I’ve never had a failure rate like that with good .22LR. I usually shoot CCI.Originally Posted by Dan_S
There’s not a “bulk pack” equivalent for WMR, so I’d expect the average quality to be better.
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.
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.
"Gunfighting is a thinking man's game. So we might want to bring thinking back into it."-MDFA
Beware of my temper, and the dog that I've found...
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.
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Not another dime.
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.
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.
How about .22 TCM ?
https://www.armscor.com/firearms/ria...es/m22-tcm-ba/
I thought about that too, but I feel like the ammo is super hard to find right now
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.
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Not another dime.
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.
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