Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 45 grain bullets in the 22 Hornet

I recently came across 400 45gr Nosler solid base bullets .224 diameter. My rifle is a Kimber "S" series. My Nosler manual doesn't even list the 45gr bullet. I know Mule Deer favors 13 grains of Lil Gun for 40 grainers. There is a little data in Gun Gack I using 45gr lead RN bullets.
My question is has anybody have data for the 45 grainers or experience with this bullet weight? How much would you reduce the powder charge for the added 5 grain of bullet weight?

1/2 grain

data for 45s here:

https://www.hodgdonreloading.com/reloading-data-center

Thank you both

I was loading 50 gr Hornady SPSX bullets over that load. I did not see a reduction in brass life. I've since gone to 45 grain projectiles. If I recall correctly, I've seen 13.5 gr of 'lil gun listed under a 45 grainer.

my mod 70 just loves this nosler bullets ! loves them. I use ww296 and cci br4 primers. my load is above book max so won't publish but it cooks along F A S T !!!! the load is in the k hornet range. my brass last for 4 to 5 reloads. the br4 primers made a big difference in groups, from 1 1/4 down to 3/4 inch. if your gun for some reason does not like them I will like to buy that batch from you. live long and shoot bunches!! D O M I T !

A few comments:

"Book max" for any member of SAAMI, if they follow the voluntary standards, is 44,000 PSI for the .22 Hornet--which means electronic measurement. Even though the Hornet case is relatively thin, exceeding this somewhat doesn't make much difference in brass life, because it's REALLY low for modern centerfire rifle rounds.

The basic pressure was established back when many .22 Hornet rifles essentially used rimfire actions. Using a little more powder in a stronger action ain't going to make much difference--especially if you use a primer designed to take a little more pressure, rather than the small-rifle primers designed for sub-50,000 PSI rounds.

That said, I have yet to see any advantage in using heavier bullets in the Hornet for varmints, especially burrowing rodents. Lighter, higher-BC bullets--especially plastic-tipped--perform far better beyond 100 yards, with flatter trajectories, less wind-drift and more consistent expansion. Accuracy is also better, for all the same reasons--which is why small groups at 100 yards in relatively calm conditions aren't very indicative of longer-range performance in even moderate winds. Which is why even in Hornets with typical too-short magazines for 40-grain plastic-tips, I prefer 40-grain softpoints or hollowpoints.

If hunting edible game--anything from squirrels to turkeys--I much prefer loading the round DOWN somewhat, instead trying for every extra fps.

But whatever....

On the days I carry my Hornet this turkey season, I’ll be using 46gr Speer FPs designed for the 218, loaded over 9gr of H110 and Fed GM100 primers. My notion is that the FP will deliver a good whack without burgerizing the bird. When I dialed in a newly-acquired Burris Mini 6x a few weeks ago with that load, the final 3-shot group I fired at 50 yards to confirm the sighting was one odd-shaped hole.

Mostly, I just want to tote the pretty little Browning around the Spring woods…..

IIRC, Seyfried said that Nosler SB was his favorite all-around Hornet slug. There’s some demand for those in Hornet circles I think. I have a broken box from around 2000.

If you haven't used them before, those 46 gr. Speer FPs are accurate and deadly. Pretty much any bullet is on little critters, even turkeys! I went full circle with my Hornet. In the dim times, I loaded 40 and 45 gr Speers. Tried getting fancy with other, more expensive bullets, but am back with the inexpensive and accurate Speers again. I am waiting on delivery of the Speer 40s and 46s as I type. I have less than 100 of the 40s and maybe a dozen 46s.

Funny thing is, these things work on grouse, rabbits, skunks and other things. I use a NEF "22 Hornet Magnum" now though because it's easier on the brass. I'm kind of shocked that it hasn't shaken the guts loose in this old Leupold. I guess I got lucky.

Here's the quote from Ross's original Handloader article on the 45-grain Nosler SB:

"My favorite all-around Hornet bullet is the last surviving, old-fashioned Nosler Solid Base. This is the 45-grain Hornet with a standard lead tip instead of the plastic nose. It is usually very accurate, quite violent on impact but with enough integrity to plow through plenty of coyote or even the skulls of larger beasts."

This is no doubt true, though I have had different results from some other bullets that Ross reviewed, in other calibers. But I have rarely envisioned the .22 Hornet as an all-around cartridge--unless perhaps as originally designed by Whelen and others as a military survival cartridge. While I did take one deer with the Hornet, using my first Hornet (a T/C Contender Carbine), a whitetail doe with a typical broadside rib shot, I used a 60-grain Nosler Partition, which shot into an inch or so through the 1-12 twist. (This is not the standard Hornet twist-rate, either in older rifles or newer. But I suspect T/C used one of their standard 1-12 twist barrels for the .223--and the 60 Partition was originally designed for the .223 with the then-standard 1-12 twist.)

But despite this, I have always found the Hornet much more useful as a smaller-varmint round--though with slower-velocity cast- and jacketed bulleted loads, where it can duplicate the .22 Long Rifle and .22 Winchester Rimfire Magnum, and works just as well on edible game. But for the job the Hornet became most popular for--varmints up to around 10 pounds--it works best with 40-grain plastic-tips at around 3000 fps. In fact those turn it into a very effective prairie dog round out to 250-300 yards, though it has also worked as far as over 400 on calmer days.

I suspect another reason Ross liked the 45 Solid-Base was that the ogive could be seated to touch the lands, even in repeating rifles with the typical short Hornet magazine. This can definitely help short-range (100-yard) accuracy, but as I stated the low BC of the bullet (or any other blunt Hornet bullet in the 45-grain range) does not result in finer accuracy at longer ranges, because they're so wind-sensitive. And yes, I know this from considerable personal experience.

I learned a lot about handloading the .22 Hornet from Ross's writing, but have continued to experiment with the little round using today's wider range of available bullets and powders.

I used to love the old Winchester 46 gr hollow point. First over H110 and later using lilgun. Everything from squirrels to deer ( crop damage permit).

Oh I know about the accurate part. Hoping to demonstrate the deadly in a week or so.

If I’d been carrying the LW on last year’s opener, I’d have been in business, but alas I was exploring the mysteries of TSS in the .410. Even that Magic Fairy Dust wouldn’t have quite reached the two strutters across the little vale. Oh well……

My shelf sags under the weight of a couple thousand traditional 40-45 grain Hornet bullets with which I'm feeding three Hornets (soon to be a fourth if I ever get this Springfield Hornet finished). That few bullets shouldn't last long you might think, but the bulk of my Hornet shooting is with cast bullets anyway so they'll last me until the end. No prairie dogs hereabouts, and gophers disappeared from here probably 1000 years ago, if they ever existed in Maryland in the first place. Groundhogs are up for grabs but I lost my hatred for them long ago, and I haven't hunted turkeys in 20 years. What's left? Paper and squirrels, and the range I belong to only goes out to 100 yards, 200 yards if it's not crowded. Those woe-begotten old semi-RN bullets suit me just fine.

Favorite squirrel load: 6.0gr. 2400 + Lee 52gr. Bator cast soft. About the same moxie as a .22WMR. (The Bator bullet is a very squat blunt bullet no longer than a "traditional" jacketed 45 grain Hornet bullet. It shoots as well as anything in a slow twisted old Hornet.) I guess it would serve for turkeys too, if I cared to do that.

Good luck! You'll have to post an AAR. 🙂.

Thanks.

Things get pretty tough here after the first few days, so my best chance will be early in the season. Thinking of trying a pinch point they frequent. I’d as soon dry gulch one in close as call.

I have a new 5.7x28 pistol I’d like to try too, if I can get good enough with it for maybe 50yard pokes, and if my chest rig ever gets here. Might try those Speers in it, and also somewhere I have a bag of those Winchester HPs and the very similar Remington bullets, both of which were about $8 a bag from Graf’s way back when. Pretty sure the RNHPs will feed; the FPs, maybe. In any case, the pistol makes a good, easy-to-carry just-in-case-I-see-a-turkey gun.

Thanks for all the feedback. My primary use for this will be woodchucks as the weather warms up. I'll be hunting the edges of farm fields and some of these critters burrow under the barns and are pretty close to houses and livestock. These conditions I feel are better suited to the Hornet versus the 22/250 or some of the other typical centerfire varmint cartridges that live in the safe.
I'll be going west for prairie dogs this summer and thought the Hornet would be a good 200 yard rig.

Have to (again) agree with Mule Deer on this one. I shoot hogs up in PA every year and for years, I used the standard factory Winchester 45gr ammo. One day I picked up a box of the Hornady 35gr platic tipped stuff and the effect on the hogs was noticeably more impressive.

I’ve settled on CCI 450 primers and 300 MP powder in my .22 K-Hornet. Have loaded some Hammer 33 gr bullet to try in my 16 twist CZ 527. Will report when the weather cooperates.

DF

Another option, and quite economical while along the same lines, are the 34gr. HPs sold by Midsouth (Varmint Nightmare Extremes, or something silly like that), I use them sitting on top of 1680 in my CZ Hornet. While they are "whiffle bullets" and certainly for short-range use only, they are also very inexpensive and work fine on groundhogs within 150-200 yards. Midway sells the same bullet as their "Dogtown" bullets, they're made by Nosler, IIRC. If you really don't need the range, they are a wonderful alternative, and last time I looked, were under a dime apiece from Midsouth (Midway is prouder of them than Midsouth, I guess). I use a caseful of 1680 and Remington 6.5 primers, and I've been using WW cases.

Had a H&R "Handi" in .22 Hornet.
I probably killed a wider variety of game with that rifle than any other gun I've ever owned!
All I ever shot was a Sierra 45 grain Spire Point.
Everything from deer and hogs to squirrels and vermin!

I bought a bunch of those dogtown 40 gr bullets for my first prairie dog trip.
Good luck hitting them at 200 with the wind you will often find while hunting them.

When the wind picks up I switch to a 243 and a 25 WSSM. The Hornet should be good in the mornings and a bit quieter so they don't scamper into their holes as quickly.

I just got back from town and had some Purolator and amazon parcels sitting on the front step. I guess the delivery guys work Easter Monday.

I missed the UPS guy. His parcel had items in it that needed a signature. The UPS parcel has more of these inexpensive, but potent Speer 224s in it. I hope my wife will be around, I am off to the range tomorrow morning and that's when UPS has rescheduled the delivery.

I haven't seen a Speer bullet for sale in a long time.

I usually shoot the Rem. 46 gr. hp over 11 gr. of 4227. Kills gophers very nicely. I also have the Horn. 35 gr. probably with the same load.. I like them both. My principal use for the Hornet now days is shooting gophers, p. dogs, and various pests at fairly close range.
For a few summers I shot groundhogs with the Hornet, .222 and .22-250. Depended on the size of the field which rifle I picked up.

Jealous of you guys with PD’s in your back yard.

I’ve seen them in NM on several Pronghorn hunts. I could have been talked out of chasing those goats, if diverted to a good PD hunt.

Maybe one of these days.

DF

Shot a 222 Rem years ago and as I recall there were .223" bullet's designed for the Hornet. Never tried them in 222. Seems they were either 40gr or 45 gr, maybe both.

Some of those are .223, not .224. I’m shooting up the older .223’s, fireforming Hornet to K-Hornet.

Don’t think the .223’s will be that accurate in a .224 bore. I’ll know pretty soon.

DF

That's why I referred to them as "Whiffle Bullets", not much good "at distance", however, I suspect most of the users for those bullets aren't using them for prairie dogs, but groundhogs at shorter distances, where it's not as windy all the time. I live in Kentucky, where we don't get the wind they do in South Dakota, for example. I've been on PD shoots where I had to use 68gr. Hornadys to hit prairie dogs at 200 yards, as lighter bullets couldn't buck the wind. You can't use those in a Hornet, though, which is the basis of this thread, anyway..........

I have the Kimber dialed in with factory 45 grainers. Now to try some of the Nosler's. I have Lilgun, 296, and 4227. We will see how these perform.

I find it interesting that so many .22 Hornet users don't (or won't) use the newer bullets with far higher BCs offered today for shooting small varmints like ground squirrels and prairie dogs. As I mentioned already, plastic-tips in the 40-grain range at 3000+ fps turn the old round into a genuine 250-300 yard prairie dog round--how far depending on the amount of wind.

And yes, using the Hornet to "start" on a PD town does result in them staying up out of their holes longer, due to a milder report. But after considerable experimentation (I get to shoot PDs every year) I eventually came to the conclusion that the .17 HMR worked even better as a starter round, especially with the A17 ammo designed for the Savage semi-auto. In my CZ 452 it gets right around 2800 fps, and works fine out to 200 yards--which is where the .22 Hornet doesn't even work as well with "traditional" blunt bullets in the 45-grain range at about the same muzzle velocity--because they drop more, and drift more in the wind, and produce an even milder report.

The .17 Hornady Hornet works even better than .22 Hornet with plastic-tips, one reason it's been my primary PD round for ranges out to 300+ yards for over a decade now.

Might also mention that beyond 300 I also use much milder rounds than some have mentioned here, mostly the .204 Ruger out to 500 yards, though a fast-twist .223 often gets used in windier conditions. The only time I go to a 6mm round anymore is beyond 500, where my 13-pound 6XC built by Charlie Sisk has worked very well with plastic-tipped, high-BC bullets in the 100-grain range.

Using traditional blunt 45-46 grain .22 Hornet bullets at traditional 1950s muzzle velocities seems kind of like using 160-grain round-nose bullets in the milder 6.5mms (whether the 6.x55, .260 Remington or the dreaded 6.5 Man-Bun) just because they're traditional....

Semi-related question: Is the Ruger 77/22 a good and accurate 22 Hornet rifle?

Better choices?

Despite 60+ years on this earth, I've never owned a 22 Hornet and need to fix that.

Thanks, Guy

The one I had was a "good" rifle, but it wasn't accurate.

Good to know. Thanks!

Don't know about that, but the 77/17 in .17 Hornady Hornet tends to be very accurate.

I suspect a LOT of Ruger .22 Hornets became far more accurate after Bill Ruger finally bought hammer-forging machinery in the early 1990s, and the company started making their own barrels. This is because ALL the Ruger rifles I purchased after that shot on average far better after that--including the Ruger No. 1B I got directly from the factory in 2003. Did some experimenting with "benchrest" handloading techniques with that rifle, and it ended up putting five 40-grain Ballistic Tips into less than half an inch at 100 yards.

Thanks John!

Doesn't look like Ruger is making them right now, but I can look for a used one.

Ya, the 375 H&H Tropical and the 7mm Rem Mag Number One rifles I've got are quite accurate.

Regards, Guy

I'd pass on the 22 Hornet. If you want a Ruger, take John's advise and go with the 17 Hornet. I have a CZ in 17H. The 17H pretty much makes the 22H obsolete.

I do have a #1 in 22 K Hornet, but that's another story.

Not real hard to make a K-Hornet out of a Hornet. I did it, first try.

Here's a link to my CZ 527 project. Lots of good info on loads, JB wrote some really good stuff (no surprise).

Also a good bit of B.S.; my threads tend to wander off in that direction...

This CZ has a .224" bore with 16 twist.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/11390994/1

DF

It's been awhile up here too. For whatever reason, Speer made a bit of a comeback. One online store I frequent has 30+ Speer bullets listed in stock. Prices are reasonable too, which makes a difference. I got the last two boxes of 46 gr .224 bullets they had. More are on order. The title of this thread concerns 45 gr bullets in the Hornet however.

X-Reload in Canada sells the 45 Speers (SP-1023) for $20.49/100. Midway has them on for $13.99/100, regularly $15.99/100 The attraction is the price.

The cheapest 40 gr. .224 bullet up here is the Speer that also retails for $20.49/100 or .205 apiece. Next is the Hornady 40 gr. VMax. They are almost twice as expensive at $95/250 or about .38 cents apiece. I don't hunt ground squirrels - we don't have them - but for anything else, the price difference isn't worth it for me.

It could be that Speers are hard to find because shooters are constantly buying them up. I know my main supplier goes through a ton of them.

46gr Speer FP’s are on sale at Midway right now for 33% off, $11.89/100. Just ordered 3 boxes.

Thanks for the heads up.

Just bought 500 of these.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1010625279?pid=369507

DF

Thanks

Okeedokee, John. You've convinced me to throw away the nearly 30 boxes of 40-45 gr. .223" bullets I have on the shelf, and replace them with 40 grain plastic tips so's I can shoot the prairie dogs that don't exist within 2000 miles of here! As it is, my M54 K-Hornet with its .223" barrel is quite happy to spit them into tiny groups on paper. Of course, zippier "modern" bullets might create a more impressive hole in the clay bank behind the target butts, so there is that....

This is the aforementioned group with my “turkey” load of the Speer 46gr FP over 9gr of H110, fired at 50 yards. Need to check poi @100, about as far as an opportunity might occur where I hunt, and about as far as my own notions about rifles for turkey shooting permit.

No pdogs or gophers here so the best use for a Hornet is for small, edible game, predators, and turkeys. I’d add chucks, but permission on the farmland they typically inhabit is very hard to come by, so the zippy (and accurate) 40gr loads are mostly just for fun, unless I elect to travel to the gamelands of PA to my North.



Will be interesting to see if that group was a fluke or really representative of that load’s performance. For certain, those flat points will drop like rock after a relatively short run.

Dang! That’s pretty cheap shooting! I’m gonna abstain, as my bullet supply has reached “critical mass”, and I need to shoot ‘em up rather than acquire more.

I just ordered 3 boxes of these. They should shoot well in my Valmet 300 series in 12/222 with a 1 in 16 pitch and in my savage 219 Hornet.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1010937447?pid=711443

If that load stays close to the same size, you’ve got a winner.

Don’t expect to shoot at more than 50 anyway, so calling it good. Just need to establish POI at 100, JIC.

Long ago I loaded Speer 110gr HPs at .32/20 levels and they were deadly, but fell like Congressional approval ratings beyond 100 yards.