Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires why keep 22lr rifle?

Yes I can reload the .22s. No more ammo shortages for me.

Dwayne, appreciate your thoughts and I'll put a little icing on the cake.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of my 10th birthday I was riding around with my brother and two cousins on a 2 lane blacktop between nowhere and empty. Along the road was a bridge where we had slaughtered many garfish in the past, tossed them on the road and waited for the daily Greyhound bus to roll by and make them pop. We laffed and giggled a bit over that. Anyway, we had just passed the bridge when a gaggle of large black birds were spotted a ways down the road. We slowed to a stop and turned broadside about 75 yards short of the birds. My grandfather's Remington 513S was in the back seat with me (the big boys rode up front) and the younger cousin. My brother told me to shoot one, so I rolled down the window and stuck that monster cannon out the window, rested it on the sill and made my best guess on where to aim, 'cause brother had told me I'd have to aim high at that range. So I did. Pop'n flop. Near about shot its head off. The big boys were astounded and so was I. That said, good irons properly sighted and used with 20/15 vision works now and then.

Time passed, and about 5 years later my grand dad gave me that gun and I slew many critters with it, mostly rabbits. More time passed and I returned from Vietnam, settled down a bit and decided for reasons that elude me now, to put a scope on that one. The gunsmith installed both bases off center in opposite directions. Dang it....but I made it work with some shims. 5 or 6 years later I was living on the beach and on occasion would shoot a crab or two with BB caps, never giving much thought to cleaning. It was a year or so later that I realized the chamber was pitted. Double Dang it. Funny thing was that it still shot pretty fair most days, but the damage I'd inflicted bothered me.

15 years later I shipped it off to a 'smith requesting that he fix the misaligned scope bases and install a barrel liner....and while he was at it, refinish the stock. He did all that and with a happy heart I went to the range. Lovely patterns at 50 yards, no more than 5-6" wide. Triple Dang it.

Grab a cup of coffee lads, this is going to last a bit longer.

The gun sat in the locker for another 15 years or so and I finally shipped it off to a gun shop I'd done business with in the past. Asked them to rebarrel the thing with a match chambered Douglas barrel. They didn't believe at first that it didn't shoot, but demonstrated that to their own satisfaction and did the job. When it came back three things came to my attention. The only ammo I could chamber was Wolf MT and that took a bit of force to accomplish. It shot lights out. One of the scope bases had been healed again. I fiddled with it awhile and finally sent it off to Mr. Dennis Earhardt in Helena, MT and asked him to take a look at the chamber.

Dennis called me a week or so later and said the chamber was tapered. "Say what?" He replied,"That's what I said." He fixed that, straightened out the one remaining crooked base and refinished the metal....all of it. It showed up and we went to the range and parked on the 50 yard butt. He said he had shot it at that distance and I guess he zeroed the old clunker too.



It has little dust on it these days and nobody gets to play with it except me. Did I mention that I like the El Paso Weaver K2.5 that resides on the roof? I ferget, some of my memory circuits are fuzzy these days. Except for where it counts. Gramps always had a wicked sense of humor and I'm sure he was laffin' all the way thru this adventure. Every time you have a glass of OJ, raise it in a toast to him. He was half the team that invented concentrated orange juice just before WW2. He also wore out 3 LC Smith 16 ga SxS guns hunting quail during his life. Seldom missed a shot made with lead or sharp wit.

From my cold dead hands,

BD




PS: I have a .17 rimfire that was made before any of you galoots were born. Fella named Paul Neubrand made it in Germany prior to WW1 in a little ville called Munderkingen on the Baltic coast. It is a Zimmerstutzen with a barrel insert of 8" length, roughly .177" in the grooves (12) and a 7" twist. I like to died laffin' when I slugged it the first time and thought "What was this loon thinking?" Now I know...

50', indoors and offhand by the notorious SPG his own self. Two shots/target






It has a double trigger. The forward cocks the action, the rear....think about it and it sends a round down range.

Frozen cold hands...........