I'm between .17 centerfires. I've stocked up on .17 Remington brass and bullets, just need an action to build on. The action from my last .17 Remington currently wears a very accurate .204 barrel. Someday I'll get around to picking up another barrel and action.
In a way, I liked the .17 Fireball even more than the .17 Remington but mine was twitchy 'bout feeding: sometimes, maybe one time out of 20, it'd decide to spit all the cartridges from the magazine into the air, then onto the ground, all at once.
Never messed with the M2. I've got a fairly accurate Ruger 77/17 HMR with the barrel cut back to 20 inches. Sometimes I forget what a good trigger job I did on it ... couldn't probably repeat that if I tried 20 times. Pull the trigger ... makes me smile. It just sends bullets where the crosshairs meet and things die. Hard to argue with. I can't imagine ever getting rid of it.
Tom
If you can pick up a 221 fireball, this is my idea of an ideal action for a walking Varminter to build a 17 fireball on. Only problem with this IMHO is the 221 fireball's tend to be tack driver's, Thus hard to pull a barrel on one of those. I came across one that someone had already swapped barrels on & that is my favorite Varmint rifle by far.
