Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Predators and Varmints What rimfire round for a pd hunt?

I'm looking for your recommendation for a rimfire round for pd's.
Obviously wind and distance are the limiting factor. So will a quality .22 rifle and good ammo be just as good as the 17HMR or even a 22 mag? Is a limit of 100 yards or so about it?
Thanks.

.17 HMR...hold into the wind out to 200 yds...pretty anemic past that...

I used to use a Winchester 9422 with CCI Stingers and was getting hits out to about 125 paces.
Hit them in the neck and it is all over!

17 hummer......

If you go early you will have lots of little dumb ones to shoot.
They are good fodder for the rimfires.
We found a town on the side of a blacktop road once where everything inside of 300 yds would go down the hole as soon as we stopped the truck.
Pay attention to the soil! If it is clay and the sky clouds up get out of there and get back on a road.
Enjoy,
whelennut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW6yM9bNyy0&feature=share

Don't even bother with a 22lr. It won't kill pd's reliably, and when it does the thing just goes plop and falls over. Watch what a centerfire does and you won't even want to mess with rimfires. If you do take a rimfire, the 22Mag (or HMR) is good for certain situations, and out to maybe 100yds......it kills them but with nowhere near the kind of authority that makes shooting pd's fun. It's about fireworks. Blowups and launches are what pd shooting is about, it takes more horsepower than a rimfire to do that.

This is what I'm talking about. A 22lr is just too wimpy. Every one of those things should've exploded with pieces flying everywhere, but all they did was fall over.

I love the CF as well, but also enjoy the pleasure of good shooting and inexpensive rimfires. A .22 mag is a great lil round out to 150 yds or so and does just fine on PD's. Have shot 100's of them with that round. I do not own a .17 so i cant speak of that. I have killed a fair share with the .22lr as well, but you will have cripples with that and thats not much fun.
Use an explosive bullet and all works well. But take that CF too so you can see what ACKMAN is talking about!

The longest kill I've seen with the .17 HMR was 303 yards--and a friend of mine did it the first time he ever fired my rifle. But 200 is normally about it, and requires a pretty calm day. The plastic-tips are MUCH more effective than the hollow-points. Occasionally the HP's don't even open up.

The .22 Magnum is also pretty good, but doesn't shoot nearly as flat as the .17 HMR, even with lightweight bullets. And you pretty much need a custom barrel to match the accuracy of the average off-the-rack Hummer.

Up unitl 2 years ago we had LOTS of dog towns around where I live. Plague got to the majority of them but until then I sure had a lot of fun with a couple of 17 Mach 2's and young dogs when the CF's were cooling. Out to about 125 yds the mach 2 is a lot of fun. They are not a reliable killer on adult dogs and useless in any wind.

That's been my experience with the Mach 2 as well, though it is a very fine "gopher" round.

I have shot them with the .22rf and the .17 HMR. The HMR is good out to about 150 yards maybe a little more. The .22rf is good out to about 100 yards.

Antoher thing to look at is cost. If you are into a good dog town where you might shoot 100, 200, 300, or more rounds the rf is a whole lot cheaper to feed than the HMR.

Thanks for the replies so far. The rimfires would be just to supplement 204's and 223's. I have to do some price shopping just to see was good 22lr's stack up against 22WM's and 17 hummers.

Bigwhoop: This spring will be my ninth season using the 17 HMR on Colony Varmints (including Ground Squirrels, Prairie Dogs and Rock Chucks).
I am convinced the 17 HMR is much more effective on Colony Varmints than any other rimfire cartridge.
And I have been shooting Colony Varmints with all manner of rimfires for over 50 years now.
I have personally killed Prairie Dogs with my 17 HMR at and just past 200 yards.
I have laser ranged Prairie Dog kills with the 17 HMR out to 260 yards.
I have NEVER seen or accomplished a kill at ranges like those with any other rimfire I have ever used.
Beg, borrow or steal a 17 HMR to use on your Prairie Dog Hunt and see for yourself what its flat trajectory, speed and accuracy does to your quarry!
Look for a "sale" on 17 HMR ammo and go have a ball shooting it.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I started shooting prairie dogs in 1949 with a 22 long rifle. Some years later I used a 22 WMR . When the 17 HMR first can out got a 17 HMR rifle..I like what the 17 HMR would do but when the 17 HM2 came out I got one. A few years ago I shot a bit over 2,000 prairie dogs with the Cooper 57 M LVT 17 HM2 and 17 HMR rifles. I live in prairie dog country so I go out when ther is very little wind . A person with a 17 HMR and a .204 Ruger rifle coud do a lot of shooting in a prairie dog town.

bracer,

That's been my experience as well, though I haven't shot PD's quite as long as you have. Obviously you still love to experiment!

Pdogs and the 17HMR, 200 yards, and 17HM2, 100 yards, go together like ham & cheese, beer & almost anything, peanut butter & jelly, hot dogs & baseball games, etc.

It is fun to shoot the critters for sport and know that you're feeding the scavengers, 'cause if you go back to the killing fields tomorrow, the scraps are all cleaned up.

I never shot a pdog before I moved to NE in 1990, but have tried to make at leave 2 trips to SD, WY, and/or CO every year since then. Have met a number of fine ranchers and shooters out on the windy plains. I like to bring 4 or 5 rifles on a pdog shoot, a couple of 17 RFs, a couple of 223s, and a .243" or 257" bore rifle to shoot heavier bullets if the wind is blowing hard, 'cause it is always blowing in all of SD, eastern WY, and eastern CO.

JEff

I just never seemed to warm up to the new Savage model 93 in the .17-HMR caliber, I purchased early last summer. It did not keep foxes, coons down for the count. So I backed tracked a little and traded that rifle to the gunstore for another Savage model 93 but in the .22magnum caliber! Now keeping foxes down or smacking coons dead as a door nail is no problem at all. Lots of penetration, especially with the new Federal 50 grain bullet.
This would even be good medicine for coyotes under 75 yards.

Yep, the .22 Magnum is a better round for larger varmints. But a .17 HMR is the real rimfire deal on smaller stuff.