Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires The shooter, the firearm or the ammo?

How would you rate these in order of importance for accuracy, speaking specifically of rimfires?

Looking at pictures of groups folks post here it seems like a lot of relatively run of the mill rifles are capable of excellent accuracy "if fed the right ammo" and "if the shooter does his part". Savage, Marlin, Ruger, etc., all seem capable of some very good to amazing groups.

Went out this morning to try out a couple of rifles, a 40 year old Kimber of OR M82 with a freshly mounted Leupold 3-9x40 (that was the highest magnification scope that would fit the low rings) and a box stock 11 year old Ruger 10/22 Tactical, that came with a 16” heavy barrel in a Hogue rubber stock; it had an equally old SWFA 10x42 scope on it. Fired a 10 shot group each with the ammo I have on hand – CCI AR Tactical, Winchester Super-X and my last box of Wolf Match Target.

Looking at the target here it’s obvious I’m not going to win any 50m benchrest matches soon but the differences in ammo are striking. The Wolf MT was the winner in both rifles but the CCI made a very good showing of itself, the Super-X sucked dog turds which is disappointing.

With the Match ammo a proven accurate bolt rifle and a factory barreled semi-auto both shot within .064" of each other, the common factor being the ammo.

To answer my own question, I’d put ammo at the top of the list with shooter skill and the firearm equal. Obviously, a top tier firearm with top of the line barrel, sights and trigger paired with a top grade shooter would print much better groups, but unless you want to compete in rimfire bench rest which is a rarefied sport to itself it seems that across the range of rifles from the $250 ones to the $3000 ones your best investment is to search for good ammo. Or to look at it another way, the accuracy difference in the decent affordable rifles vs. the super expensive ones seems to amount to maybe a couple hundredths of an inch at most provided both of them use top notch ammo. And shooter skill, including and especially the ability to read the wind, could reverse the ranking.

This may be stating the obvious to you guys who are really into your rimfires so I’m curious what y’all think.


50 meters, wind about 6-7 mph shifting constantly from 4 to 8 o’clock. Groups shot over a front rest and rear bag. No real effort was made to wait for calm conditions since it was getting really hot really quickly and the wind was picking up quite a bit as well. My goal here was just to compare different ammo in two different rifles to see if there was any commonality or if their appetites diverged widely.




Fwiw, I used this same 10/22 and SWFA scope to win Overall Match Winner in our club .22 silhouette championships back in 2010 and that was competing against several guys shooting Anschutzes, Model 52's and rifles of that grade. So even though it's not showing real bragging groups today, it was plenty accurate enough when you get off a bench and add in the human factor. But that's a thread for another day.

Not too surprised at your results Jim. Many years ago I used Winchester Power Points for my varmint rifles and at the range it would print .2-.3 groups all day long in my Win 52B. Super X was just a little bit behind but still respectable. Since then the Winchester ammo has been more than a little disappointing, to say the least. Good enough for close range squirrel shooting but that is about it...

In all my rimfires, ammo has always been the determining factor when it comes to shooting paper. I'm too cheap to buy expensive ammo but I do purchase mid priced ammo when it is available and it does make a huge difference in my groups... at the moment Eley Contact and SK Standard Plus are the best in all of my rifles and are quite a bit ahead of CCI Mini Mags, which are no slouch in most cases. I'm pretty sure I can pin point that to being supersonic ammo as opposed to the Standard velocity I seem to get the best groups with regardless of conditions...

For 10 shot groups and the conditions you were in I would say those are pretty respectable groups. I don't think most people realize how hard it is to shoot decent groups when you up the ante and shoot 10 in a group instead of 3 or 5 shots .... that is when you really get an idea of how you and your rifle work as a team.... IMO...

Bob

Ammo is a huge factor in 22’s. It’s just a matter of finding what the rifle likes. No rhyme or reason about what’ll shoot best either.

I thought it was a known fact that ammo is first on the list. This is especially true with a rimfire because you don't develop loads for it, as you would for your centerfire rifle. I'm often surprised how many guys still don't know ammo rates right up there as the most important piece of the puzzle. However, If you have a rifle or ammo that shoots consistent "fliers", you'll never know how accurate the shooter is. One of the first things I do when I get a new rimfire rifle is take every box of ammo I have with the rifle and see what it likes the best. Then I make note of it. I generally save targets showing what ammo said rifle likes best. Here's a target I shot with one of my 10-22's a few years ago:


Something that you need to know is ammo cost has nothing to do with how well its going to shoot in your rifle, as the above pic shows. That particular rifle also loves bulk pack Federal ammo. Hard to go wrong with a rifle like that. My buddy now owns that one. This buddy is one that doesn't understand the concept of fliers. I found that out a few weekends at a know your limits shoot. A nice young guy came to the club with a member, just to shoot the know your limits shoot. He had bought a new Christensen arms ($1,000.00 rifle) and $1,000.00 scope, in preparation for the shoot. He had been practicing with the rifle and trying different ammo and he decided to run some match grade ammo in the event. He was getting his azz handed to him, and after he lost he'd say, "damn fliers". My buddy called bs, but I told him that he might be right. A lot of 22lr ammo is very inconsistent. One thing I've noticed is accuracy can even change a little from box to box of the same ammo. It is my belief that the best shooter in the world will get his azz handed to him if the ammo and rifle are not up to the task... I experienced some fliers a month ago with some very old SK standard ammo. That ammo is so slow that I can see it flying through the air before it hits the target.

When shooting for groups, I won't even bother with the first 10-15 shots after switching ammo.

There is way too much variability before the bore has been seasoned with the new bullet lube.

That said, I've had great guns shoot mediocre ammo fairly well and shoot exceptional ammo exceptionally well.

Never had any gun shoot low grade ammo well.

You’ve never shot well.

Good point on seasoning the barrel for each type of ammo.

My GM 10/22 bbl and CZ455 liked the SK Match.

Winchester Super X many moons ago was decent hunting stuff. Like somebody posted above, it doesn't seem to be as good nowadays.

Over a few rifles, the best cheap ammo I've had was CCI Blazer. Standard V has not shown any advantage, unfortunately.

A cheaper ammo I've had good luck with is the American eagle 38gr hp's.


This shoots much better when I'm not firing off 10 rounds in 4 seconds. Prepping for golf ball shoot.. Hits the golf ball every time.

I used to have the same results with American Eagle ammo in a couple of my rifles. They always shot way better than their price point but I haven't seen much of it in stores for a while now.... may have to give some of it a try again....

Federal Gold Medal match also shoots very well in several of my rifles and is often on sale somewhere (during normal times) for very good prices- usually around the price of CCI Mini Mags....

Bob

Ammo no 1!

I keep records in my log book, noting the rifle or handgun and which ammo it likes and is sighted in for. So if I pull out a certain rifle, say a Marlin 39a, the log book shows which ammo to load it with.

Manny

Firearm......AO scope.....shooter.

I only shoot .22 ammo that I use hunting. CCI Mini Mag hollow points. For me they out shoot other brands at 50 yards.

Best two shooting .22 rifles I've owned and still own is a Winchester model 75 Sporter w/compact 3x9 Leupold with an AO....and a Kimber sporter of New Yawk with a 4x12 Leupold with an AO.

Into a dime at 50 yards is fine by me.

Even lot numbers of the same ammo will swap things around and give you fits with fliers and such. I have a little left of an old lot of Geco Semi-Auto ammo in my little CZ 512 that averages .368" at 50 yards, which is awfully good in a 5lb. rifle with a cheap 3-9 scope on it. I was able to find more of the ammo (a different lot#, though) and bought a case of the stuff. Ooops. The new lot is not nearly as good as the older stuff, and it isn't nearly as greasy to load, either. Sometimes, you gotta take the bad (greasy) with the great performance. The new stuff is a lot cleaner and handier to load, but doesn't shoot very well in that rifle (happily enough, it's shooting really well in my 455s and 452s).

I know a guy who used to shoot rimfire Benchrest and did quite well at it, even winning the Nationals one year. He gave it up because chasing lot numbers of "good" ammo gave him fits and he just got tired of the effort involved. Chasing good lots of ammo can give a person heartburn, headaches, and for all I know, the Hershey squirts. Steve decided it wasn't worth it.

Yup, flyers are the "fly in the ointment" that will drive you crazy. Just when you think you have a really accurate rifle and you've found just the ammo it likes, you throw a couple flyers and wonder what the heck you did wrong? Inconsistent ammo can be the bane of rimfire shooters and cause you to have less hair pretty quickly if you take it seriously... Since I'm too cheap to buy $18 a box Eley or Lapua ammo for my informal paper punching and squirrel hunting, I just live with it or blame it on some external causation-

We used to buy a case for target season to help eliminate variablity. Still had fliers but maybe to lesser degree and number, running one lot per season

Same deal w shotgun slugs, or rifle ammo. Buy 10.boxes at a time from one lot #.

Sucks when you finally get low and have to try a new lot.

So far been lucky w the big stuff.

I got 3 bricks of CCI Blazer from one lot so my squirrel rigs are proly set LOL

Only have 2 bricks of match ammo 22lr.....fiocchi of some sort. Aint even tried em yet.

I have a boatload of CZ rimfires, and happily enough, they shoot Aguila 38gr. SE HV HP pretty well, about 1/2" to 3/4" at 50 yards. I was able to pick up two cases of that lot awhile back, when it was still under $200/case. I should be set for life! I also snagged a couple cases of the solid-bullet 40gr. SEHV that, while not quite as good as the HPs, are plenty good enough for plinking and general goofing off. Yeah, my rifles shoot Lapua CenterX or Pistol King better, but that money is better spent on the cheaper stuff, which I can parse out to my nephew's kids when they can't find anything else to shoot. CCI MiniMag Segmented HPs are awfully good for the money, too, when you can find them.

Good thread guys. Now on the subject of fliers or flyers. How ever you want to spell it. You really notice them when you are shooting at tiny targets. When I practice for our know your limits shoot, I practice on 1/4" diameter targets. Anything outside of the 1/4" circle is a flyer. Now, if you are missing on the 2" target and calling it a flyer, you really got issues.

Half the fun for me is finding the cheapest ammo rifles will shoot best. It’s no secret the $15-20 offerings from lapua and eley are going to perform better than the run of mill ammo

I don’t shoot competition (other than vicious bragging rights battles) so I’ve never chased lot #’s.. and I do enjoy some high volume all day target shooting, so I can’t afford to shoot tenex all day, nor do I really need to.

I’m very much enjoy searching for that over achieving sleeper rimfire ammo and seeing what my guns will do with it.

One that works quite well for me in several different rifles is aguila SV. My KIDD thinks it’s center-x...obviously it’s not, and it will drop a few here and there..but I can very easily live with that when I’m just having fun
And that was $200/CS delivered so I can cut loose

1. The shooter- most important imo because simply put, some people just can’t shoot! Trigger discipline, vision, holding the gun the same way each time... lot’s of variables in getting a rimfire to shoot tiny groups and some people just can’t do it no matter how much money they spend! No offense to anyone just the the cold hard truth! When I have a electrical issue I keep my arse out the panel box because I’m not a electrician lol


2. The gun- Simply put some guns will shoot and some guns will not! Most rimfire rifles are assembled of mass produced parts and that means a ton of variables... how’s the machine running today?, is the operator hung over from the weekend, how about the final assembly
Tech? Maybe the Quality control inspector is ready to go to lunch... even custom guns have different harmonics when fired and can be finicky!

3. The ammo- I’d say if you have the art of how to hold the rifle, how to squeeze the trigger and be very consistent repetitively and you have a darn good rifle..., now you need to start the hunt for,
A. What ammo your gun prefers
B. A good lot number
C. If your lucky enough to complete A and B, spend the $1k-$2k and get a case!!!

Bodkin... sticking to the OP’s original question, I agree with your post.

If you don’t possess at least the basic fundamentals of shooting, a 40x and a brick of tenex will largely be for naught

Jim, that is a nice shooting 10-22..

Yep. I have yet to try the "good stuff". Blazer at 50 yards from a tweaked 10-22, some of the rest did pretty well. Dead reliable too.

No match ammo for the 22 Mag but this one shoots pretty well with some.

Those targets are a perfect representation of how guys need to keep track of how a rifle shoots with different ammo. That's the best way to do it.

Shooter with ammo being a very close second. I think I can shoot, but some ammo throws out some serious patterns.

Appreciate everybody's input. Reason for asking the question is I've been trying to decide on an upper-mid tier .22 bolt rifle with a great trigger that will take a modern 30mm scope. Not going to do much more than long range plinking but it's fun and a definite challenge to consistently hit a 6" or even 4" ringer at 200 to 250 yards, such endeavors really teach you how to judge wind. Also thinking of getting back into rimfire silhouette which I was pretty heavily into in the 90's, our local club runs monthly 100 and 200 yard matches for that.

Obviously this three legged stool follows the law of limiting factors or “the chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. Good rifle, good ammo, bad shooter, no bueno. Good rifle, good shooter, bad ammo = bad groups, etc. Looking at the groups posted here and in several other threads in this forum it seems the three factors shake out something like this (not listed in order of relative importance but just to comment on each).

Shooter – On a scale of 1 to 10, the shooters I’ve seen rank from -2 to 10 with a bimodal distribution. Your average guy who comes out to the range occasionally is about a -2 to maybe 6 with the mode around 4 or 5. The club members or anyone else who takes their shooting seriously runs from 6 to 10 with a mode around 8 or 9.

Firearm – Looking at group sizes in various threads here fired by everything from the bargain level rifles all the way up to the ones costing 4 figures, the scale on these seems to run from about 7 to 10. Unless a rifle has a bad crown, chamber or flat-out rusted barrel, most all .22’s will shoot from good to fantastic. Even pre-war sporting rifles in good shape are capable of some really tight groups and the older heavy barreled target rifles will still give most modern rifles a run for their money. Obviously, today’s top tier rifles can outshine the lot but given good ammo it’s hard to find a really bad shooting .22 rifle. And even then, we’re still talking differences of a few hundredths of an inch in group size.

Sights, trigger – calling this a subset of the firearm group. Given the general level of .22 rifle accuracy, I’d say the firearm/shooter combo is limited by the sights with a good trigger a definite plus. Open sights or a low power compact with small objective just won’t give you the resolution needed to get a precisely consistent sight picture like a modern 10-20x scope with AO. A good receiver sighted rifle and a matching round bullseye can turn in incredible groups but that is dependent on a well defined aiming point, you still need a good scope to distinguish small targets from similar colored backgrounds. Now, all you guys who shoot with low power scopes or even open sights, don't get too mad. My Kimber 82 mounted a 4x Compact for decades and I can do some fine shooting with an open sighted (notch and bead) 1939 Remington pump, but we're talking about going for precise hits on smaller targets at longer range.

Ammo – as everyone here seems to agree, on a scale of 1 to 10 this runs from -5 to 12 and that varies greatly with brand, lot number and isn't even that consistent from rifle to rifle. I could post pics from other .22's with the same Winchester Super-X shown above that match or beat the CCI groups. In the 1990’s I won several rimfire silhouette matches with Winchester Wildcat solids, the same brand name Wildcat ammo wouldn’t even shoot decent patterns in the mid-2000’s. Great, that makes things easy. 😉

Have rambled on long enough but again, thanks to all for the conversation. It’s cemented a choice in my mind but might have to start another thread on that.

I shoot rimfire every week and rating myself as a “good” disciplined shooter on a scale of 1-10 (1 being poor and 10 being excellent) I’d say I’m a 6-7. I play hail trying to do everything the exact same way each shot! Somehow I manage to win a few here and there I blame the wins on luck lol

I have two .22 RF sporting rifles, an original Winchester M/52 Sporter and a Springfield 1922 M2 neither are target rifles and both are 70 + years old. I shoot CCI Blue Box Standard Velocity ammo in both, these vintage rifles both group this ammo into one ragged hole for 50 shots @ 50 yds. I'm just shooting these for recreation and groups like that satisfy my needs. Most shooters that I know concur with this thought, I also shoot this ammo in my Smith & Wesson M/41 and Sig Sauer P226 with .22 conversion.

Very nice, well thought out post. I feel like you have a good handle on this Jim..

A friend of mine is sponsored by Lapua. I get some of what he calls reject ammo. I would rate ability first, ammo second and then rifle.

That must be some damn good ammo. Have you used anything other than Lapua? One thing I know is a good shooter can put great ammo into the same hole. Lower quality ammo and the same shooter can't put it in the same hole. Does that make sense? Probably not, but theres that.. What I find funny is some guys just don't get it. Hence guys don't believe in "flyers" and such. Most of those guys don't shoot competition of any kind or even shoot much for that matter.

I think the dividing line is, ammo matters when the shooter can tell the difference. Of course, the gun is either good (feeds right, shows promise) or bad.

I had similar experience to Sheis with Win PPs. When they first came out, I bought a brick on spec, seasoned the bore and spun the dials, oh my goodness. Drove straight from the range back to the LGS for the other brick from that lot. Rim gaged the whole thing. Many casualties ensued. But the next PPs skunked, even after rim-gauging. Pistol plink ammo.

Same deal with the red 42 power points. Found two boxes once, they were AWESOME right out of the box, no gaging. Then, bought the last two boxes I've ever seen -- plink ammo. $*%^#!

In general, I have found that CCI ammo, no matter what it is, tends to have the highest likelihood of shooting better than minute-of-shooter. I wish CCI would do a truncated cone 40/42 HP.