Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires What is considered good 100 yard accuracy for a 22 rimfire?

Jeff, we can't all be barbarians.....

You wankers....leave me without words. Almost.

20+ years back, 10/22 on the bench. Full length bedding and a new trigger is all it took.



100 yards


I do it right, so can you fellas.

I think the key words there are "he's doing it wrong." I have to agree with Dan. If a fella can't do it he needs to take a hard look at his equipment, get some good ammo, and Learn To Read The Wind.

That is the key and the hardest to learn. Anyone with enough $ can get the good equipment and ammo, it's that last part that takes practice and dedication. Anyone can get lucky on a real calm day and shoot a decent group but getting wind flags and understanding/recognizing what they're telling you as far a holding off, is what separates the lucky from the accomplished.

True - all of it.......

Wind is subtle most days, a blind rage on others. One constant is that wind is never uniform in magnitude and direction from one moment to the next. At the range multiple wind flags are your friend. Out in the field...leaves and grass are your buddies.

Crash course for learning about wind can be had with a small caliber round ball ML. If you want a PHD do your learning in Wyoming around March-June.

Many casual shooters give little thought to the wind. I did quite a bit of rimfire benchrest shooting (which is shot at 50 yds and 50 meters) and I've seen many times when wind flags over that distance would be pointing in different directions. Confusing? You bet! Also, even just a change on a partly cloudy day, when the sun comes out can create a thermal that will carry your shot high. I also used to use a flag called the Uppy/Downy that would show vertical air movement. Features like a berm, hill, buildings etc can also cause vertical movement. And I won't even talk about what mirage can do.

He's a story to illustrate the importance of doping the wind. One time at the range my wife wanted to try to shoot. She had trouble doping the wind cause she didn't know what she was looking at. I said, "Want to shoot an X?" I set up the rifle in the rest for a right to left wind (which was the prevailing condition that day) with the proper hold-off for a light 5 mph wind (a 4 o'clock hold just outside the 10 ring) and told her "pull the trigger when I tell you". When I saw the condition (direction and velocity) that I set up for, I told her "now". She fired and I called out "X". She said, "How did you know?"

Norma Match and SK Match will shoot MOA all day in my Anschutz 1710 and 1712. I sight them in for 50 yards however for normal shooting. An amazing thing is, I have an Anschutz 1720 which is 22 magnum that will shoot 1/2 “ with Hornady V-Max. 22 mags aren’t known for their accuracy but if I have a good rest I can hit a squirrel in the head at 100 yards quite consistently.

This is a fine example of a complete waste of time and money. you cannot break in a 22 rim fire...you would do just as well to run an oily patch through the barrel 10.000 times.
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Nonsense. You most certainly can, though not like a centerfire rifle barrel. Even shooting the best match-grade hand-lapped barrels from makers like Shilen, MullerWorxs, Lilja, Broughton, Benchmark etc., we (my gunsmith and I) would always shoot at least a brick of ammo down the barrel with quality match ammo. We also noticed that, over time, the accuracy would improve as the barrel broke-in. However, they could also suddenly fall off. Some will tell you that you can't shoot-out a rimfire barrel. Also nonsense. Maybe for casual shooting you won't notice it but I did. At one time I had a Broughton 5R barrel on my custom sporter rifle that was the best in the country. I won several National sporter class events with it and in 2010 had the highest sporter class average. It was a "hummer" barrel. Then at around 2013, it went away for no apparent reason. My gunsmith bore-scoped it and re-lapped it trying to bring it back to life but could not figure out why it stopped shooting to it's past level. Sadly, I we had to re-barrel it and while that barrel was better than the shot-out Broughton, it wasn't as good as the Broughton was at it's peak. Even though that Broughton was no longer competitive at that level of the sport, most .22 shooters shooting it would find it superb.

I like Norma match ammo as well, and also SK. Luckily my rifles love the cheaper SK standard ammo. Norma shoots MOA out to 100 yards. Here's how it shoots at 50 yards, as all of our clubs rimfire matches are shot at 50 yards:


Even though, we've messed around and shot a couple 100 yards matches. My rifles print 1 moa groups at 100. With iron sights.... So to answer the OP's question, "what is considered good accuracy from a 22 rimfire at 100 yards", 1 moa with iron sights is what I consider "good" accuracy...

My newest edition to the rimfire family shoots just as good as its 70 year old brother...

Well it looks like I need to find some Norma Match or SK Standard to try out. It appears that presently under $10. a box 22 ammo is hard to come by. But I found some Lapua Center X for around $13. a box and will order some. In reality it is shooting plenty good enough for offhand shooting of relatively large rimfire silhouette targets. Offhand makes me a 3" or so shooter at 100 yards anyway.

If you can find an ammo that gives consistent one inch 5 shot groups at 100 yards then you are smiling.
Quality ammo, good equipment, wind flags and the ability to read them - it takes all of these things to make it happen consistently though.

drover

I've got a 10/22 with a superb aftermarket match grade barrel and am able to shoot under 1" groups at 70 yards with a few of the off the shelf .22lr ammo. Beyond that range of 70 yards I find my groups in those same rifles to be in the 2-3" groups at 100 yards. I dunno why other than the effects of a small amount of undetected wind gusts or just the QC of that batch of ammo. As a result I try to keep most if not all of hunting shots with those 10/22's at that distance.

If I want to reach out to 100-150 yards I will switch over to the 17HMR using the A17 17 grain round and the accuracy carries out to that distance wind permitting.

I really don't want to be spending $5 and up for a box of 50 .22lr ammo for plinking with the exception of the CCI Quiet ammo.

Curious that is. I can't hit squat with CCI Quiet.


Same gun different ammo....

That is an exceptionally nice Model 52. Mine is not nearly so nice and will be getting tested today (very briefly, it's kind of cold out) I'll test with S-K Standard Plus, and Lapua Center-x and some CCI SV.
I have fired some sub MOA groups at 100 but am not foolish enough to claim I can do so on demand. Fliers matter! GD

Well, there you go. I sighted in at 25 yd then moved back to 100m. The first group of five went into just over 5/8 inch off to the left. I adjusted to center than fired another five. Four went into .8" and one shot hit 1 1/2 inches high and that is the issue I have with the .22's; there is always a flier in every ten shots.
My model 52 is not pristine by any stretch. I just set the barrel back an inch and built an off-hand stock (myrtle wood) for M-S shooting. The headspace is a little bit snug on the S-K. I think it is about .002" tight so I'll have to fix that. If my rifle will shoot consistent 1 1/4, I would be ecstatic. GD

Use good ammo greydog and it will reduce the amount of fliers you get. As with all shooting I do, I always count the fliers in the group. They won't let you slide in a competition and I don't let them slide in real life either. Always count your fliers!!!! I was actually shooting one of my rimfire rifles yesterday, in preparation for a turkey shoot I will go to on the 21st. I'll be using my A17 and it has a definite preference for Federal 17 grain ammo. Yeah, some people think its exactly the same thing as Hornady ammo, but it isn't. It shoots slightly different and I get an occasional flyer with Hornady. As we all know, choosing the right ammo for your particular rifle makes a huge difference.

Over on the Rimfire Central long range forum, testing shows that even some of the better ammo has over 100 FPS of ES. I have forgotten what that translates to in terms of POI shift at 100 yards. In each 50 round box of most ammo tested there were several rounds that were dramatically different in speed. I suspect it's the ammo, not you or the rifle.

Curious that. I’ve shot a lot of Wolf and SK Standard over the chrony in the last few years, even a fair bit of CCI SV and Norma Tac. Never saw ES numbers that large. 25-35 is the norm for 5 shots. On occasion the CCI will nudge up to the low 40’s. By “a lot” I mean a brick or so of each. I have NEVER seen an ES in the 100’s.