.22 Rimfire availability/cost vs. centerfire reloading

[62chevy]

14.99 plus shipping is a bit much. Take a 223/556 case and drill it out to just fit the 209 primer, neck size to fit the 22 pellet. Shoot and deprime on a press.

[buckeye43210]

14.99 plus shipping is a bit much. Take a 223/556 case and drill it out to just fit the 209 primer, neck size to fit the 22 pellet. Shoot and deprime on a press.

True. Just linked to that video to show what could be done. There's a guy down under that rolls his own to take out nuance birds.

[BBvideo 560,340][/BBvideo]

[BBvideo 560,340][/BBvideo]

[Steve]

Those videos make me want to go shoot some birds. But its cold and windy here today.

[DaveInGA]

I have a box of 100 209 shotgun primers sitting going to waste in my reloading cabinet. I also have a ton of .22 caliber air gun pellets. Now I'm going to have to buy that .223 rifle.

Dang, that means getting a scope I can use for very short and medium ranges. Let's see - 2-7 X 32MM or so, Leupold VX I or II sounds about right or something similar.

[62chevy]

I have a box of 100 209 shotgun primers sitting going to waste in my reloading cabinet. I also have a ton of .22 caliber air gun pellets. Now I'm going to have to buy that .223 rifle.

Dang, that means getting a scope I can use for very short and medium ranges. Let's see - 2-7 X 32MM or so, Leupold VX I or II sounds about right or something similar.

LOL I feel your pain.

[DaveInGA]

A gun junky can always find a way to justify such purchases.

[Steve]

When I got interested in downloading cartridges and going subsonic with stuff I made a comparison chart of what QuickLoad tells me is possible with some of the stuff I load for. I found what the muzzle pressure was in PSI for a 22WMR then converted it to BAR for QuickLoad to compare it to other stuff. This gives you a scale of how loud things are. Probably easier to just show you than explain.

I shot some 55 gr Varmint Nightmares with 13 gr of IMR 4227. I fired them in my Grandson's Rossi single shot, they shot pretty good but a lot lower than the usual load in that rifle.

I am going to try them in my Rem VTR, it has mil-dots in the scope. My hopes are that one of the mil-dots will serve as a aim point when shooting the light loads.

I'm not too concerned with noise, but would prefer to use a lower power load in some locations. (Like my back yard)

[DaveInGA]

Back yard is my exact situation. For the past two years, we've been overrun in the spring with southeastern grey squirrels. Not very big, hardly enough meat to make worth shooting them, but they're getting into the wife's garden and %@*&$ her off something fierce.

We live in a neighborhood with a fat homely woman %@*&$ couple on one side and a single liberal mom and her two grown daughters with kids on the other. A small drainage creek and a just enough large a stand of woods to house provide a perfect neighborhood for grey squirrels and they're all over the place.

While I have two premium CZ .22 rifles with great scopes on them, I don't have a single box of the subsonic ammo and it's obvious this is going to be a regular spring thing dealing with the greys. I'm pretty disgusted at the prices .22 ammo has come back at and I'd rather reload in another cartridge I can control the load than pay this price for .22 ammo.

I've come down to a couple conclusions:
1. I want either a .223 or .22 K hornet bolt action carbine.
2. I want the carbine to have iron sights and weight in as light as possible, preferably less than 7 pounds.
3. I want the carbine to have a wood stock, laminate is perfectly fine.
4. I want to put a small, lightweight scope on it that's suitable to deal with these squirrels or use for true varmint hunting if the opportunity presents.

[357cyrus]

Google "pvc squirrel trap"

[DaveInGA]

Google "pvc squirrel trap"

That's no good. I can't justify buying another gun if I do that.