Rimfire is What it Is

I was planning to get out the Sweet Sixteen and go back to the squirrel wars, but today I decided it was best to do some .22 shooting. The Sweet Sixteen is a much more effective squirrel weapon, but it takes a lot of the skill out of the process. I have been having problems killing squirrels cleanly with rifles, so I felt like I should go out and check my rifles on the bench at known distances.

I belong to some gun forums, and I sought information about my problems. Naturally, people tried to tell me I couldn’t shoot,and they made up nonsense about how they never missed and never failed to get a clean kill. I figured it couldn’t hurt to practice, if only to reassure myself.

This afternoon, I moved my bench to 25 yards from my targets, and I started shooting CCI 36-grain Mini-mags. I was using my Savage A22 and Nikon Prostaff II scope.

I was not very happy with my first set of groups, and I went in the house, figuring maybe the Savage was not going to work out with squirrels. Then I thought about the ammunition and the way I had held the gun. CCI Mini-mags are very popular, but they’re not high-end ammunition. As far as I know, all .22 LR ammunition, even the pricey stuff, is less accurate than good centerfire ammunition. Maybe I’m wrong, but people on the web get bad results with expensive .22 LR ammo, including Eley, all the time. Maybe I needed to try something other than Mini-mags. Also, I had been trying to use a different technique to hold the gun, and I wondered if that had screwed things up.

I got more Mini-mags, some CCI standard velocity ammo, and some Remington Golden Bullets, and I went back out.

This time, I held the rifle in a pretty conventional way, and I was very careful to contact the trigger with the same part of my finger every time.

The results were better, but not inspiring. With the Mini-mags and standard velocity ammo, I shot somewhere under an inch, except for one crazy flyer. The Golden Bullets were very disappointing. The groups were bigger.

I’ll post a photo of the Mini-mag target.

I know the problem is with the Golden Bullets, not me, because I alternated targets. I didn’t shoot all of the groups for one brand at once and then move on. I shot two groups with each brand, switched, and shot two groups with the next brand. The Remington groups weren’t bigger because I was tired or because I wasn’t warmed up.

The groups are not bad, but they’re not making me ecstatic. The squirrels where I live are tiny, so their brains are tiny, too. You really need to be able to shoot half-inch groups in the field in order to kill squirrels quickly. I can do that from 50 feet. At 25 yards, it’s a crap shoot. I shot into something like half an inch from the bench today, most of the time, but I don’t hunt from a bench, so I should expect 25-yard shots to be less accurate in the woods.

I can continue using rifles, but I’ll have to wait for very close shots. I guess I have to decide whether I want to kill several squirrels per day or just one.