22 - WMR or Hornet?

[Dan_S]

Looking to fill a specific niche. Desire better performance than .22LR, but want something I can easily suppress, which has me looking at 22 WMR and Hornet.


If I’m giving up the ease of finding ammo (22LR) then I also want to throw reliability considerations into the mix. I’ve had enough ignition failures with rimfire to totally trust it. The Hornet, being a centerfire, should help there.

The use of this, is as a backpacking rifle, and keeping myself supplied with food in remote areas.

Thanks in advance.

[Duelist]

The Hornet should be sweet, but downloaded .223 to your desired power level will be easier to source brass and a barrel for.

[Dan_S]

The Hornet should be sweet, but downloaded .223 to your desired power level will be easier to source brass and a barrel for.

The issue is the can is only rated up to 22 hornet/5.7x28.

And I can’t find a 5.7x28 bolt gun.


Actually hadn’t occurred to me that a downloaded .223 might fill the niche...have you played with a similar combination by any chance?

[Duelist]

The issue is the can is only rated up to 22 hornet/5.7x28.

And I can’t find a 5.7x28 bolt gun.


Actually hadn’t occurred to me that a downloaded .223 might fill the niche...have you played with a similar combination by any chance?

.223 of various load levels in another guy's bolt action, but very limited amounts. all of my .223s are ARs, so my lower limit is a lot higher than if I had a turn-bolt, break action, pump, or something like that. A lot higher than what you're looking for.

[Dan_S]

Alright. Good deal, though. Interesting concept, and I’ll have to give it some thought.

May end up coming back around to this one, if I am unable to figure out a better(?) option.

[SkiDevil]

I can't offer an opinion on the .22 hornet, but many look to it as a low noise centerfire alternative. I looked at the caliber more than once, but cost and availability of the ammunition was always an issue. If you are a reloader then it may not be an issue for you. Ruger makes a nice scaled down rifle.

The .22 WMR is a great rimfire round. I've owned one before and shot many jack rabbits, dogs (feral), crows, and coyotes. It works well and kills all out of proportion to its size. Only downside to me is the cost of the rounds vs years ago when I was paying less than $10 per box.

Lastly, I have no idea how a suppressed firearm would work with .22 WMR, because it is typically a high velocity rimfire round.

You may want to look at rimfirecentral for an answer to that question.

[Dan_S]

Suppression is pretty consistent, so no issues with the velocity of a round.

I may just have to try a wmr and see how I like it.


In your use of it, did you feel it was more reliable than the LR? I ask, in part, as I had two ignition failures just the other day in firing about thirty rounds of 22lr. Not particularly great.

[farscott]

If you reload, .22 K-Hornet used to make a ton of sense. I prefer the K-Hornet sharper shoulder and use it in a Contender action. If you are buying factory ammo, the cost is about the same between .22 WMR and .22 Hornet. The latter is more reliable, but the real advantage is the availability of spitzers with the Hornet. All .22 WMR loads are round nose so as to be safe in tubular magazines. The Hornet is a 150 yard cartridge on small game; the K-Hornet stretches out to 200 yards. Any longer and .223/5.56 makes sense. If you reload, 5.56 can also be loaded subsonic and the 5.56 brass is less expensive. Plus you can use the AR platform. For that reason, the Hornet is obsolete even though it is a fine cartridge.

I still think about building a Ruger #1 in .22 K-Hornet.

[MGW]

Not sure what your purpose is but have you looked at 17 HMR? It’s really good on varmints. The Ruger Ranch is available threaded in 17 and it’s reasonably priced. My dad is messing around with one and getting really good accuracy out of it. The supersonic crack will still be there but it’s going to be very quite otherwise.

[BobM]

Suppression is pretty consistent, so no issues with the velocity of a round.

I may just have to try a wmr and see how I like it.


In your use of it, did you feel it was more reliable than the LR? I ask, in part, as I had two ignition failures just the other day in firing about thirty rounds of 22lr. Not particularly great.
In the past I shot a lot of prairie dogs with a Winchester 9422M, mostly with Winchester 34 and 40 grain loads, and never had a dud.
Recently I’ve been hunting with a Ruger American Rimfire compact with a Sparrow. It’s obviously louder than my RAR 22lr but it’s pretty reasonable for a shot in the field without ear protection.

[peterb]

In your use of it, did you feel it was more reliable than the LR? I ask, in part, as I had two ignition failures just the other day in firing about thirty rounds of 22lr. Not particularly great.

I’ve never had a failure rate like that with good .22LR. I usually shoot CCI.

There’s not a “bulk pack” equivalent for WMR, so I’d expect the average quality to be better.

[Hambo]

Alright. Good deal, though. Interesting concept, and I’ll have to give it some thought.

May end up coming back around to this one, if I am unable to figure out a better(?) option.

I got 1400fps out of my 15" Encore with 55gr bullets over Red Dot. I have not shot these .223 with a can.

As far as .22WMR or Hornet, I'd take the Hornet so I could make it do what I want vs. having to find a factory load I want with the WMR.

I do not like .17HMR, unless you want to buy a Contender carbine barrel, in which case it's the best thing I've ever owned, but I'd let you have it for the right price. ;)

[OlongJohnson]

The Hornet should be sweet, but downloaded .223 to your desired power level will be easier to source brass and a barrel for.

This is the exact excuse I told myself to enable buying a Super 16 Contender barrel in .223. It's said to be (haven't measured it myself) 1:14 twist, so 50 grains is about the upper limit it will stabilize. (Hoping a laser-beam flat-base old-school bench rest bullet of some kind in the 52-53 gr range will work.) I have a bunch of light/slow bullets ranging from 30gr Remington 22WMR overruns through the Hornet-specific stuff to light .223 varmint bullets. I figure anything from WMR equivalent up to full-bore .223 is on the table. The tapered 16.25-inch barrel on a Contender is ridiculously compact and light. A folding pistol brace on a Choate M4 grip could be awesome, since there's no buffer to cycle through there. Super 16 barrels are hard to find, but Super 14s are a dime a dozen, sorta. Just need to be careful of overall length issues.

I've thought about a K-Hornet, but decided that if someone gave me a K-Hornet barrel for free, I'd still end up about $700 into the project between brass, tooling, optic and mount, etc.

[jetfire]

I feel like it's going to be harder to source ammo for 22 Hornet than it is 22 WMR. In fact, even in the ammo crisis I can pretty handily get 22 Magnum ammo for my two handguns I have chambered in it. I've actually been toying with the idea of a 22 Mag bolt gun to go with a 3 inch LCR as kind of a panic proof lightweight survival combo. I've shot animals up to coyote sized with a 22 Mag and it works pretty well on those.

[oregon45]

If you handload, the Hornet is a better choice than the 22 WMR, although it can be temperamental to load. I like the Hornet over the 22 WMR because I've found it easier to get consistent, reproducible, accuracy by handloading the Hornet as opposed to dealing with factory 22 WMR loads.

I've loaded 22 Hornet for years for use in my T/C Contender for IHMSA Field Pistol competition. Depending on what rifle you get, and how tightly it is chambered, you may have issues with brass life in the Hornet, particularly case separation at the neck from stretching if the chamber is slightly oversized. With Hornet brass, care must be taken when re-sizing the case and seating bullets to avoid crushing the case mouth or collapsing the case neck. Those considerations would not cause me to not recommend a 22 Hornet, but they are something to think about. The Hornet is a cartridge that will reward your purchase of top-shelf reloading dies--I use a Redding neck sizing die and a Forster precision seating die and have had no issues with brass deformation; I de-prime the case separately with a Lee depriming die and I do not use an expander ball. I also do not crimp my loads, but that is because I'm using them in a single-shot match pistol so I don't have to worry about bullets walking out of the cases from jostling or recoil, as you would have to with a magazine-fed 22 Hornet.

All in all, the Hornet is a fun choice but not the most practical choice. For your purposes I would go with a .223 using Hodgdon Trail Boss powder to duplicate 22 WMR ballistics. The .223 gives you common, robust, brass that, if properly resized and used with light loads, will last virtually forever. You also have a much wider range of choices in terms of rifles.

If you just have to have a 22 Hornet rifle (and it's a great cartridge; accurate and pleasant to shoot) the CZ 527 is a great choice. I had one several years ago and it shot very well and was properly chambered; I had no issues with case separation even with maximum loads.

[HCM]

How about .22 TCM ?

https://www.armscor.com/firearms/ria/rifle-series/m22-tcm-ba/

[jetfire]

How about .22 TCM ?

https://www.armscor.com/firearms/ria/rifle-series/m22-tcm-ba/

I thought about that too, but I feel like the ammo is super hard to find right now

[OlongJohnson]

When I was nerding around with the K-Hornet idea, I learned that Lee will rework their Hornet collet neck sizing dies to K-Hornet for a reasonable fee.

[farscott]

When I was nerding around with the K-Hornet idea, I learned that Lee will rework their Hornet collet neck sizing dies to K-Hornet for a reasonable fee.

I really like the Redding set with the full length sizing die, seating die and neck sizing die as I usually use the neck sizing die with the Contender. If I need to do so, I can full-length resize but that is usually only after fire forming K-Hornet brass from factory ammo. This results in longer life for the brass.