Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 17 HMR vs 17 Hornet

You're gonna put the gun companies right out of business, owning one of them chronographs and all!

Have you considered a 5mm Rem Mag?

Why the hell would he, since ammo is only made Aguila, which may or may not be making is this month?

Have heard from SO many people that the 5mm Remington is the be-all and end-all of rimfire hunting rounds, but had a friend who owned one back when it was introduced, and it did just about what I expected with the Remington ammo featuring bullets of about the same weight (as I recall 38-grain) at about the same muzzle velocity as 40-grain .22 Rimfire Magnum ammo. There was so little difference in field performance that it couldn't be seen.

The present Aguila ammo has lighter 30-grain bullets at higher muzzle velocities (when its available, via the Internet) but none have plastic tips, which increase downrange performance a LOT, even in the .22 Magnum, but especially in the .17 HMR and .17 WSM.

Plus, .17 HMR ammo is available in every convenience store/gas station in the rural part of Montana where he lives, generally at around half the price of 5mm Remington ammo--and even less if you consider the cost of shipping 5mms. Oh, and he'd also have to spend a LOT more for a rifle that would be difficult to resell, due to the ammo problem.

Hahaha!

The 5mm kinda sounds like something I would do........

Jim stop in to Big and Bobs and check out the CZ 455 it stainless with a synthetic stock for $400. I have two of them and they are shooters. If you wanted 22lr or 22 mag barrels are available and reasonably priced. The only knock on the 455 is the safety is backwards from most firearms. The safety has been a non issue for me and the stainless/synthetic is a beautiful thing in a working firearm.

Yes. I have never been bothered by the CZ safety.

Now that they have "fixed" the safety.....I dont like em as much.

I can’t comment on the new safety, no experience with them. I did see a couple of gophers out today. Tomorrow my 17hmr will be in the truck.

Haha!

The wife saw a gopher a couple days ago.

I go to my Prairie dog town a miss one every week.

We have an understanding.

No one's posted the standard Campfire Recommended Strategy yet, so: Get 'em both, switch 'em back and forth for a year to decide which you like better, then keep the other in the safe in case you change your mind.

Dang! Sometimes you guys make such a simple decision so complicated.

This has been available for several months continuously.....maybe over a year now.


https://www.midwayusa.com/product/2624230772

Not saying this is a good option.....but I'm not the one looking to make a purchase. One should also look to the .17 WSM....also a high risk of ammo availability as it don't seem to be selling well. It never hurts to look at all the options.

I recently purchased a Browning 1885 in .17 HMR.....it don't shoot for squat. We all take our chances.

I wish I'd bought a CZ as I dearly like my 455 in .22 LR....and Aguila is the best of any ammo I use in it.....by far.

Aguila makes great ammo--not the absolute best in my .22 RF's but certainly worth buying. But as I noted, why bother with the 5mm when it costs at least twice the price as either .17 rimfire--before shipping? Have never seen any in a Montana store.

And as I noted, Aguila does NOT make plastic-tipped 5mm ammo--which is one of the reasons the .17 HMR is so effective at longer ranges. Muzzle velocity is not a good indicator anymore.

Am going to check the local farm'n'ranch store for .17 WSM ammo. That's one of my most reliable indicators of the relative popularity of rifle chamberings. If it's not available in that store, then it's a 50-mile round-trip drive to any other store that MIGHT have it, and around 65 miles to one that definitely will.

They had a couple boxes of WSM in Havre yesterday at the Big R. Some Mach 2 and a metric ton of HMR.

Did you notice the price on the .17 WSM? Have generally found it at least 25% higher than HMR.

I did not commit it to memory but it was quite a bit more.


Seems like it was just under 16.


The cheapest HMR was 10.

I keep my calculator handy to figure out the PPR on the 22 ammo.

Yeah, that's about what I've seen.

Rimfire ammo availability and price has been important to a bunch of shooters since the Obama Shortages. I hadad a wonderfully accurate CZ .17 Mach 2 before the2, which made sense at the time, because .17 Mach 2 ammo coat about half as much as HMR--which was one of the justifications for the M2's introduction. Wonderful gopher round.

Then during the shortages M2 ammo became almost unobtainable, and when it was the price was close to .17 HMR--and even during the shortages HMR ammo sometimes went on sale. So I sold the M2, and bought .17 HMR ammo on sale.

.17 M2 ammo is now available again, but just checked the three websites where I bought most of my rimfire during the shortages. The average lowest price for 50 rounds of M2 was $7.58 and for HMR $9.15. Ain't buying another Mach 2.

Thats too bad.

The Mach 2 might just be the best of all of them.

The 221 aint coming back either....but I still buy them.

The mach2 is great and ammo is now readily available again. For how long who knows. I have a few rifles in mach2 and won’t get rid of them for anything. But saying all that I would take the HMR over the mach2 every day of the week for reasons muledeer states. I like having odd stuff and it appeals to me to keep the mach2. I had enough ammo to get through the last shortage and am stocked up again for the next one. I find it about $2-2.50 less per box wholesale. I was however scared I had an expensive cooper rifle with nothing to feed it during the shortage. Not a good feeling.

The wsm is also a winner in my book cause I like all rifles. But with Ruger 77/17 being the only viable choice it would be a hard sell unless you had a couple HMR’s already. The WSM ammo does cost enough more to not make sense if ammo cost is a consideration. You couldn’t give me a 5mm cause of ammo cost and options

This has been (so far) a great discussion as there's a lot of potential alternatives.....but not among the two choices the OP has asked about. (I plead guilty here).

If it were me, I'd buy a good CZ in .17 HMR as I'm not wanting to spend that much time reloading these days. When one tries to balance the advantages of a centerfire against a rimfire he is often confronted with the question of the value of his time and how much is he actually gaining sitting at the reloading bench.. It might just be prudent to buy one and see how it works rather than to contract analysis paralysis and spend the remaining days of his life wondering. One could starve to death trying to decide if he wants a footlong hotdog or two regular ones six inches each.