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Wayne van Zwoll: What You Didn’t Know About the .22
Categories:: The Technical Rifleman
Wayne van Zwoll | Apr 11, 2012 | Comments 5
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From left: .22 Long Rifle, .22 WMR, .17 HMR, .17 Mach 2. The popular .22 Long Rifle dates to 1887.
Phoebe Ann Moses was one. Born in a log cabin in Darke County, Ohio, she showed early talent with rifles when she started killing quail on the wing with a .22.
At a local turkey shoot she beat not just the local boys, but visiting sharpshooter Frank Butler. She was 15. Frank married her within the year.
She joined his traveling show under the stage name Annie Oakley, shooting tossed glass balls. Petite at 100 pounds, Annie had the endurance to hit 943 of 1,000. She’d cut one ragged hole in a playing card with 25 shots from a .22 rifle – in 25 seconds.
Rimfire drills help you hit with deer rifles. Here Wayne pesters sodpoodles with Browning’s BL-22.
Once she shot a cigarette from the lips of a German crown prince. After he became Kaiser Wilhelm II and Europe entered the Great War, Annie allowed that with a flinch she might have altered world history.
Not long thereafter, a lanky Texan named Ad Topperwein began entertaining. He left audiences agape by shooting aerial targets as small as a steel washer. When the washer showed no reaction to a shot, Ad would turn to the crowd and deadpan that the bullet went through the hole.
Hecklers jeered – until Ad stuck a postage stamp over the washer, tossed it again and perforated the stamp with a .22 bullet. In 1894 he shattered 955 of 1,000 air-borne 2 ¼-inch disks.
Dissatisfied, he repeated, busting 987 and 989. It was said Ad could hit the bullet of a tossed .32-20 cartridge without tearing the case. In 1907 at San Antonio’s fairgrounds, he uncrated 10 Winchester 1903 self-loading .22s, tens of thousands of rounds of ammo and as many wooden blocks.
He endured 120 hours of firing before calling a halt. He’d fired at 72,500 blocks and missed nine. His longest run of hits: 14,500 straight!
The .22 Short once common at booths on the “midways” of state fairs is about gone. Winchester’s 1890 pump rifle, then a staple in shooting galleries, has become collectible. The mild BB and CB (Bullet Breech and Conical Bullet) Cap cartridges peddled as pest ammo in those days have faded away, too.
The .22 Long, with a 29-grain Short bullet in a Long Rifle case, never caught on. But the Long Rifle steams ahead, as popular as ever. The best target loads can deliver half-minute accuracy. High-velocity hunting bullets give you 90-yard point-blank range with a 75-yard zero. Bullets strike about an inch high at 50 and 3 inches low at 100.
I once shot a crow at a paced 145 yards. It must have been the bird’s day to die, as I was shooting a lightweight lever rifle with iron sights.
Sometimes a .22 is just shy of magic.
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About the Author: Wayne van Zwoll is a regular contributor to the Gun Digest annual, and author of the Gun Digest Book of Sporting optics. He is a nationally-recognized expert on rifles, optics and western hunting.
Also not mentioned are the matches shot here in the U.S.A. from 50~200 yards that was common up until the end of the Korean War, or thereabouts.
Check the history of Jack Hessian, the BEST rifle shooter to ever have squeezed the trigger…
BTW- the BB and CB cap are still on the market, and I know a boatload of people who still shoot them in their basement or living room during inclement weather. Check out the CCI QUITE .22 @ 710 fps!
The only [?] .22 MAG auto pistol on the market is the KelTec PMR-30, a remake of the old Grendel- but good luck finding one. From what I hear, they have finally gotten all the bugs out of it…
.22 LR on BIG GAME??? Well, sure, it CAN be done, [whitetail, headshot, from 3~10 feet, sure] but why risk (1) loosing the meat, and (2) getting arrested. Goes back to the old adage, “Use Enough Gun”.
Browning BLA shoots straing every time.
While I agree with Van Zwoll, I wish the bun makers would come up with more of a selection of guns using the .22 magnum, a round I prefer. I have not seen a really good auto pistol for this one.
I sure had hoped for a much more indepth history of the .22 LR, and especially, some more current info on small, mid-size, and big game the round is capable of taking down. Ahh well……