Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Looking for a Good 22 Rifle

In that price range I'd look no further than a CZ or 77/22 of your choosing.

Ruger American would be a close 2nd. Meaning 3rd.

https://theolddeerhunters.com/thompson-center-22-classic/

This is a great 22LR semiautomatic rifle.

Yup.....

i have used a ruger 77/22 for 30 years and a truck load of squirrels. i bought one for each of my boys too. they can be had for that money used on gunbroker. they are a great looking, well built, heirloom quality gun. mine was helped a lot by replacing the trigger with a dayton-traister for like 25 bucks. i have a bushnell 4200 3-9x40 that i bought on here for under 200 bucks. with this rig i can head shoot squirrels all day. on my 50 yard bench, if i do my part it will shoot honest dime sized groups with cci mini-mags. the cheapo stuff is just about as good. my boys guns shoot about as well stock. the nice thing about the 77 is you can have the same gun in dozens of rimfire and center fire calibers. big fan of the 77.

I had one. Great accuracy, great trigger.

BUT, seems to me the way it's designed, you end up with a lot of powder residue in the fire control mechanism..

The 10-22 design, on the other hand, seems to isolate the fire control mechanism better than the tcr.

My tcr went down the road, still have several 10-22's, some custom fitted with aftermarket barrels, triggers, etc.

Out of the box, the tcr is hard to beat. Tricked out, the 10-22 can't be beat, IMO.

DF

I've cycled thru a bunch of quality .22's over the years, including a Rem 40X Sporter, a Win 52 Sporter, Annie, Kimber of Oregon plus a few I've probably forgotten, all eventually going down the road.

My keeper is a Cooper with Kahles 2-7 rimfire scope (try finding one of those). It will shoot with the best, out shoot most and is a keeper. It's not that picky on ammo, likes most of what I feed it...

Now, there's good then there's best. Best can be a bit pricey. You cry only once, smile for decades.

DF

For 500 bucks the Tikka T1X is hands down the best 22 out there, scary accurate, awesome trigger, I have 2 and both are awesome.

There are springs on ebay for the trigger, they sell for 9.49 and are great, better then any I have tried, I have them in both my Tikkas, pull down to 14 oz and 15 ozs and will go a bit lower.

Here's a CZ 2500, an unusual rifle. It shoots almost as good as the Cooper. 29" barrel is pretty quiet with subsonics, besides being closer to the target .

Timney trigger is an improvement. Leupold 3-9x33 A/O EFR is a good .22 scope, can adjust parallax pretty close, handy on indoor 50' range.

DF

Cool rifle.

I really like my Tikka that I bought this summer. It is not a thing of beauty - almost aggressively unpleasant to look at with it's weird magazine and plain jane synthetic stock/blued barrel. I love shooting it, though, and it appeared to be much better quality than the Ruger American Rimfires I handled prior to purchase. I sometimes wish I'd bought a CZ, but I can't complain about such an accurate rifle.

That would be hard for me to argue with. This is only a few bucks more than I paid for mine several years back. I was surprised to see it at this price. LH version.

https://www.sportsmans.com/shooting-gear-gun-supplies/rifles/cz-452-american-rifle/p/p58738

Mine. Cut down to 18.5", threaded with knurled cap, trigger job. Throws decent ammo in the same hole at 50.

I was quite happy with one of the odball 96/22 lever actions. Shoots almost as well as a Cz452, which is surprising. Hard to find nowadays

I’ve been pretty pleased with my Ruger 77/22 RSI because it has the same operating system as my 77 Mk ll 7mm-08. I always wanted a Mannlicher something and since a .22 LR is most efficient out of an 18” barrel, I’m liking that RSI with a Timney trigger upgrade.