Varminting- scaled down

[Chris-NZ]

While I normally use centrefires on varmints, I do regularly use rimfires round our lifestyle block, particularly on magpies and rabbits. A German hunter I sometimes exchange mails with told me he'd scored cheaply a perfect condition older Anschutz smallbore rifle to which fitted a nice target scope. As he does not have a range handy where he can easily shoot his centrefires, he figured this rifle would make some good practice. He was thinking along the lines of shooting clays up to 250yds, something most of you will know is far from easy as standard rimfire rounds are dropping like a stone at that distance, ignoring the wind susceptibility.

 

This got me thinking. I had sitting in the safe a 50's vintage Walther smallbore rifle which a patient had given me. It was in rough condition when I got it, especially the butt which had be "relieved" in the cheekpiece area with a rough wood rasp! I has to take a slice off it and fit a replacement piece and reshape/refinish it. The mechanicals of the rifle are still pretty good and it can still shoot. I had a couple of evening at the local smallbore club and shot a 99.4 with it just using basic club-grade ammo. I knew where the nine had gone even before looking through the spotting scope..

 

I dragged the rifle out and looked in the den cupboard to see what spare scopes I had. The 6.5-20 LR Leupold was probably a bit of overkill but I also had a Bushnell 3200 10X40 tall turret scope which the guys on Chuck Hawk's site rate as a good little performer. Got it very cheap in the US and it once sat on a .22-250 which has been sold. I found some basic .22 rings and it sat quite nicely on the rifle, both eye relief and height wise.

 

 

Despite being a breezy chilly day (it's winter here remember..), I managed to get it zeroed at 50yds and found come-ups for 80 and 120 yds. I did this just with Winchester subsonics as I've got about five bricks of the stuff lying about. The groups weren't that impressive but it was definitely minute of magpie at 120yds.

 

 

That's about a 1.6" aiming square.

The 50yd group with this ammo was about 0.6" so not very flash for a smallbore rifle. After retrieving the distant targets, I thought I might just try some target ammo through it on the 50yd target. I had two boxes of Tenex on the shelf so fired one group with these:

 

 

Shows how critical ammo can be and this is in a rifle that should be pretty forgiving on ammo choice.

 

Having these three zero points, I thought I might plot these for future reference. Decided to extend the curve and extrapolate up to 200yds with this freehand plot:

 

 

Funnily enough, they tie in very closely with an article that I later found on the 6BR site. I must test the actual drops at 150 and 200yds to see how much error there is in my guestimates.

 

Just before lunch today, I had to go upstairs to get changed prior to going out for lunch. Lo and behold, here were nine magpies in the top paddock Raced downstairs and grabbed the Walther, ammo and Geovids and opened the top bedroom window. Closest maggie was 99yds so wound on the (interpolated) 6mins of elevation and let strip. The maggie went down and expired after a couple of flaps. Three of the remaining seven took off but the closest two were on top of fence battens at 120 and 124yds. Cranked it up to 10.5 mins and fired to be greeted by a solid PLOP and the maggie poleaxed. Hit the ground without moving a muscle. Reloaded (which seems to take an eternity with single shots) and lined up the second one for exactly the same outcome. Man, was I stoked

 

 

Chris-NZ

[6.5shooter]

Great write up Chris!

I sold my .17 hmr as I found my .22's far more fun and the accuracy is more consistent without having to faff around cleaning all the time to keep it accurate etc.

I have a custom ruger with volzuartsen barrel on, an Anschutz 1710 dhb which is a cracking rifle which I have used out to 300 yards before.

I have a weirauch smallbore target rifle which never gets used for anything else only smallbore comps.

My 1710 is everybit as accurate as the target rifle though and its magazine fed which I prefer.

Its great practice and really brings youre wind reading skills a step further without having to shoot centrefire rounds all the time and you can see youre shots strike through the scope.

 

Garry

[ejg223]

Good one. That scope is ideal. I might be getting in an old Walther from Germany.

 

After all that, I see you are still married....kitchen clean!

 

edi

[TonyH]

Great write-up Chris, lovely pictures, very interesting indeed. And good shooting! Magpies are tricky. I reported here recently about my renewed interest in rimfire so I know where you're coming from: my rifle (Ruger 10/22 with a custom Anschutz barrel fit, trigger job, Volquartsen stock) isn't as accurate as yours but it's not bad; it likes the same ammo, Winchester s/s HP, and I too have it fitted with a slightly OTT scope, a Bushnell Elite 6-20. I've hit rabbits so far out to nearly 100 or so by aiming off, must do some more precise controlled accuracy/zero tests.

Interesting rifle you're using, reminds me that many years ago I saw a photo of another 1950s Walther that I loved instantly - the KKJ sporter. I've never seen one in the flesh, but if I come across a decent example I don't think I could resist buying it...

Thanks, and regards - Tony

[foxing2night]

Good write up Chris

 

Just goes to show that you can learn more from a small bore rifle!!

Wind reading, gun handling, trigger control, breathing, producing drop charts,,

and all done at a fraction of the cost

 

I hear a lot about people that have got to have a big rifle,, less drop, less wind drift??

when in actual fact they would learn more with a small bore rifle!!!

Anyway that's is another story,,,,,,,,,

 

Tony, One of my friends has had a kkj in 22 hornet for years,,, beautiful rifle,,

and very desirable,,,,

 

I have got a Holland and Holland rook and rabbit rifle in 22 ,, after reading Crisis write up i fancy getting it out and having a shot????

 

My 17hmr comes out with me most weeks and it certainly makes you read the wind????

 

I can see loads of people resurrecting 22 out of the gun safe

 

All the best, Darrel

[fizzbangwhallop]

Good shooting Chris!

 

Always wondered how a target rifle would compare - as a teenager I was target shooting with my dad's martini action single shot BSA(?), lighter than the formal cadet target rifles...often wonder where that little rifle ended up, it did shoot straight.

 

There's a lot of fun to be had with a .22 RF - I exchanged my tricked up Ruger 10/22 Target for a Sako Finnfire Hunter last summer and haven't taken the 17HMR out much since. Stuck a Swarovski AV4-16x50 with the BR reticle on it (Same set up as my HMR) and it's mustard! Dropped a rabbit at 200 paces with it the other week, 35 - 40 in total that night just sitting in the vehicle, followed by another 25 odd two nights later.

 

When the 17's first came out the rabbits didn't seem to realise they were being shot at, unlike the .22's.... but now it's the other way round. Good stuff.

 

atb

FBW

[Mike357]

Good report and nice work with Capt Magpie

 

I am in the process of adding another 22 slot on my ticket for a BSA Martini International. £50 or thereabouts, a bit of tinkering with and I cant wait to start shooting it from 25-100 yds and maybe even beyond.

 

They are a lot of fun and often overlooked.

[Chris-NZ]

At one stage, I got my older guy a BSA International Mk.II smallbore rifle with a L-hand stock. Only cost $150 (~80 quid) but it shot fine. He quickly got bored with smallbore, preferring live targets..

 

One possible project is to track down a lighter smallbore rifle, eg some older Anschutz, shorten the barrel to about 16", add a mod and trim the stock up. Chances are it'd still shoot great but be much more practical to handle.

 

Here's my usual go-to rifles for maggies round the house

 

 

This 10-22 has a fully sleeved barrel and I had to solidly bed it in the cheapie "synthetic" stock to get it to shoot. Seems to hold zero OK.

 

Next one is my thrash-about rifle which cost me ~15 quid. It's an old ?Baikal with a "heart of rhubarb" stock but it can really shoot, despite the crud trigger. When my gunsmith shortened it for the mod, he said it was the straightest rimfire barrel he'd ever spun up

 

 

I keep a mount on it for the Lightforce 140mm Predator light and it's shot heaps of possums round here. Has accounted for -at least- 200 maggies over the 12 years we've been on this place. Guys who have seen it in action have been very impressed after getting over the cosmetics

 

Chris-NZ

[tony]

Good write up there Chris, You cant beat a 22rf for having good fun, like you said, the ammo drops like a stone but still has quite a lot of energy left in it so can be used a fair way out with a good scope mounted on top, spending a little time working out a drop chart for this cal in my view is worth it........

Tony

[Andrew]

Nice write up Chris. Some people forget, or never knew, that when the ".22 Long Rifle" cartridge was introduced it was billed as a "...fine 200 yard target and small game cartridge" and you and FWB certainly have proved it! I am a huge fan of the 22LR cartridge and shoot upward of 800 rounds a week through rifle and handgun. One of our favorite things when the wind isn't too bad is to flick 12 hulls off of the top of the 100M target frame. Lots of fun! When I travel the back-country, a Brno .22 and a selection of ammo is with me.~Andrew

[Davy]

Great write up, the .22LR can work very well at longer distances. I was talking to the RCO at an F Class comp earlier this year who told me he was shooting competitions to 300y with a .22LR single shot.

 

My wife had a Hungarian Lampagyar trainer for a while, they were built in secret in the 1950's to mimic the Mosin Nagant and had open sights graduated to 200m with a whopping great big barrel on them. Not only was it incredibly accurate it was also surprisingly quiet and fun to shoot at distance. I am sure it would also have made a reasonable 250y+ rifle and all for under seventy quid.

 

 

[Chris-NZ]

Here's another little toy in the safe Andrew:

 

 

It's a Model 1 Brno is nice condition and the little 3-9 Vari-X AO Leupold --just- clears the bolt. The handle is a problem in that most scopes have too large an ocular bell to fit, short of tall rings. It shoots well despite a marginal trigger action which is the best my other gunsmith mate dared do. Didn't want to push it too far.

 

Davy- my US mate has a ?Hungarian trainer he got very cheaply and while not very pretty, it shoots very well. Long barrel and looks fairly heavy.

 

Chris-NZ

[Davy]

Davy- my US mate has a ?Hungarian trainer he got very cheaply and while not very pretty, it shoots very well. Long barrel and looks fairly heavy.

 

That sounds like the one, apparently Lampagyar was the name of a lamp company and these were built in secret, they were later modified to target rifles and used in the Olympics. All that for the price of a morning at Bisley. I wanted to put a side mount on it like the MN sniper but we changed clubs and no longer had access to range days at less than 800 yards so she got rid and put something more suitable on her ticket.

 

 

 

 

 

[TonyH]

...It's a Model 1 Brno is nice condition and the little 3-9 Vari-X AO Leupold --just- clears the bolt. The handle is a problem in that most scopes have too large an ocular bell to fit, short of tall rings. It shoots well despite a marginal trigger action which is the best my other gunsmith mate dared do. Didn't want to push it too far.

...

Chris-NZ

 

A nice rifle indeed. Reminds me of my first centrefire rifle, a BRNO Fox Model 2 in .222 - great rifle in every respect bar the trigger, which was bloody awful and I was never able to do much to improve that. It shot my handloads pretty well, but with a decent trigger it could have been very accurate indeed.

Tony

[Andrew]

Another bit of ancient lore: Back in the 1930's the Springfield Arsenal in the US produced the Model 1922 which was a 22LR version of the 1903 Model 30-06. It was found that their top 1000 yard shooters using a M-22 would shoot identical scores on a 1/5 scale target at 200 yards as they would at 1000 with the 30-06. They developed a competition around this premise using .22's at 200 yards. The wind doping for the 40 grain bullet of the day (1100 fps) was very close to the issue 30-06 round at 1000, it was said. I tried to gin up some interest in this comp back in the eighties but the 100M metallic silhouette comps ruled...~Andrew

[Chris-NZ]

Weather was nice this morning and a fairly light breeze so I decided to check the longer range zeroes for the Walther.

Set a target up at 175yds in the neighbour's paddock and fired off our upstairs balcony with a not-so-great rest. It seems the come-ups I got off the Tactical Rimfire article on the 6BR site are spot on for this combo:

 

 

Given I know Tenex shoots twice as good as these Win Subs, the rifle must be fairly accurate

 

Chris-NZ

 

PS. the combo has now accounted for at least a dozen maggies- got four in 10mins yesterday morning, closest 84yds

[Andrew]

Weather was nice this morning and a fairly light breeze so I decided to check the longer range zeroes for the Walther.

Set a target up at 175yds in the neighbour's paddock and fired off our upstairs balcony with a not-so-great rest. It seems the come-ups I got off the Tactical Rimfire article on the 6BR site are spot on for this combo:

 

 

Given I know Tenex shoots twice as good as these Win Subs, the rifle must be fairly accurate

 

Chris-NZ

 

PS. the combo has now accounted for at least a dozen maggies- got four in 10mins yesterday morning, closest 84yds

 

Nice shooting Chris! I wish I could get Winchester subs locally. CCI is the closest in bullet form that we can find here in Montana.~Andrew

[Chris-NZ]

The Walther has proven a great source of entertainment and I wish I'd had it set up like this ages ago. Current tally is now at least 25 maggies including eight in one session before I went to work the other morning

Here was a collection lying under one tree when I went to do some more testing yesterday afternoon

 

 

The "testing" was comparing some basic smallbore ammo (SK Standard Plus) with the Win Subs. I only have time to fire a couple of groups at 77yds in less-than-perfect conditions but it's doing OK

 

 

One of those shots was loose but it's holding very nice elevation.

 

The one maggie I shot with this new ammo was at 116yds and the solids just don't seem to have the knock-down effect of the Win Subs. It was a solid hit by the sound of it but needed a finisher

 

Chris-NZ

[Chris-NZ]

Still having fun slaughtering maggies. Despite have cleaned out at least a dozen since last posting, they still hang round!

Slow learners..

 

Here's my new record from out the bedroom window this morning- 136yds = 12.75mins come-up. Poleaxed it

Bird is under the "V" of the text on the skyline.

 

[TonyH]

Well done Chris, great shot - still with the Winchester subsonic? First thing that occurred to me on seeing your pic was to wonder what (if anything) is beyond that skyline... Here, even rural S.Devon is so crowded there is no way I could ever take such a shot! Not like a friend who was touring the USA years ago and called into a club range somewhere out West: he asked about shoot/no shoot rules etc, and an old-timer just scratched his beard and said, "Son, just shoot in a northerly direction..." - there being nothing in that direction for a hundred miles at least.

I wonder how many turns of your scope's elevation turret those 12.75 mins equates to; I've hit rabbits at 70-80 yards using s/s, by holding over, but frankly I wouldn't attempt shots at well over 100 yards; my longest ever rabbit hit was 118 yards with rimfire, but that was using RWS hv LR ammo.

Regards, Tony

[terryh]

Chris,

 

Nice report and rifle - inspires me to go out and and have a go.

 

What this site's about really?

 

Terry

[brown dog]

Not like a friend who was touring the USA years ago and called into a club range somewhere out West: he asked about shoot/no shoot rules etc, and an old-timer just scratched his beard and said, "Son, just shoot in a northerly direction..." - there being nothing in that direction for a hundred miles at least.

 

Reminds me of a pal who was one of the first Brits to use the ranges in Poland; when he asked for the range restrictions the Polish range hierarchy retired into a huddle and after a few minutes scratching of heads and mild argument they came back and said:

 

"Please don't fire persistent nerve agent near the villages".

 

and that was it!

[Gunsgobang88]

Hi All,

 

Reminds me of when I started shooting. Used a customised CZ Model 2, amongst all the modifications and refinishing I tweaked the trigger to a crisp kilo and fitted a BDC scope which I calibrated for distances out to 175 yards. Longest one shot kill on a rabbit was 166 yards in conjunction with a cheap Bushnell range finder - happy days! Shot off shooting sticks and using Eley subsonics. Mind you, it was a bit like mortar or plunging artillery fire,

 

Alan

[Andrew]

Chris, you steely-eyed .22 man! You can come shooting with me anytime. I was testing a prototype .22 round (40 grain, 1500 fps) a few years back and took the head off of a cottontail at 147 yards.That is the farthest shot I think I ever recorded with a 22LR. I have it on video someplace but I'll be hung if I can find it, let alone get it posted.~Andrew

[Chris-NZ]

Tony- I'm using that SK Club ammo as it shoots so much tighter. About a week ago before work, there were some maggies in the furthest macrocarpa. I nailed two in successive shots- first 125yds, second 128yds, holding about 2" into the breeze. It's accurate alright.

 

As for a safety zone, there are no houses for maybe 2km past there. Funny that should be mentioned- the shot that killed the maggie actually zinged off the top off the hill afterwards!

 

Chris-NZ