Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Why I gave up the .22mag.

Redneck...I have a Single-Six Hunter and it shoots great. This was the first 12 shots sighting in the scope at 25 yards... The first three were sighters while adjusting...then I left the dials where they were for 9 more..



Maggies can be very very picky about ammo. I have a Savage 24 DL and a H&R Handy Rifle that both will shoot 3/8" groups at 50 yards with the old Winchester 40 gr. HP...put in CCI TNT and groups open up to 2.5"... This picture is three shots from a Ruger 77/22 All-Weather with CCI TNTs... But with 40 grain Winchester HPs it won't even hit the dot...






You may want to try some different brands and use a good scope if you are shooting a rifle...

Bob

No, they are country hogs. They have a remarkable resemblance to liberals though since they lose all caution when they see the color yellow. Then they lose their minds, such as they are....another similarity. Perhaps they read the Miami Herald?
Here's a family picture for you. The fence you see is not a barrier to them, nor intended to keep them in.

That would be a good question.

I've shot way too many critters with both to believe the .22 mag is an inferior cartridge, but I will share an experience I had.

I was a new employee at a gun shop and the owner told me that when I sold one of those little Davis derringers that I should encourage the customer to buy .22 lr instead of .22 mag. He claimed the .22 mag didn't perform well out of the short barrel.

I was a .22 mag fan, so I raised the BS flag and he made me eat my words. Logically I figured it wasn't at its best, but I didn't believe the lr was a better choice in any situation.

We mixed balistic gel and fired both cartridges with several types of bullets, choosing as near to identical bullets as we could get.

Believe it or not the .22lr penetrated about three times further than the mag. It also out penetrated .25acp. (but the acp disturbed a lot more gel around the entry)

He said the burn curve of the powder was all wrong in the .22 mag for that short a barrel. There probably isn't an inch of barrel in front of the .22 mag cartridge in one of the little derringers. I still have the one I bought in .22lr.

Out of a rifle, or a revolver with a few inches of barrel, there just isn't any comparison. Though the ammo selection just ain't what it used to be.

Bob, I was only talking about the one I shot which looks nothing like yours. It had about a 1" barrel on with smooth bore with no rifling. I have only been talking about the model I shot so while your pictures are nice they're completely irrelevent and don't really prove anything.



Here is a picture I borrowed off gunbroker. This is what the one I shot looked like and the results were photographed.

It had a smooth bore barrel which made it incapable of anything close to the accuracy you show in the pictures. I also seriously think the barrel was over bored so not to jam any slugs in it when fired. This wouldn't help a thing in the accuracy or velocity depts.

Don't believe me? Look at the pictures again. See any rifling on the bullet?

Do you think a gun with a 1"-1.5" smooth bore barrel is capable of the kind of accuracy you're talking about at 25yds?

Look for yourself, see any rifling marks on the bullet?


Also, I was standing directly in front of this piece of wood when I fired. As you can see the bullet looks like it came in from a 45deg angle which indicates the bullet was tumbling.

As for the ammo, I don't remember the brand. I didn't think I would need to. I know it was 22WRF because I loaded the gun myself once.

I will state this for the last time. I have no reason to lie about this and those that know me on this board should know I don't make up stuff.

I shot this pistol from about 5' away from the target. The picture you see is the result.

I never wrote this to piss anyone off but it obviously has. I know we try to defend our buying decisions. In this case my brother in law couldn't. He realized that a gun like this is pretty much worthless when the chips are down and sold it at the pawn shop on the way home. I was glad he got rid of it and I wouldn't recommend one to anybody.

I was amazed enough to get a camera and take a picture when I got home. This was my experience with the pistol. I posted the pictures to share my experience with the gun. My intensions weren't to upset anyone but, It's not always pretty when you don't have advertisers to please.

Terry

I hear the little ones eat pretty good. True?

We don't have any on my place.

Terry

I have a NAA 1 5/8" barrel in 22LR. I have finished off one elk and two or three deer with it, at close range. One 100 LB plus dog and hit a cat at 30 or 40 feet. I have also shot a couple of rattle snakes with it.
It chronoed over 300 FPS in my den with CB's. It might have been over 400 I don't recall the exact FPS, but do remember I was impressed. I darn sure don't want to be shot at with one.

On the 22 Mag vs, the 17 HMR. I shot about a hundred of both calibers at whistle pigs (ground squirrels) this weekend, Plus about 500 22 LR.There is NO WAY a 17HMR approaches to the energy or damage compared to what a 22 Mag HP has on small critters.

As far as accuracy goes My old Marlin 783 in 22 Mag will out shoot me I think. That said, the 17 HMR I have is super accurate, but the Mag is M-O-whistle pig as far away as I can hit em, which is definitely over 100 yards, and leaves a lot less wounded.

OK, so it's an elk gun now.

HA!

Ok Terry...now I understand...you were shooting .22 Winchester Rimfire (WRF)..not .22 Winchester Rimfire Magnum (WRM). There is a BIG difference between the two...like the difference between a .38 Special and .357 Magnum...

As to your gun, my first NAA .22 Magnum looked just like that but had two cylinders as does the MiniMaster above. It was just as accurate as the Black Widow I now have and was so accurate that after a friend shot it he pestered me for weeks to buy it...and I sold it regreted it until buying these two.

If that NAA really didn't have any rifling then it could never possible stabilized any bullet and since there would be no bullet to bore seal then all the gas would leak by further reducing velocity. I was thinking maybe that NAA made a special run of guns just for the CCI .22 Magnum snake shot round but that would subject the gun to Federal registration as a short barreled smoothbore firearm and subject to a $5.00 Tax....

Don't give up on the little NAAs...as you can see they are great little shooters.

Bob

I did say MRF instead of WRF, My bad.

Terry

Well, it still seems a bit cockeyed to me, but it really isn't all that important. The WRF uses the same bullet diameter as the WMR and has velocity a bit higher than the LR. CCI's current loading is a 45 grain copper jacketed bullet listed at 1300 fps. It is not a healed design. I've seen older ammo that uses lead bullets but they too are not a healed design.

With that said, I have a magnifier function on my mouse and there are no rifling marks evident in the photo.

1x10^9 angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Time to move along.

Those of us who look at field results rather than hype know this to be true sir. Shooting critters in the head with an HMR is not a good test for cartridge performance. Especially on larger vermin. There really is no comparison.

But HMR touters will still get their panties in a wad...

Life goes on...

I had shot a cow elk that was facing straight towards me. She was standing behind small rise so that only her very upper chest and up was visible. I placed the cross hairs on her chin, lowered a bit and fired. The bullet went through her neck and spine dropping her on the spot. She was unconscious but still breathing when I walked up to her. I took my little NAA 22 out of my front pocket, where it stays while I am big game hunting, for just such a incident.
At 6 inches from her forehead a 22 Stinger stopped her breathing instantly.

If you have ever had to finish a deer or elk from just a few feet with a centerfire rifle, with a shot to the head, you know why that little gun is where it is when I am hunting.
If as I suspect, you have not, I will explain that a 30-06 bullet at 20 or 30 feet to a critters head can be a very messy situation, to say the least.

Hope that answers you well enough.

I never asked you for an explanation, nor have I ever needed 2 guns to take down an animal.

Terry

I worked for a family owned Cold Storage/Meat Processing plant for years. We cut and packaged game for hunters,as well as butchered hogs and beef for local farmers. We'd drive to their farms in a winch truck to do our slaughtering, as the cold storage was downtown. I will guarantee you that all of the biggest of beeves, huge bulls included, even a few bison, that we ever shot in the forehead with a 22mag died on the spot--hundreds of them, and not one ever got back up.

Before that we had used a .22LR, but made the switch because every once in a great while, a big bull wouldn't go down, or would get back up, really really mad, when shot with the .22LR. After the Mag -- not one ever.

OK, I looked at that picture of the bullet in the board and had to go see for myself. Here are my results.

Test weapon Ruger Single Six, 6.5" barrel with interchangeable cylinders -- .22lr and .22Mag.

Ammo:

.22Mag 34gr jacketed hollow point, Winchester Supreme (Hey I know that solids would of tested better but this is what I had on hand).

.22LR 32gr gilded hollow point, CCI Stingers (Again with the hollow point, but they were one of several .22LR rounds that I had on hand and should compare closest to the mag shell that I used)

First a couple of .22mag rounds into a 2x4 from about 25' . . .



and the other side . . .



OK, so they get through a pine 2x4 how about the .22LR . . .


Yep they do too.

How about edgewise . . .





The .22Mag did it but the .22LR didn't make it. Judgeing from a piece of wire that I stuck in the hole, the .22LR did make it 2/3s of the way or more through though.

I brought some books too, but after one shot with the .22LR, I knew that I didn't bring enough books.



So I had another idea, how about if I clamp the books on behind the 2x4 and see what happens . . .

.22mag 3/4s of the way through the second book, after 1 1/2 inches of pine lumber.

[img]http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z13/bricky62/100_1654.jpg[/img]

.22LR 1/3 of the way into the first book after 1 1/2 inches of pine lumber.

[img]http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z13/bricky62/100_1655.jpg[/img]

I'm not sure what this proves, other than that was some hard lumber in that first photo, or that I don't want one of the little pocket derrangers. But I did get all of my bullits to go a lot deeper than that. And the .22Mags made it through over 500 more pages of book on the other side of a 2x4 than the .22LR did.

By the looks of that bullet in the original photo, it's not mashed or tore up or anything -- If it's a genuine photo, no matter how hard the wood is, I think that little smooth bore let all the gasses get around the bullet, so it had no force at impact.

I have done some testing on this, but with 6 inch barrels. In 6" handguns, the .22 magnum severely beats the long rifle. I get 965 fps with a 37 grain hollow point Super-X long rifle, for 76 foot pounds of energy. Using Super-X 40 grain hollow point magnums, I get 1375 fsp for 168 pounds of enery - well over TWICE the power of the long rifle cartridge. This is a HUGE difference. These numbers are from my SW 35 6" .22 long rifle revolver and my SW 648 6" .22 mag revolver.

As for comoparing the .22 mag from a handgun to the long rifle from a rifle, the .22 mag from the handgun beats the published .22 long rifle high velocity cartridges (from a rifle) by 17 to 22%, depending on whether one is using solids or hollow points. Some of the hyper velocity hollow points (Yellow Jackets, for ex.) from a rifle amost equal the .22 mag from a 6" gun.

Really nice testing there Jock-L, thanks for taking the time to do it and post it. Got an old single six myself, well, actually, Dad said to give it to my son before he left for some other plane.

Pretty conclusive IMO.

This is an interesting thread. At first, I thought it was purely inflammatory.

The 22 mag is a bone crusher.

And see there's people that probably thought that if I'd of actually read them books, they would of been more useful and informative -- Guess they finally taught me something in the end!