Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires 17 Mach2 Ammo Question

Is there any Mach2 ammo being produced anymore?

I stop in retailers around here and most of them tell me they haven't had any in over a year. Not that they have some dribbling in and selling out right away. But they are getting none.

So, is Mach2 ammo being produced anymore?

I have a great shooting CZ I bought for the wife. Slayed many a prairie dog with it and I am trying to decide what to do with the rifle.

I have probably 500+ rounds of ammo and considering selling it as a package.

If I keep the rifle, what are my options if ammo continues to dry up?

[b][color:#000099]This Article[/color][/b] should help explain the current status of 17HM2

Thanks. The article was very poorly written, but I took away that there might be more runs at a later date, once the demand for 22lr slows down.

Have you looked at what is being posted on Rimfire Central?

The .17MH2 is one of my favorite cartridges, probably the best tree squirrel round EVER MADE. But without Eley or Eley-made Remington ammo, the rifles are just candidates for being rebarreled to .22LR.

I bought a bunch of it when CDNN and Centerfire Systems was selling the last of the Remington. I bought 500 rounds of Hornady last year, but didn't get to shoot much because of my prolonged health issues.

I never bought into the 17 Mach2 and I knew it wouldn't last with the competition from the 17 HMR, which in my opinion is the better round. Lesson learned, don't buy into fades from the gun and ammo people until it is well established. Another is the 17 WSM.

I have several of both 17HM2 (x10) and 17HMR (x8) rifles and think that the 17HM2 is a superior tree squirrel rifle. The 17HMR is faster and louder, but the the 17HM2 is at least as accurate and was a little cheaper to shoot. When Eley was selling match grade ammo for the same price as their mid-level .22 LR match grade ammo it was a great ego booster 'cause it was so easy to shoot sub-MOA groups with just about any 17HM2 rifle, even the inexpensive Marlins and Savages.

I'm sorry that the 17HM2 doesn't appear to be on track to be a long term success, but it is easy to rebarrel most 17HM2 rifles to .22LR and I suspect that down the road there will be lots of 17HM2 barrels for sale on eBay.

Get your Congressman to lobby for more 17 Mach2 ammo

My Congressman is one of the most liberal in the entire House! Brad Ashford has never met a criminal who couldn't be rehabilitated or a gun owner who was misdirected.

I had a Kimber 1911 conversion in Mach2 that was a pleasure to shoot, but would fire slightly out of battery and bulge cases every so often. When I sold my .45, I also sold the converter and later sold about 1800 rounds of ammo I had picked up at bargain prices. Probabbly the most accurate pistol I've ever shot, but a little scarey.

The rifles and ammo were so accurate that there was talk of them replacing .22s for match shooting, but nothing came of it I guess.

Didn't buy into any fad. Found a really nice CZ rim fire for my wife. It just happened to be chambered in 17 HM2. Once I got it, I realized how nice of a shooting rifle it was.

Now, fast forward a number of years and we hit this 22lr run which really hampers Mach 2 ammo production because it just hasn't sold well.

A large percentage of the guys trying to convert Ruger 10/22s to shoot 17HM2 had pressure issue that ran from bulged cases to blown out cases that caused damage to the rifles and the potential for injury to the shooter. Lots of stories over on RFC, but when shot in a bolt action rifle 17HM2 is capable of shooting very small groups and the trajectory out to 100+/- yards is as flat as the 17HMR. The 17HM2 is one area that I agree with Layne Simpson on.

I sometimes wish that I had kept the ammo and bought a Contender or CZ to shoot it. At the time, Gander Mountain, where my son worked, would re-line a .22 barrel for about $150, but the only one I had was my 581 that I've had since Christmas of '67 and that wasn't an option.

I still might go for one someday if the madness ever stops.

Somebody, either here or on RFC, has a Japanese-build Browning or Winchester 52 Sporter that has been rebarreled to 17HM2, by far the neatest 17HM2 that I've heard or seen pictures of.

It is a safe bet NOT to go with new cartridges that I like; 17HM2, 218 Bee, 256 WinMag, 25 WSSM, 260, 356, etc., etc., are either on life-support or look to be headed that way.

I too love the mk 2 but unfortunately many very good carterages never caught on or jus died..

Here's a good read on the lack of 17HM2 ammo availability. It doesn't look very favorable.

http://www.rrdvegas.com/17-mach-ii.html

Looks like the same article that Tarkio posted the link to.

Without Eley ammo, the 17HM2 is much less attractive to me.

Sure is. Sorry I missed that

How's that BetaMax working out?😀

The Mach 2 is a great round and I don't think it will die. But I do think it's going to continue to suffer from a severe drought for a few more years.

Wouldn't own another in a semi-auto. But they are awesome in a bolt gun.



Travis

Ohh so true and the list is growing

At the introduction of 17M2, I already had a 17HMR, but the introductory pricing of 17M2 ammo was lower than the bullets in the cartridge.
At 8 cents a shot in 2008, I could pull the Vmax bullets and be ahead.
I bought a 17M2 reamer and a 17M2 barrel and bolt for the 10/22.
That was a bust. A rim blow out is going to happen, more than once.
My brother built a 17M2 bolt action with my reamer, and then moved to a prairie dog area. The 17M2 is no prairie dog cartridge. Maybe ground squirrel, but not prairie dog.
So now I have 11 bricks [$440 in 2008] and have fired a dozen rounds in 7 years.
But I have not given up.
I have a 17 Mach IV reamer and a barrel.

You ever want to sell any of those bricks, please let me know.

I've seen some good results on PDs depending on the distance. About the same with the .17HMR which obviously has a little more legs.

Well, when I bought a MkII it was a Sako Quad and I also got a 17 HMR barrel and barrels in .22 LR and .22 Mag. I also bought up a schitload of ammo for the MkII cause I kinda wondered how long it would be around. Turns out I've used the rifle more with the MkII barrel than anything...great little round.

.Killed 2 starlings with one of mine this morning..

Possibly the ultimate starling round.

We used to shoot them by the bucketful. We baited them in winter and shot them with airguns. We shot them with .22s during the nesting season in PA. The most fun was wingshooting the flocks in the wintertime. Those feathered rats can really fly!

My brother even popped one with a 185gr hollerpoint out of his AMT Hardballer.

There is another issue preventing 17HM2 ammo from production. This may have been solved as of late, but it was still a topic at SHOT.

CZ does runs of 452's for us every year. We requested 500 17HM2's in addition to our regular order. We met with them and the ammo manufacturer. We didn't want the guns if they couldn't deliver a big quantity of ammo.

Long story short, the ammo company wouldn't commit to a run until they could anneal the necks before priming. They said the necks were too brittle in their current form. The firearm manufacturers had been pounding them over the last several years because of split necks. They were even concerned about shelf life of existing ammo. They said it should harden and become more brittle over time creating additional issues in the future.

FWIW -- this may have been a story concocted as an excuse because they couldn't keep up with everything else, but they sure went into tons of detail to say "not at this time".

I've seen necks crack on .17HM2s. But no more than the 17HMR to be honest.

I'm starting to see Ruger 10-22 barrel chambered in the Mach-2 for sale on EBAY

From what I've seen, 10/22 conversions to 17HM2 are potentially dangerous under the best of circumstances and bombs under less than the best of circumstances. I converted three of them and even though I kept them spotlessly clean, never had so much as a bulged case, I decided that safety concerns dictated that a return to .22 LR was the smart thing to do.

I just removed a Majestic 17M2 barrel from a 10/22 this week and put a 22LR Bentz Green Mountain barrel on.

I currently have no 17M2 guns, but I have a reamer, and I will build one.



THis 1947 Winchester 75 looks like a good candidate [already been touched by Bubba]. Much better chamber support than the 10/22.