My passion while growing up on a farm was small-game hunting, and in those days I used the .22 Short almost exclusively. I did so mainly because a box of 50 of those shiny, little beauties sold for 46 cents at the local hardware store, while the same number of Long Rifles went for almost twice as much. In those days I probably shot more cottontails and gray squirrels in a season than most hunters today shoot in a lifetime, and not once do I recall needing more cartridge. At the time the “experts” had not gotten around to discovering that the .22 Short is worthless, so I quite innocently went about the business of keeping every family in our rural neighborhood supplied with all the wild meat their pots could possibly handle.

Rimfire cartridges (left to right), .22 CB, .22 Short, .22 Long Rifle, .22 Stinger, .17 HM2, .22 WRF, .22 WMR, .17 HMR, 5mm Remington Magnum.

As I grew older, I strayed away from hunting with the .22 Short, but after many years I rediscovered it with great joy by adding a Ruger 10/22 modified by Volquartsen Custom to handle it. Its chamber is of the correct length for the .22 Short, and the rotary magazine was modified to feed it perfectly. Not as many loadings are available today as back when I spent every minute of my spare time in the woods, but enough exist, should I decide to once again start leaving dead rabbits and squirrels hanging on the back porches of my neighbor’s houses. The CCI high-velocity load is accurate enough for headshots out to 50 yards and rather quiet to boot. Quieter still and perfect for 25-yard shots on backyard pests that dare raid Phyllis’s flower garden are the CB loads from Remington and CCI. Both are surprisingly accurate in the .22 Short chamber, and while neither has enough steam to cycle the action of the Ruger 10/22, a tug on its bolt handle ejects the old and chambers the new before the second of a pair of chipmunks can make its getaway.

.22 Long Rifle
The first rifle in .22 Long Rifle I hunted with during my youth was a Remington Model 512, and while it was accurate enough, I was never as fond of it as I was of a Marlin Model 39A Mountie that I later bought with money made during a summer job. Like many hunters and shooters who grew up in America, I got my first taste of the .22 rimfire at an early age and became hopelessly addicted to it. A lot of centerfire rifles have passed through my hands through the years, and while I have managed to hang onto a few of them, I have done a better job of resisting the temptation of parting with rimfire rifles. For this reason, that first Marlin Golden 39A and many others are still with me.

Some of my early rifles were not drilled and tapped at the factory for mounting a scope, so they remain original with open sights only, but the more modern rifles I hunt with wear scopes. Most of my woods-roaming rifles wear variables with magnifications up to 9X or 10X, but those on the rifles I use for varmint shooting are capable of zooming on up to 16X or higher. That many Xs is not actually needed for the limited range of the .22 Long Rifle cartridge, but I like to see the whites of their eyes, so to speak, before squeezing the trigger.

With a 17-grain bullet, the .17 HMR shoots about as flat as traditional factory loadings of the .22 Hornet and .218 Bee and is incredibly accurate in a good rifle.

My favorite .22 LR load for varminting is the CCI Stinger, but it is not always accurate in all rifles. Although not as fast, Remington’s Yellow Jacket is sometimes more accurate and does a good enough job on flickertails and other small animals as far away as I care to shoot at them. The Winchester Xpediter is also a good varmint load. There are other choices, but between those three, one or the other will usually deliver satisfactory accuracy from about any rifle.

Various high-velocity hollowpoint loadings are the traditional favorites for small-game hunting, and since they are quite deadly on rabbits and squirrels with hits about anywhere in the forward one-third of their bodies, they are the logical choices for the typical rifle. Nowadays, I tend to mostly hunt with match-quality rifles accurate enough to consistently make head shots out to 50 yards or so, and for that, plain-vanilla, standard-velocity loads are often more accurate. CCI Green Tag is quite good, as are the subsonic loads from Remington and Winchester. Often more accurate and capable of shooting well inside half an inch at 50 yards is the match ammo loaded by Eley for Remington. As its price indicates, Remington’s EPS load is usually the most accurate, but groups fired by a couple of my rifles with Club Xtra and Target Rifle are about as small.

.17 HMR
The .17 HMR took off like a rocket, and as far as I know, it has yet to slow down. Why this is true is no big mystery. Loaded to a muzzle velocity of 2,550 fps with a 17-grain bullet, it shoots about as flat as traditional factory loadings of the .22 Hornet and .218 Bee and is incredibly accurate in a good rifle. Recoil is close to nonexistent, and as varmint cartridges go, its bark is quite soft. Since that tiny little bullet is easily blown off course, the .17 HMR is not a windy-day cartridge, but under calm conditions a good rifleman can spoil the day for prairie dogs and smaller varmints out to 200 very long paces. More distant hits are possible with this cartridge, but with the exception of smaller targets, such as flickertails and such, kills will not always be instant at much beyond 200 yards.

In addition to super-accurate and value-priced bolt-action rifles, the .17 HMR is also chambered in lever-actions such as this Henry.

As good as the .17 HMR is, it has stiff competition on both sides of the performance range. On one side is a better small-game cartridge called the .17 HM2. On the other side sits the .22 WMR, which is more effective on targets larger than prairie dogs. The .17 HMR presently outsells those two cartridges, but it had best not look back because friends in the ammunition business tell me the .22 WMR is beginning to nip closely at its heels in popularity.

I have shot a lot of small varmints with exceptionally accurate rifles in .17 HMR, and I cannot think of a single really negative thing to say about it. It is not the best choice available for every job, but then no cartridge is. An excellent option for the varmint shooter who does not reload his cartridges, it is exceptionally good at what it does best—reaching across the back 40 owned by a farmer who may cancel your invitation if the cartridge you are shooting makes too much noise.