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How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 5:01 am
by SoupOrMan
Use Remington ammo.

I went out to the range today with a depleted box of bulk Golden Bullets, a 100-round box of Remington Subsonic and a 50-round box of Eley Sport. The firearms used were my dad's old store-branded Marlin and my Ruger 22/45 Mark III. My primary purpose was to sight in a Bushnell 3-9x rimfire scope on the Marlin. It's cheap, but the entire purpose of that scope is to get used to shooting with a scope. I used the indoor 25-yard range at my gun club due to snow and nasty wind chill.

I emptied the box of Golden Bullets (about 140) and had about 15 rounds that needed a second strike to shoot, all in the Marlin. Accuracy was decent out of the rifle. At 25 yards rested, the rifle shot about 7 inches high. Eventually I got sick of not being able to move the shots onto the target, removed the scope, and did better shooting with open sights. I'll try sighting in again with better ammo but for now it's going to be open sights only.

I switched over to the pistol once the Golden Bullets ran out. The Remington Subsonic didn't feed well at all into the Ruger. Out of 40 rounds, 7 were duds and wouldn't fire on a second strike. At least the bulk ammo took the second strike! Accuracy at 10 rounds was "meh" at best. I then switched over to the Eley and fired 20 rounds. Eley Sport is made by Aguila and you can smell that. Every shot fired when struck, but something weird happened on a few shots. The extractor didn't pick up two of the 20 rounds and I had to manually chamber those rounds. Accuracy was pretty decent.

Now I have 60 rounds of Subsonic and half of another box of Golden Bullets left. I think they'll all go to the rifle just for the purposes of restriking them if there's a failure to fire. Once that's gone I'm switching to anyone but Big Green for ammo. I got hooked on them because I started with some Remington ammo from the 60s and 70s that shot well. Those days are long gone. I'll stick with CCI Mini-Mags as a default. Those have done well for me in the past.

Re: How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 8:00 am
by First Shirt
I've had really good results from Federal bulk pack .22LR, especially their Auto-Match stuff. Even better is that the local Wal-Mart usually has it in stock, 325 rounds for $14.99, which is an outrage, buts it's 5 bucks cheaper than it was this time last year, and no "two boxes per customer" limit anymore.

Re: How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:45 pm
by Weetabix
You just need to try different ammo until you find what the gun likes. Oddly, my 10/22 doesn't like the Automatch but it loves CCI standard velocity. Haven't tried the minimags.

Re: How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:51 pm
by Captain Wheelgun
CCI Mini-Mags are my standard choice for testing any new to me .22. If it won't shoot Mini-Mags reliably and with reasonable accuracy then there is likely something wrong with the gun.

I have some Remington Golden Bullets in my stash. I'm going to save them for post-apocalypse trade fodder (preferably to potential enemies) :evil:

Re: How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:19 pm
by MarkD
Back in the day (probably early 1990s) Remington Target was one of the best out there until you got into the real premium stuff, you MIGHT get a couple misfires per brick of 500. And as accurate as you could ask for. I think I still have a brick of it somewhere.

Re: How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:22 pm
by First Shirt
Weetabix wrote:You just need to try different ammo until you find what the gun likes. Oddly, my 10/22 doesn't like the Automatch but it loves CCI standard velocity. Haven't tried the minimags.
My 10/22 eats it up, but it's got an Adams & Bennett sporter-weight match barrel on it, along with a titanium extractor. Generally, if the round will go into the chamber and fire, it WILL come back out!

That said, it's best to try a bunch of stuff (as much as you can reasonably find, but concentrate on the more-available stuff) and see what your gun likes, what it will tolerate, and what makes it gag-and-wretch.

Re: How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:53 pm
by evan price
The Federal 550 brick of 36 gr php from Wal-Mart were great bullets. I still have a significant quantity from pre sandy hook.
Winchester auto match has been good.
I also like CCI Blazer.

Re: How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:48 pm
by SoupOrMan
Captain Wheelgun wrote:CCI Mini-Mags are my standard choice for testing any new to me .22. If it won't shoot Mini-Mags reliably and with reasonable accuracy then there is likely something wrong with the gun.

I have some Remington Golden Bullets in my stash. I'm going to save them for post-apocalypse trade fodder (preferably to potential enemies) :evil:
If they're pre-1990s manufacture, they're probably great.

Re: How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2018 7:25 am
by HTRN
MarkD wrote:Back in the day (probably early 1990s) Remington Target was one of the best out there until you got into the real premium stuff, you MIGHT get a couple misfires per brick of 500.
Big green rimfire was always garbage, even back to the early 80s. The ammo of choice was Winchester dynapoints, before winchester fucked with it, and if you were willing to spend more money, federal 711b.

Re: How to turn rimfire shooting into drudgery:

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 2:51 am
by Mike OTDP
This is me shaking my head...Damn it, there is no pleasure or point in shooting trash ammo. My go-to has been RWS Target Rifle, but I also have a large supply (around 15k rounds) of Eley Club. Good stuff.