Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires .22 RF shotshells... what do you REALLY use them for?

When I was a kid , we used to go out and shoot Rats at night at a country Dump . Kind of fun with all those Rats running all over the place and using a Flashlight trying to hit them . Anyway , with a Rifled Barrel , 22 Shot was about as effective as throwing Corn at them ....never killed even one .... they just flinched a little and ran off . We quickly switched back to Hollow Points . I later set out some of the old Aluminum Pie Pans at maybe 20 Feet and the Shot would never penetrate the thin Aluminum . A Gun dealer friend called me up one day and told me he had a Smooth Bore 22 and to come over and try it out . What a difference : it shot thru the Aluminum easily . Timbo was spot on with his previous Post . I did'nt know much about Firearms in those days and passed on buying that Winchester M61 Pump in 22 Shot . I won't mention the Price as it still hurts today !

I load the #12 shot in .38/.357, .44 and .45 Colt, using the Speer capsules. Deadlier by far on snakes than the rimfires and the "dust" shot makes for a denser pattern plus a little extra range. I have some of the CCI .22 and .22 mag shotshells but haven't tried them on snakes. I have usually used the Federal or Winchester crimped loads.

Worked well on carpenter bees at the cabin last year out of my .22 S&W. Went 7 for 8.

Wife says I've been watching too much Justified.

Well, I just learned a new term, "carpenter bees". For the 7 years I lived in middle TN, I had a problem with what I thought were bumble bees boring holes in wood. Once I found out that they were what was causing so much destruction, I declared war on them.

I went through a lot of shotshells during that time and could sometimes even wingshoot them. If I got a solid hit on them, they virtually disentegrated, if a marginal one, they'd Kamakazee me while leaking the last of their vital fluids. Made for some exciting shooting!

Before that, and since leaving TN to a land where "carpenter bees" don't exist, shotshells are more a novelty than anything else for me.

While the shotshells were a lot of fun for this, I bought an aerosol can of Spectracide foaming Carpenter Bee and ground wasp killer and sprayed the holes they had created. Two treatments a week apart and I haven't seen them in a year.

We used to swat bumble bees with tennis rackets when we were
kids, wouldnt recommend it to anyone.

For some reason this thread has me thinking. I stoppeda the range the other day to check some patterns.

The old Federal crimped shot load, fired from a single shot winchester bolt.
I started at 2 paces and walked back a bit for each shot. Paces, which will be a hair under a yard.

2 paces


3 paces


4 paces


5 paces. This one sounded odd, very different report than the rest.


6 paces


7 paces


10 paces, probably 8-9 yards.
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/crockettnj/22shot10_zpsa0a850e0.jpg[/img]

I then took a poke with my very lite 410 reloads. 1/2 oz or slightly under, #5 shot.
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/crockettnj/4101255_zps05031fc6.jpg[/img]

Here is the cumulative of all shots. Interestingly, everything passed completely through the paper and both sides of the cardboard box.
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/crockettnj/22shotcume_zpsf9a52db4.jpg[/img]


enough to dispatch this one?
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/crockettnj/wsnake2_zpsc3687808.jpg[/img]

I think the 2 yard pattern probably had a lot of uncounted pellets in the same hole as others. I only had 114 in a tight pattern, yet the 3 and 4 yard loads had 160+ pellet holes.

It could also be poor QC re the shot count from federal.

The 5 yard shot was a squib.

Things go to hell pretty fast at 10 yards!

Next time I'll try the CCI. Maybe that fancy blue cap wad will tighten things up?

My sister uses them to keep the bears out of her apple trees..

Not .22 shot shells, but probably the luckiest shot of my life - A friend and I were hunting with our sons in Alaska while on R&R leave from Afsandystan.

We got into some prime Ptarmigan country, and I had loaned my 12 gauge to my buddy's boy. I was carrying his Ruger Super Blackhawk in a chest rig stoked with .44 SPL CCI shotshells. A bird flushed right in front of us while my son was in the middle of re-loading his .410, and my buddy and his boy were on the other side of the hill and didn't have a shot, so on reflex, I drew and fired, and dropped the bird at about 15 yards. I seriously doubt I could ever make a shot like that again, but that was one tasty bird. Matter of fact, we got 13 of them between the four of us that day, and ate like kings back at camp that night.

NICE!

we use Ruger single 6's and birdshot to shoot "Bee skeet" .
It's fun and it keeps the little buggers from eating holes in all the boards on the deck roof.

A buddy was shooting rats in his barn one night with a flashlight and a Single-Six loaded with birdshot- pretty effective when they are skittering right past your feet. He pulled a bozo stunt and managed to put a load into the top of his right foot. By all accounts right painful and gave the surgeon fits picking all the little BB's out. I bet there's still a couple in there.

In the late 60's in Boy Scout Camp we shot Smoothbore .22's at Moskeeto Clay Pigeons which are about 1/3 smaller than standard clay pigeons, don't remember which guns we used.

Jerry

Those Mo-Skeet-O guns were Mossbergs, if they were truly such (hence the 'Mo' in Mo-Skeet-O). All of the big manufacturers made a smooth bore rifle for shooting bird shot. The best of them had what was called Rutledge boring which were bigger-bored than .22 and had a degree of choke if I'm not mistaken. Its been a long time since I looked at one.

They couldn't pry me away from the Mo-Skeet-O 'range' when I was a Boy Scout in the mid-60's.

I ran the Boy Scout Mo-Skeet-O range when I was a teen in the late 60's, early 70's, We had Remington .22 smoothbores. We'd try to shoot bats at dusk. They were pretty elusive, but we had better luck with the .22 shotguns than the later CO2 shotguns with plsatic, reloadable shotshells. The airguns' velocity was just too slow - the bats would dodge the shot pattern.

I use them on sparrows and starlings mainly. I do know that they can sluice a magpie at 25 feet. I use a Remington 121 smoothbore with Routlege "choke." Seems to work a lot better than in a rifled bore. Mine patterns pretty well to about 10 yards. I prefer the star crimp variety but just for looks.

When I was a kid they had a game at county fairs where we shot little clay pigeons launched towards some sort of netting. I think they were called "Mo-skeet-o" or some such. It was pretty cool.

Carpenter Bees - it is a blast "wing" shooting them......have had many say to me "you might be a redneck if.......". All I need to add is a lawn chair and beer

PennDog

I have a Remington single shot bolt smoothbore. It is very effective for shooting english sparrows in our turkey barns, and won't penetrate the plywood or the sheet metal that the barns are lined with. Perfect! And it is effective out to about 40ft. FAR better patterns than any rifled barrel shooting the same stuff. I use the crimped Win/ Rem/ Fed cartridges, not the CCI stuff. I have killed pigeons with this gun at 30ft. DRT. it is also very effective on rats.