Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires A simple solid supply of hunting & plinking RF

Too much variety & junk taking it's toll on me. Have wondered at times about a solid supply of one kind of hunting, casual target & plinking/blasting ammo. ammo.

Or is it just SOP to have 5 brands & 4 bullet weights on hand?

Told a friend once I'd be tempted to shoot mini mags at everything but serious target shooting. He ask, "even at a rock across the river?" I said yep, would cost more, but might be more fun without clearing jambs, hearing squibs, or getting misfires. Damned if he didn't order 4 or 5 cases.

I could shoot SK STD at targets and MiniMags at Game and ditch everything else

I thought mini mags were the best money could buy until I read otherwise on the internet! They run in anything I own and provide good accuracy and thump.

I have always had great luck with minimags. My 21" Contender commonly shoots the hollow points into 3/8-1/2" @50 yards. My CZ455 and Shaw 10-22 dont do any better with mid level match stuff.

Yeah, if ya have rim fires, particularly semi autos giving you function problems, Mini-mags will likely cure them, they kill good too. IME. The base line IMO for a dependable, well functioning small game stopping 22RF. Particularly the 36HP. Specialty ammo exist, but just complicates this scenario IMO.

Beyond this, a similar plinking/blasting round??? Dependable but cheaper? Thinking Blazer 40's. (the 38's not equivalent)

It's always wise to have numerous types and brands of ammo on hand, to test new rifles. You never know what a rifle is going to like, until you do the testing. As for CCI, that is always a very popular choice. Personally, If I had to choose something as an all around choice for target and plinking and hunting, it would probably be the American Eagle copper plated hollow points. It shoots very well in all of my rifles and it works well on small vermin. CCI has always been a crap shoot in my rifles YMMV..

Thinking dependability, function, job one for every day firearms. Maybe not? Accuracy is secondary if it's problematic.

But AE plated HP isn't one I've used, maybe a new player revealed here. It's just that mini mag usually runs well in a gun that otherwise gives function problems & I know it to kill well when similar offerings are sub par.

As my Dad always said, variety is the spice of life, so therefore I like shooting many different types of 22lr
Being mid 70's, paper is what I shoot mostly these days, so accuracy is my primary goal. Back in my Squirrel hunting days accuracy was at the forefront then also. I keep a lot of different brands and types of rimfire ammo on the shelf, but I admit to having a strong like for RWS, especially the subsonics. Killed a lot of critters with that one. These days I mostly kill Possums eating the Cats food and much to my wife's displeasure. Because it's close range, about 10yds or less, I use the CCI Quiet segmented HP in a 24.5" barrel. This type of shooting forced me to buy another scope that would accommodate very close range and also out to 50yds in the dark with a porch light on at times. You'd be surprised what scopes don't work for that type of close shooting at night.
So now that I mainly shoot paper, it has livened up the rimfire game for me, new equipment, different trigger weights, different optics, etc. Kind of fun again. Sure, I can shoot small groups with a fixed 6X scope, but these eyes can get blurry at times, so I've gone to a bit more magnification on some of the rimfires.
As for ammo, I much prefer standard velocity even for longer ranges, so SK Standard is a good common round to use. It has great accuracy in most rimfires and no squigs. If I could only have one round of rimfire it would be the RWS Subsonic with other choices being Norma Tac 22 or SK Standard.
I should add that I shoot mainly bolt action rimfire and occasionally a 10/22.

The great majority of my 22 LR is CCI Mini-Mags, they just work well in all of my 22's - reliable and usually give 5 shot 1/2" groups at 50 yards.

I do keep a few bricks of mid-level match ammo around though for when I want to shoot bragging size groups, but if circumstances forced me to only have one 22 LR ammo then it would be Mini-Mags.

The Federal Americn Eagle performs almost as well as Mini-Mags but costs about the same and, around here at least,is usually sold in 40 round boxes rather that the standard 50 round so it actually costs a bit more per round for no actual improvement in performance in my experience.

drover

Blazer 40s are good in a wide variety of my .22 rifles, so is Aguila Super Extra HV hollowpoints (box with black stripes). Price is about the same for either type, depending on where you shop. I was always a huge fan of MiniMags, but after trying the Aguilas in several CZ boltguns, I decided to concentrate on the Mexican stuff, as it was usually a bit less, and I was buying two or three cases at a time. IN MY RIFLES (maybe not yours), they shoot better than the 36gr. MiniMags. The exception to that, are the segmented MiniMags, which outshoot danged near anything except the highfalutin' CenterX from Lapua. I save the segmented stuff for raccoons, it kills good.

My main issue with CCI is availability, often enough, it's hard to find around here, while I can always find Aguila, and it shoots equally well, if not a little better. My 10/22s and a CZ 512 autoloader, DO seem to shoot a fuzz better with the Blazer 40s, but not enough to matter. Avoid the Blazer 38s, but you already know that.

I hate to think how many different varieties of 22 rimfire ammo I have. Over the years you couldn’t always get what you wanted, but what was available.

K22, I know you shoot a lot of rimfire, as do I, on certain occasions. It seems like every new rifle I get, I have to test a lot of different kinds of ammo. The one you mention has always been a good/great go to for testing accuracy. That SK standard plus seems to be well liked by all of my rifles. A step above that is the SK rifle match. Most of my rifles love that stuff. Sometimes I can find each one at close to the same price. I bought a brick of SK rifle match last winter for $90.00, and I think the SK standard plus was $80/brick.

As for CCI MINI Mags, most of my rifles don't like it, and it is expensive, as compared to federal hollow points. I don't know where drover buys his ammo, but I want the link. Or maybe I don't, if American eagle ammo is the same price. Either the AE is way over priced, or he's fibbing about the price of the mini mags. Either way, the mini mags have been hit or miss, much like the good ol Remington yellow jackets. Some rifles like them, and others don't.. This is why we test different ammo in our 22lr's. And since the OP is looking for a reliable source of ammo, I am not going to suggest the Remington yellow jacket ammo, but I do have a lifetime supply of that stuff on hand, and don't shoot it often.

I also won't suggest high velocity ammo for plinking or target practice, as it generally doesn't shoot as well as standard velocity and sub sonics. Again, I am agreeing with what you said.

You'll get some outliers though. An example: I was shooting my new to me rifle yesterday. Didn't shoot much, but I grabbed a box of SK high velocity match ammo, that hasn't shot very well in anything, and this is how it did in my old iron sight rifle:


This is just one rifle, but here is how it did with CCI standard velocity:

I have some rifles that shoot it fine, and others that hate it. This one appears to hate it.

It being an old Remington, it seemed to prefer old Remington ammo. Even though I don't like Remington 22lr ammo! This ammo was fairly inexpensive at $30/brick, so I bought 2 bricks of it locally, at the beginning of the year. I would not buy any new Remington ammo though. That stuff has been garbage for the last 20 years or so IMHO..


I've had issue with Tac22 in cold weather, so I would not suggest that ammo. I don't know if it was the lube that was freezing, and making accuracy really bad, but I try to avoid TAC22 at all costs anymore. The Norma match has been pretty good, but I need to test some new lots of it. That stuff is as expensive as SK Rifle match, so if I had to pick one over the other, SK would get the nod.

Who else here likes Federal Automatch? For general plinking, that is the one I'd pick. 9 times out of 10.




The girlfriends 10/22 with green mountain barrel even likes Federal Automatch:


There's other rifles in the stable that like it, so I keep buying what works. Nice thing is you can find it at the local Wally world for pretty cheap..

quote from BSA - "As for CCI MINI Mags, most of my rifles don't like it, and it is expensive, as compared to federal hollow points. I don't know where drover buys his ammo, but I want the link. Or maybe I don't, if American eagle ammo is the same price. Either the AE is way over priced, or he's fibbing about the price of the mini mags."


As to your fibbing reference - That's the word that comes to mind with your constant posting of your so called "50 yard targets".


Here are the prices of AE and Mini-Mag at my nearest source of over the counter ammo. In actuality they often have the Mini-Mags on sale for $8.99 to $9.99 per hundred.

https://www.murdochs.com/products/s...in-jacketed-hollow-point-ammo-40-rounds/

40 rounds @ $4.49 = 11.22 cents per round

https://www.murdochs.com/products/s...mag-22-lr-36-grain-cphp-ammo-100-rounds/

100 rounds @ $10.99 = 10.9 cents per round

I have compared these prices to ammoseek and in most instances they end up costing as much from ammoseek because of the cost of shipping.



drover

When on ammoseek, totally ignore the very cheapest offers on the 22LR page. Their shipping price might be graded as on the lower side, but not nearly graded low enough. Instead of being graded a 3 or 4, they should be graded a 4F or 000. One of those places wanted $75 to ship me 4K of 22LR's. Thought maybe & went above a threshold of something on weigh & just to see, I changed my order to 1 brick,,,,, still $75.

Scroll on down the page & look for hi grades on shipping or the ones with low shipping to free if over a certain amount,,,, still great prices with some of these guys.

SGAmmo for instance, has great prices & many times, free shipping. They sent me a case a couple weeks ago. No funny business in all of it. Great price, free & fast shipping.

On the left side where you can narrow the selection criteria, third from the bottom is a selection for shipping rating. I almost always check F/CF - Free or Conditional Free meaning it's free for orders above a certain dollar amount.

Federal Automatch and CCI MINI MAGS together have been the best for me in most situations. Very little target other than sighting in. Plinking, rabbit, squirrel, plinking. For suppressed I have tried a lot of things. But nothing stands out. Have various loads to try in another thread. Good shooting, RZ.

I’ve never had any issues with loose, bulk pack 22’s…..Remingtons, Federals, and occasionally Winchesters.

Even shot the bulk Remingtons 36 gr. HP’s @ 100 yards just to see how they would do…..I was pretty impressed! It’s been a while, but as best I remember, 5 shot groups went under 2” from our Ruger 77/22. memtb

I keep about a flat of SK Match and Long Range in reserve for my CZ 457 LRP. The SK Match can be stretched out to 100 metres easily.

Also keep a flat of Norma TAC-22 and a few bricks of CCI MINI-Mags for my BSA hunting rig.

When the Federal Auto-Match comes on at a really good sale price some of that gets put away for plinking on gusty days when target ammo would be wasted in the wind.

Sure wished some Norma Match-22 would show up on the gun store shelves again.

On the other hand, I never had a rifle that liked CCI Standard Velocity. Just saying.