Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters .17 Fireball rifles?

Who makes 'em? Is the Remington SPS the only one available? That's all I have found in an internet search.

As you might expect the Model 21 Cooper is available in .17 Fireball 1/10 twist.

Might keep looking

I don't believe Remington is chambering the 17 fireball. Their site shows "discontinued".

Yeah, it's apparently gone until Remington can afford to tear their ammo machines away from making more common cartridges. Hard to find brass for it right now too, though it's easy enough to make from .221 Fireball.

I notice Remington has even discontinued the .204 Ruger in a couple of rifles, though not all.

I recommend the Model 7 Predator in 17 Fireball if you can find one. Nice rig.

Those are nice little rifles. There isn't any need for a heavy rifle in .17 FB.

Remington seems to have stopped its regular ammunition in 17Furball, but we're still getting the UMC loadings and it appears to be available your side of the pond too. We pay about $83 per 50 here for UMC, 17Rem when available is almost that per 20!!

Shame ADI/Thales wont make 17Rem brass ... still plenty of rifles floating about over here with a large backlog for brass.
Cheers...
Con

Yeah, you're right, the UMC ammo is available here and there. But Remington hasn't made any component brass for a while, which is common right now for a bunch of chamberings.

So apparently it's well-liked in Oz? Can't see why it wouldn't be, since it's normally very accurate, light-recoiling, flat-shooting and relatively cheap to fire.

17cal has always been relatively popular down here due to being very well suited to rabbit and particularly fox shooting - especially back in the olden days when we could sell the skins. Then there is the issue that in many places we don't have much to hunt much larger than foxes until you get to game like pigs and deer, hence probably the .224cal while popular, wasn't quite as good a fit down here at times. It has been common recently for folks to go from a 17 HMR up to a 243. I think Australia was probably the last great refuge of the 17 Rem, and the Furball and original 17 Ackley Hornet have been very popular in custom rifles.

That makes sense. How's the availability of .17 HMR ammo?

17HMR availability is fine - are there issues up top side? 17HMR has been very popular here, although I think a lot of folks are starting to think that for fox shooting it doesn't have the advantages formally attributed to it over the old 22 mag. The HMR is only a reliable killer in foxes out to about 100m or so, and out to that range really has very little ballistic advantage over the 22 mag. And 22 mag ammunition remains significantly cheaper down here. There is a lot of interest in the 17WSM as well, but we are not hearing great things from you folks about the cartridge or rifles.

Probably the other big advantage of the 17cal was the very flat trajectories. Most rabbits and particularly foxes are shot under lights, and range estimation becomes very problematic. The 17 Rem allowed hold dead on shooting out to the limit of even the most powerful spotlights. You could obtain as flat ballistics out of cartridges like the 243 and Swift, but they made such a racket that every fox for miles would promptly disappear. The 17 Furball seems to offer the best compromise between flat shooting and noise. It isn't that it has been very popular down here, but certainly it has been a favourite with guys who shoot a lot of foxes and probably especially for guys who make money out of it, for whom the low cost of reloading the cartridge is a big consideration. In places we have a $10 a head bounty on foxes, and during lambing season it is possible to get as many as ten foxes a in a couple of hours work at night. That will pretty quickly pay for a custom rifle specifically for the task.

Ammo for all the rimfires has been scarce here since Obama was reelected, at least in stores, especially .22 Long Rifles. There's been more .17 HMR available at times than anything else, though, partly because we don't have constant year-round demand for it. It's mostly used for shooting prairie dogs and other ground squirrels in spring and summer.

Many Americans also prefer the .22 Magnum for larger varmints, whether foxes or anything else that size. A big prairie dog is at most two pounds in weight, and most are smaller. But there are some who really like the .17 Fireball even for prairie dogs, since it's usually volume shooting of up to 500 rounds a day, or even more, and they also shy at too much noise. If they've been shot at much, one shot from even a .223 will send every dog within 300-400 yards scurrying into their burrows, while a .17 HMR or Fireball allows more shooting before they spook. I like the .17 Fireball for prairie dog shooting because it shoots flat enough to hold dead-on out to 300 yards, and recoils so little I can see the results in the scope. (Prairie dog shooting is all done in daylight.)

Many also prefer the .17 Fireball or Remington for fur shooting, not so much foxes (though there is some of that) but coyotes.

Never understood why CZ didn't chamber the 527 in 17FB -the American would be the perfect platform for it .

That's a fact Jack!
I converted a 527 American in 221 to 17FB five or six years ago.
PN barrel and a couple of other mods and it's as close to the perfect walking varminter as it gets IMO. Love that little gun!
It and my 700Classic in 17Rem are the two bolt action rifles I'll NEVER part with.
If I were in the market for a 17FB I'd build one just like it.

This may be one of those dumb questions, but would there be feeding issues in converting a .223 CZ 527 from .223 to .17 Fireball, or would a simple rebarrel work?

I have a rebarreled Ruger mkII .223 and whoever did the work, didn't block the mag. It has feeding issues with normally loaded cartridges, but if you leave them at the front of the magbox, it's fine......

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Only difference is in the magazine -the 222 and 221fb use a spacer/block? doodad to keep the round further forward.
Other than that -yes just a rebarrel.

FieldGrade , that's one sweet little rifle , perfect fur cartridge -17FB..
I made the mistake of shooting my cz american 221fb that I bought as a 17fb donor. Many have made that mistake.