Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires CCI ammo and Federal .22lr ammo similarities???

After searching for an effective suppressor .22lr ammo out of a rifle that was both quiet and had great performance on critters I arrived at a CCI offering. It has worked out great with some one-shot immediate kills due to the bullet weight and velocity. I'm using CCI Suppressor #957 ammo with a 45g lead hollow point bullet at 970fps and locally it runs around $9 box of 50.

While in a couple of LGS I noticed a Federal offering that I found very interesting and have picked up a couple of boxes of it. It is Federal American Eagle Suppressor AE22SUP1 ammo with a 45g copper plated round nose bullet at 970fps and locally it runs around $6 a box of 50.

What caught my attention was the same weighted bullet at the exact same velocity. Granted the bullet composition is different, a lead hollow point vs. a copper plated solid point. However, while there are some manufacturers of rimfire ammo producing bullet weights of up to 60g in some subsonic rounds, the common loading for most .22lr ammo is in the 36-40g range for hollow points and solid points.

Is it possible that CCI is making this American Eagle product for Federal and only changing out the bullet type ? I know that CCI also produces Blazer and Speer ammo but was not aware of them adding any other labelings to their production.

OR is it just duplicating a competitor's successful design?

Anyone with knowledge on these two ammos ???

Vista Outdoors owns both CCI and Federal so I would assume there is some intermix in their products.
But you know what they say about assume.

Good point....I had forgotten about that Vista Outdoors ownership

I and my rifles like the CCI version of that load. I may have to try to find some of the Federal loading to try out.
Thanks for the tip!
Rick

I just looked at Lucky Gunner ballistic tests on .22lr and in about 95-99% of the time, at many speeds, the expansion of the same weight bullets is NOT dependent on the hollow point vs. solid point design. So I guess those two loads could be looked at as almost identical.

In fact almost all .22lr rounds do not expand at all.

I read someplace (yeah, I know), that the 40gr. CCI Blazer ammo is made by CCI, while the newest 38gr. offering is put up by Federal. I read that on rimfirecentral.com, but I cannot verify it personally. Maybe looking at the SKU numbers will tell the tale.

CCI 40gr. Blazers shoot pretty well in most of my rimfire rifles, but I haven't messed with the 38gr. LRN loads yet.

It looks like the Federal offerings of some of the CCI line is "almost" a copy with perhaps a cheaper bullet.

If the Federal stuff performs like most of the CCI lines have done in the past......I'm becoming more of a Federal 22lr buyer.

Federal has been great for a long time now. I have never seen the need to pay CCI prices for 22lr. Unless I'm shooting comps where I need to burn out the X ring. Then I'll step up to Eley, SK, Norma or some other match grade ammo.

I shot both at the range on Saturday. Identical groups at 25 and 50 yds. out of my T1X. Exact same point of impact. I think I just found my practice ammo. I have a gemtech 22 suppressor on the t1x, it’s Hollywood quiet. Doesn’t scare my dog when we squirrel hunt.

Old70

Not LR. But... Haven’t seen any 50 grain CCI WMR.
Or Federal CB shorts.

Looking forward to pics of your match rifles…..

That’s correct, the 40 grain Blazers have a C head stamp, the 38 grain have an F. Or at least that was the case a few months ago when I bought bricks of both.

The blazers have 2 different coatings on who made them. One is a waxy dark coating made by CCI. The other is a lite grey graphite coating. This is the one that leaded up thousands of barrels when CCI and Federal combined. I still have a couple of bricks of the junk stuff. It takes about 12 bullets and the bore will be solid lead.