What You Need to Know About Ruger's Super Redhawk 22 Hornet

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Alot of the people I socialize with are big-game hunters. Whenever they are around, they are excited to show photos of the game they have taken most recently. I enjoy seeing their prized game animals and hearing about their adventures. I, too, have been on many memorable big-game hunts. In fact, I’ve hunted big game on four continents. But I must confess that deep down I’m a varmint hunter. And where I live, coyotes are the top of the varmint chain, so I’ve sort of always thought of myself as a coyote hunter.

I’ve never been on the same scale as my friend and former Shooting Times writer Rick Jamison, but I’m not ashamed to say that I sometimes daydream about hunting coyotes. I’ve tried a lot of cartridges on varmints, including .220 Swift, .22-250, .270 Winchester, .243 Winchester, .22 WMR, .17 HMR, .17 Remington, .32 H&R Magnum, .357 Sig, and 10mm Auto, to name just a few. One of my favorite varmint cartridges has always been the .22 Hornet. I’ve used it in Ruger rifles (Model 77/22 and No. 1), a German Weihrauch rifle, and two Magnum Research handguns (a single-shot Lone Eagle pistol and a BFR single-action revolver).

As Steve Gash points out in his article on the timeless .22 Hornet beginning on page 34 of this issue of the magazine, in 2024, Ruger announced that it is now offering a new version of the double-action Super Redhawk revolver chambered for the .22 Hornet. I’m happy to focus this report on the new revolver because I have been a fan of the Super Redhawk ever since Ruger first brought it out in 1986. I’ve shot just about every version of the Super Redhawk since then (calibers include .44 Magnum, .454 Casull, and .480 Ruger; I have not fired the 10mm Auto version yet), and one of my cherished collectible guns is a .44 Magnum Super Redhawk with a two-digit serial number. (I used it on my first hunt for Shooting Times back in the early 1990s. That was a big-game hunt for aoudads in Texas, south of El Paso.)

The .22 Hornet Super Redhawk

The Super Redhawk is an interesting gun. It has a beefed-up frame, an unfluted cylinder, and a coil mainspring. The frame’s butt is a Ruger GP100-style affair, which is basically a stem inside of which is housed the mainspring. It reminds me of the classic Dan Wesson grip frame. The Super Redhawk’s grip slides over the grip frame stem and is secured with a screw that goes up through the bottom. Various types of grips have been used on the Super Redhawk throughout its lifespan, including two-piece rubber with different kinds of wood inserts. The grip on the new-for-2024 .22 Hornet Super Redhawk is a black rubber one-piece Hogue Tamer Monogrip with a built-in recoil absorber on the inside.

The .22 Hornet Super Redhawk’s cylinder holds eight rounds. That’s the highest capacity of any previous Super Redhawk, but that’s not a surprise when you consider you’re starting out with a cylinder that’s large enough to hold six of those big .454 Casull or .480 Ruger rounds. The cylinder rotates counterclockwise when the action is operated, and it swings out to the left when the cylinder lock release, which is located on the left side of the frame, is activated. On my sample, the cylinder-frame gap measures 0.006 inch, according to my feeler gauge.

The barrel on the .22 Hornet Super Redhawk is 9.5 inches long, but for other chamberings you can get a 7.5-inch, 5.0-inch, or 2.5-inch barrel. The 2.5-inch barrel is offered on the Alaskan version of the Super Redhawk, and it is chambered for .44 Magnum, .454 Casull, and .480 Ruger. The 9.5-inch barrel of our .22 Hornet Super Redhawk has a diameter of 0.9 inch at the muzzle, and the muzzle is recessed to protect the crown.

The revolver’s front sight is a bright green HiViz fiber-optic sight, and the rear sight is fully adjustable with a white-outline square notch. One of the best features of the Super Redhawk is its topstrap is machined for Ruger scope rings, and the .22 Hornet version comes with 1.0-inch Ruger rings. They made installing the Burris 3-12X handgun scope I used for this report very easy. It’s one of the most robust and secure scope-mounting systems on a handgun that I am aware of.

Another easy thing about this revolver is its trigger pull. Its single-action trigger pull averaged 5 pounds, 2.5 ounces, which is a little heavier than I prefer, but it was very smooth. The gun’s double-action trigger pull averaged 15 pounds, 1.4 ounces. Those trigger pull figures are based on eight measurements in each mode with an RCBS trigger pull gauge.

By now, I’m sure you get the picture that the Super Redhawk is a big piece of hardware. It measures 15 inches long and weighs 66 ounces (that’s a bit over four pounds) without a scope. With the scope I used, it weighs 86 ounces (5.38 pounds), according to my digital scale.

Shooting Results

Shooting the .22 Hornet Super Redhawk was a ton of fun. There’s plenty of roar and muzzle blast, but there’s hardly any felt recoil. I put seven factory loads through the new revolver, and I have to say by the time I was done shooting, the gun’s cylinder was dirty! The .22 Hornet factory ammo from Browning, Federal, Hornady, and Winchester simply wasn’t the cleanest-shooting ammo I’ve ever fired. Honestly, I had never noticed that with my .22 Hornet rifles.

Also, as you can see from the accompanying chart, most of the factory ammo I fired had high extreme spreads and standard deviations. In fact, four out of the seven loads had triple-digit extreme spreads. I can’t explain that. At first I thought it was due to how old a couple of the loads are, but when I got down to really looking at the results, one of the oldest boxes of ammo I used had the lowest extreme spread. It’s the Winchester 46-grain HP ammo, and my supply of it is going on 30 years old. The newest ammo I have (the Browning Predator & Varmint 35-grain BXV, the Federal Varmint & Predator 35-grain Tipped, and the Winchester Varmint-X 35-grain PTRE) are not more than two years old, and they had the highest extreme spreads. Like I said, I can’t explain it.

As for the accuracy, I was very pleased with my results. I’m sure the fine Burris 3-12X handgun scope I used had a lot to do with the good results. I purchased it a few years ago, intending to mount it on a Thompson/Center Contender G2 single-shot pistol for which I have several extra barrels, including one in .223 Remington. I think putting it on the .22 Hornet Super Redhawk was a perfect application.

Overall, the five-shot group average for all seven loads was 1.82 inches. That’s for three, five-shot groups with each load, and that’s at 50 yards, fired from a benchrest. I dispensed with shooting the .22 Hornet Super Redhawk at Shooting Times’s standard protocol distance for handguns, which is 25 yards, because most of the varmint hunting I do is at longer distances than that.

My best accuracy came with the Winchester Super-X 46-grain HP ammo, and like I said earlier it is going on 30 years old. Its three-group accuracy average was 1.25 inches. Another old load I had in my cache is the Winchester 34-grain JHP loading, and with it, I achieved a 1.75-inch three-group average. I know it’s not as old as the 46-grain ammo, but I don’t know how old it actually is. Anyway, it still shoots quite well. With an average of 1.95 inches, third place in the accuracy department went to the Hornady Varmint Express 35-grain V-Max ammo.

The load with the highest velocity is the Winchester Varmint-X 35-grain PTRE, averaging 2,310 fps, measured 12 feet from the gun’s muzzle. PTRE stands for Polymer Tip Rapid Expansion. The load with the lowest velocity is the Winchester Super-X 45-grain JSP, and it averaged 1,791 fps. All velocities reported are the averages for eight rounds fired.

I encourage every reader to check out Steve Gash’s article elsewhere in this issue. He, too, fired a brand-new .22 Hornet Super Redhawk for his report, and he achieved better accuracy with his revolver than I did. Obviously, Steve is a better shooter than I am, but that doesn’t hurt my feelings one bit. I’ve always said I am a mediocre shooter at best.

For readers wondering if I had any hiccups shooting the new Super Redhawk, I can say there weren’t any. I didn’t even have any sticky extractions, which I was anticipating because other .22 centerfire double-action revolvers that I have worked with have exhibited that, due to expansion of the fired cases. With a DA revolver, you are extracting all fired cases with one push on the extractor rod, unlike a single-action revolver that extracts one case at a time, and sometimes if the cases expand enough, they can require a very stiff push on the extractor rod. Not so with the .22 Hornet Super Redhawk.

I did have one chamber in the Super Redhawk that felt a little tighter than the others when loading a fresh round, so I tried my best to measure all of the chamber throats with my calipers. It appeared to be about 0.006 inch smaller in diameter than the others. Those measurements were 0.220, 0.225, 0.225, 0.226, 0.225, 0.226, 0.226, and 0.226 inch, respectively. Also, I didn’t have any trouble cocking the hammer when firing in single-action mode. Sometimes with a double-action revolver, you’ll have some cartridge setback upon firing, wherein the case heads can cause enough friction against the frame that the cylinder’s rotation hangs up. That didn’t happen here.

What else can I say about the new Super Redhawk? It might not be for everyone, but for varmint and small-game hunters who like to use the classic .22 Hornet cartridge, it’s a dream revolver. 

SUPER REDHAWK SPECS

• MANUFACTURE: Ruger ruger.com
• TYPE: Double-action revolver
• CALIBER: .22 Hornet
• CYLINDER CAPACITY: 8 rounds
• BARREL: 9.5 in.
• OVERALL LENGTH: 15 in.
• HEIGHT: 6.25 in. (without scope)
• WIDTH: 1.78 in.
• WEIGHT, EMPTY: 66 oz. (without scope)
• GRIPS: Rubber Hogue Tamer
• FINISH: Satin stainless
• SIGHTS: Adjustable rear, green HiViz front
• TRIGGER: 15.09-lb. DA pull, 5.16-lb. SA pull (as tested)
• SAFETY: Transfer-bar firing mechanism
• MSRP: $1,499

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