Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires What's your best shooting target/matchgrade ammo

That's one of the reasons why I stopped shooting Wolf Match. Not only is it the dirtiest ammo it is caked in lube. Now I use the 500 round bricks as a doorstop.

Food for thought.

I would say that there's always room for improvement. Had the shooters and ammo makers of 100 years ago thrown their hands up and said "this is as good as it can get" we'd be in a fix today. But, I doubt we'll see over the next 100 years the same dramatic increase in quality/accuracy that we've seen over the last 100 years. Ammo makers have spent a sh*t ton of money to develop what we now have (probably not out of kindness toward we shooters but as a means of profiting more than their competitors - always follow the money). Subtle changes in bullet shape, lead alloy, lube, cases, powder, priming compounds, etc. have served to move us forward. How much is left in that pot I don't know.

As for better BC bullets for the .22LR case, and different calibers, etc. yeah, I think that's where we'll see the most improvement. But along with new ideas about ammo there has to be attendant changes in the equipment that shoots it. I'll submit that the current .22LR match ammo is about as optimal as you can get for the bores/chambers/throats of the guns we shoot it in. Will more ballistically efficient bullets demand changes in said barrels, etc.? Undoubtedly. And will such revolutionary changes in ammo & gear demand revolutionary changes in how we approach the game, yeah probably again. That all spells money - money that ammo companies has to spend, and money we'll have to spend to get on the bandwagon - and to that end maybe it is better after all to let things progress slowly. I see so much trouble in the world from mankind leaping ahead way too fast in some things, faster than our frail psyches can keep up with sometimes. Kinda like if you went back to 1920 and gave a guy who's used to driving a Model T and rightfully can't conceive of a car that'll easily and (relatively) safely zip up to over 100 MPH and handle/brake accordingly well too, and drop him into a new BMW he would probably kill himself in less than two minutes - but we moderns who benefit from slow but progressive advances in automotive technology take that Beemer in stride. (Probably not the best analogy, but hey!)

Dunno, just thinking out loud.

Just thinking out loud...

Have we reached the apex of what we can expect from the .22 LR - and in particular the bullets to which it is limited? I know there is always room for improvement but even the most accurate ammo possible is still going to shoot a ballistically inefficient bullet at a low velocity.

Would we be better off putting some major development into something like the new 21 Sharp? I've never owned a .17 caliber rimfire but by all accounts, run of the mill .17 caliber rifles outshoot similar .22's by a good bit and especially as the range increases. A faster bullet with a much better BC that loses velocity at a much lower rate will always be less affected by wind.

In a perfectly windless environment good .22 LR ammo in excellent barrels can certainly show incredible one hole accuracy, but outside of that (literally outside) environmental factors will always be more detrimental to less ballistically efficient projectiles.

My long winded point here is that instead of relying on esoteric efforts to create results that are greatly affected by factors outside of our control (the art of reading the wind vs. the science of bullet and rifle technology), could we not see a major leap forward by by simply changing the bullet that a .22 LR case can shoot?

Thanks buddy. However I've seen more lube on the Norma Tac22 ammo. That stuff is greezy!!! In cold (below freezing), that lube gets real sticky and starts affecting groups and even velocity as well. No bueno here. If you lived closer, I'd trade you a real doorstop for that Wolf match target ammo you have. ha ha..

A tale strictly for amusement purposes. Many years back I bought a Vickers Special Grade II 1928 Special. It was represented by the seller as a super accurate rifle, which it never was with me at the helm. Enter an old! English gentleman emigrant I met. He had a mantel loaded with 'miniature rifle club' trophies. I related my tale of woe with the Vickers Special. He told me that it was a proper English rifle and it demanded proper English feeding. At his insistence, I bought the required Eley Tenex, cleaned the bore of the 'pollution of that foreign ammunition' (Federal Gold Medal Ultra Match) and fired 20 or so to season the bore...and bingo...she was competing with the 52B's. The old gentleman claimed that Eley still used beeswax and tallow, the only lube that doesn't cook or build up as round count goes up and he claimed that Vickers had cut the chamber to fit the Tenex...perhaps so.
It'll never be an Anschutz...but it is amazing to see what a nearly century old rifle can do with fodder it likes.

A tale strictly for amusement purposes. Many years back I bought a Vickers Special Grade II 1928 Special. It was represented by the seller as a super accurate rifle, which it never was with me at the helm. Enter an old! English gentleman emigrant I met. He had a mantel loaded with 'miniature rifle club' trophies. I related my tale of woe with the Vickers Special. He told me that it was a proper English rifle and it demanded proper English feeding. At his insistence, I bought the required Eley Tenex, cleaned the bore of the 'pollution of that foreign ammunition' (Federal Gold Medal Ultra Match) and fired 20 or so to season the bore...and bingo...she was competing with the 52B's. The old gentleman claimed that Eley still used beeswax and tallow, the only lube that doesn't cook or build up as round count goes up and he claimed that Vickers had cut the chamber to fit the Tenex...perhaps so.
It'll never be an Anschutz...but it is amazing to see what a nearly century old rifle can do with fodder it likes.