Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles 22 Hornet

I would only use 35 grain bullets if I was hunting ground squirrels or skunks perhaps. Certainly not raccoons, foxes or anything bigger. My experience with the 35s was bad. Depending on the animal, rib bones can mess up the little 35s. I had three or four bad experiences with them in my 22 Hornet. That rifle that is now a 22 K Hornet.

I gave it the K treatment to improve the accuracy and bump up the horse power a tad. The worst experience with a light bullet in the 22 Hornet was when the 35 gr. VMax first came out. I shot a fox. The bullet flew apart after hitting bone and turned the VMax into a fragmentation grenade. It peppered the chest cavity, eventually killing it, but only after it bolted away. My buddy and I looked for it for a while before we found it. I felt bad about that, but figured it was a 'one of' experience. The same thing happened a couple of other times, so it soured me on the 35 gr. VMax.

The body die is only for the 22 K Hornet. When it was still a 22 Hornet, I only had a FL Lee die set, but no body or collet die.

Switching to 40s stopped the severe fragmenting problem. It didn't seem to matter which 40. They all print under an inch.

As an aside, Ellwood Epps grandson reamed my rifle to 22 K Hornet.