Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Small Game 17 or 22 for small game?

Why would you choose the 17 over the 22?

17 M2 electricutes small game flat shooting and accurate.
I guess that's why I don't have one -just hard to beat a 22lr and subsonic ammo though.

Depends on what you're hunting. I'm strictly a .22 man, and probably will stay that way. My hunting is squirrels, and I don't like the way the 17hmrs tear them up. The 17m2 would probably be alright, but finding ammo is tough, and it is cost prohibitive. All 4 of my .22s love CCI SV LR, so that's what I will stay with.


maddog

Maddog I received my first suppressor last week -put it on a CZ455 , it shoots cci sv hp's into nickel size groups at 50 yards for 10 shots .
I have shot squirrels with this ammo and it kills very well.

Like to have me a CZ455. I have a Ruger 77/22, Winchester 9422 & the crown jewel, Page Lewis Olympic. I'll be .22 poor before you know it.

i hunt with both, mostly use .22LR with subsonic HP's early in the year, once leaves drop and i get chances at shots at 75-125+ yards, its the .17mach2's for me...

There is no question in my mind that the 17HM2 is the best tree squirrel cartridge yet to be introduced. Even my $200 Savage is match-grade accurate with Eley/Remington ammo and close with CCI/Hornady. Yes, ammo is hard to come by, but how many tree squirrels are you actually going to shoot in a season? Even if you shoot a couple hundred, that is what, five boxes of ammo? Five boxes for practice and five boxes for hunting over the course of a year seems like a low price to pay for the performance that you get.

I've been killing small critters with the .22LR and .22WMR for almost 45 years now. Rabbits, squirrels, woodchucks, grouse, coons and more have fallen by the thousands. I reckon the .22's will continue to work just fine for me thanks.

Reloder 28,

What 260Remguy said.

Most people don't hunt tree squirrels or bunny rabbits in Montana, even though we have plenty of both in the right areas, but a .17 Mach 2 does the job on either better than anything I've ever tried, because of accuracy and trajectory. Even a relatively affordable rifle like my CZ 452 will put 5 (not just 3) Hornady V-Maxes into less than half an inch at 50 yards, and the trajectory's so flat you can hold right on a squirrel's head or a rabbit's eye from 25-100 yards.

Ammo is more expensive than regular .22, but not by much anymore. The only problem is ammo availability, which is indeed spotty. When I asked Hornady about continued ammo production they say they're totally committed to the HM2, but if for some reason ammo becomes impossible to find I'll just handload my .17 Hornady Hornet with 20-grain V-Maxes and 7.0 grains of Accurate 5744, which duplicates .17 HM2 velocity and accuracy.

I'd like to see you fellas get 100 yard shots at rabbits and squirrels around here. They'd be few and far between and you'd have to purposely be making an effort to set up those long shots. I shot literally hundreds of each per season throughout my teens, twenties and thirties and could count the number of shot opportunities beyond 75 yards on my fingers and toes. The vast majority {like 98%} of either species will be taken at ranges short of 50 yards and the .22LR is plenty flat and accurate for that. I did buy a .17 HMR as soon as they hit the shelves but eventually sold it. Wonderfully flat and accurate for sure but too expensive and more powerful than needed for rabbits and squirrels and yet less effective than the .22 WMR on bigger stuff like woodchucks and coyotes. Since we don't have any prairie dogs or ground squirrels hereabouts, about the only thing I found it really good for was crows.

Venues differ, of course...and theres lots of use for a 100 yard rifle here. Ive even taken to using reduced loads in center fires, mainly because I like to use center fires, but also find them more consistent at distance than rim fires. Heres part of my bag on the last trip out. No real long shots here, but all head shots and a few out to 75-80 yards..

I'm sure I'd have plenty of use for a .17 out where you are. I've been all over Montana and seen that you've got plenty of open ground there. I bet you'd get positively claustrophobic hunting here in the Catskills and would be much less interested in such as long range rifles, flat trajectories and high BC bullets. Such things are of little practical use to me unless I go North to hunt the farmland, which I never do anymore except for a few trips each summer to shoot woodchucks. For that I generally take my .223 or .243 and leave the rimfires at home.

Have hunted and fished in New York several times, from the Catskills to the Niagara River, and yes, it is different than Montana, just as Africa is different from Alaska.

One of the advantages of the Internet is varying perspectives.

17 HMR is the best small game round ever produced in my opinion

If I was limited to one rimfire hunting round, the .17 HMR would defnitely be it!

Luckily ammo is pretty cheap these days, especially if you shop around the Internet. Just picked up some at $115 a brick, including shipping.

And yet I found it relatively useless here. The 5mm Remington rimfire mag. kicked it's azz on woodchucks and bigger varmints. Mine was wonderfully accurate and as effective on big chucks at 175 yards {with solid chest hits} as my 17 HMR or .22WMR's were at 125... It's a shame it didn't make it.

I have a friend who is disabled via PTSD. His disability pension doesn't pay enough to live on, so he farms, hunts, and fishes to feed himself along the Connecticut River in east-central New Hampshire. His daily companion is an old Marlin 783, tube-fed bolt action .22 Magnum with which he has killed every sort of wild game and varmints up to the size of deer. The old Marlin long predates the introduction of the 17HMR and even if given a choice, I don't think that he would make the change. Other than the .22 Magnum Marlin, he hunts deer with an old Marlin 336 in 32 Special and birds with an old Ithaca 37.

Blackheart,

Yeah, sometimes very useful rounds just don't make it, for whatever reason. I take it you don't have your 5mm rifle anymore? Did you get a chance to try the Aguila 30-grain ammo in it?

Have you tried the 30-grain V-Max load in the .22 Magnum? I generally do prefer the .22 Magnum to the .17 HMR for larger varmints, whether jackrabbits, chucks or whatever. But then I also prefer centerfires for those animals over the .22 Magnum. Here in Montana we don't have any regulations against using centerfires on public land, as some Eastern states do.

One of the realities of rimfires is if you can't buy ammo, then they're not much good. Which is one reason I like the .17 HMR: It became so popular ammo might be more available these days than any other kind of rimfire, and pretty reasonably, given the performance edge the HMR provides over many other rounds. I usually buy it off the Internet for under $120 a brick, including shipping.

Right now the .17 WSM seems to be making headway, after being introduced at an unfortunate time for rimfires. I just bought one but haven't had a chance to do more than sight it in.

My Father was an early 5mm Rem Mag fan. He kept a 591 in the upstairs bathroom, so that he could shoot 'chucks out the window if he saw them in my Mother's apple orchard. I have a 592 and a 580 that has been reworked, but don't care for the 30 grain Centurion ammo, as it isn't as accurate in my two rifles as the original 38 grain Power-Lokt.

Interesting about the Aguila ammo, though obviously it might shoot better in another rifle. I suspect one of the reasons the 5mm never caught on was the original load's advertised muzzle velocity wasn't all that different from the 40-grain .22 Magnum's. Many shooters back then were fixated on muzzle velocity, not downrange ballistics.