headstamp. The large, wide hollow point bullet should be even more devastating on game at its higher velocity of 1435, claimed (my Ruger got 1392, still a good step up). I bet they are coming off the same assembly line.

Unfortunately, the Browning load was the least accurate in my Ruger, with a 10-shot group of 3 1/2" at 100 yards.

The Browning load would be my first choice in a rifle that shot it well enough. The high-velocity CCI Stingers haven't been very accurate in my rifles, either.

In conclusion, I no longer think there is an inherent accuracy advantage to the Winchester Power Points. I test each rifle with several different loads, and let the rifle tell me what it likes best. In recent times the Power Points have shown just average accuracy in most of my rifles. In my opinion they are not as good as the first, original Power Points. Whether they are the same as the pre-Obama Power Points, I do not know. If your rifle shot those really well, then you may still be in luck with the plastic box ammo.

Now that I have a supply of the newest Power Points I will retest some of my old rifles. I will be very happy if they turn out to be "best" in one of my rifles.

nifty,

Very good info on the history of the Win PP's. Thank you for the rundown of where they are at currently.

I'll still do some testing of the new PP's, but its sounding like they aren't like the PP's of old...

This week I did some more testing of the current Win Power-Points in my Ruger 77/22.

In my tests at 100 yards with 10-shot groups, the Power-Points produced unimpressive groups which fell into the middle of the pack of loads that I tested. But I noticed that several of the shots in each group clustered very close together.

This time I tested by shooting several 5-shot groups at 50 yards. What I found was that all the groups had 3 or 4 shots in 1/2", and then usually one, but sometimes two flyers about an inch out of the group.

I really like the terminal performance of the Power-Point bullet. I will try using some on the ground squirrels, and maybe just accept that one of every few shots will be a flyer. That will give me a good excuse for missing, anyway.

I will also try the current Power-Points in some of my other rifles and see how they do, and if the flyers are still present.

I wish I knew what caused the flyers. If they could be eliminated this ammo would have excellent accuracy.

Under 50 yards the accuracy as-is would be good enough, but few of my ground squirrels are shot at less than 50 yards.