Best ammo for .22lr

[Radman]

View attachment 166628 I just picked up a Savage Mark 2 and topped it with one of my Sightron scopes, a 4-20x50 S-Tac. The set up works great. My buddy has a Tikka T1X with a Leupold LRP and we're having a blast with these things. We're shooting out to 200 yards and so far, our rifles are shooting the tightest groups with subsonic ammo.

I'm curious about different ammo for this thing and what others are using. What are you guys using as far as rifle/scope set ups and what do you think is the best ammo for the cost?

I may be able yo answer this: Over 3 years ago my shooting buddy and I set out on an independent, private quest to find what was, in our opinion, the best .22 ammo for us. Unfunded by anyone we probably put close to 10,000 rounds of every brand and type of .22 ammo avsilable locally, (and some ordered). We put our ammos through every brand of rifle and type of action available and in pistols as well as rifles. We shot practically every week of the year for about 3 years in heat, cold, sun, rain, sleet and snow. We looked at performance, accuracy, ease/reliability of loading and somewhere in there price was probably at the back of our minds. Some didn't load well, repeatedly. Some wouId load in anything. Some did't fire occasionally. Some always fired. Some jammed. Some jammed often. Some never did. Some were lasers.Some were not so great. One brand shot consistantly high out of any barrel!
While these are our own private results and we are not knocking anyone's products, these were OUR results in our long-run tests. Your results may likely vary. In our opinion the best overall and most accurate ammo for us was Remington's .22 Golden Bullet in 40 grain round nose.

 

[corsair4360]

I have also found the later CCI standard velocity ammo to be not nearly as good as the older stuff... and I bought lots of it...

 

[DavidleeCole]

I have hunted with several different 22lr through the years and when I have to have some ammo I can count on its CCI Stinger it will put any thing down under 50 yards. Several hogs, coyotes and well some other things to great shooting ammo with awsome terminal ballistics. I use the Norma Tac22 bricks for every day shooting but be on the look out for some Winchester and Remington bulk they have some duds and some just wont fire bullets in the packs.

 

[Hawkeye Pierce]

Mine is nothing fancy it's a 10/22 tactical with a Silencer Co sparrow suppressor. It does really well with the Eley sub sonic. Like super good, off hand hit a chipmunk at 45 yards good.

 

[GHDIII]

Wolf match target. Haven't seen a rifle it didn't like.

Same here. Had a 10/22 that absolutely love CCI mini mag. My CZ 457 hates the mini mags. They both loved Wolf.
Lots of folks have great luck with Eley. I've never had good luck with it in either gun.
The 457 is a real princess. Hates all things CCI and Eley, but shoots SK red box, Lapua Center-X, and Wolf, all with the same POA/POI. And, it's a stone cold tack driver with Federal Target Match, but it absolutely will not stabilize Federal Target HV.

Dude, just buy different loads and try them.
That said. Here's a pic of SK yellow box the one time the 457 decided it liked it.

 

[Groundhogshooter]

Believe it or not. My best grouping has been with Thunderbolt. They are nice chunky bullets that fill the bore. Catch is it takes some effort from the shooter. I start by sorting the ammo by 1/2 grain increments. When I get a brick sorted I sort the lots by rim thickness... that is your head space for .22s. I have found that anything less than .0355 rim thickness should go in a cull bin. Every missfire I have had is less than .0355. I sort them in groups of every.5 thousandth. Once I have my groups sorted by weight and rim thickness, then I am ready to shoot. Typical result at 25 yards is a 30 cal hole after 10 shots. Short story is you don't need to spend a lot of money to get good ammo... if you have time to make sure you have consistent ammo. That is the key.

 

[5.56×250]

Thats part of what your paying for with match ammo, the sorting and culling. There are differences in the wax used on the bullets or even if there is wax used too, as well as quality of the primer distribution .
You can make any 22 ammo shoot better though if you cull through by weight and rim thickness like groundhogshooter recommends, but the best 22 ammo is already sorted and built with extra care and higher quality materials.

 

[Groundhogshooter]

I was hoping someone would be happy to talk about said match ammo. I sat at my home bench beside 4 custom 10-22's with high $ optics using store bought match ammunition. I had been using out of the box ammunition in my TC Contenter match carbine when I was challenged to a match. I asked if I could change to my match gun and they said bring it out and we will see. I got my 14" Contender pistol with 2.5 Bushnell Phantom scope out... they laughed...... for a short while. 20 bullets measures. .339. Now what do you think about high priced ammo over measuring your own cheap stuff?

 

[5.56×250]

My lilja barreled sako finfire shot well with hand selscted cheaper ammo, but it was better than i was easily with eley 10x in the right lot number. I never shot 20 rounds st the same target, but with 5 rounds per dot, it AVERAGED in the 0s. The best I COULD SHOOT was how accurate the rifle fired. Not how well the rifle shot the ammo. Best ever was .005 for 5 shots at 50yards when i was on. That was with fresh 1075 lot numbered ammo from boxes that were opened and fired. Nothing was measured or separated by me. I started out mearuring eley 10x when sampling lots, but i never found more than .0015 difference in rim thickness from any lot measured. Selecting by the extremely narrow differences never had an effect on the group sizes, so i just opened fresh boxes and fired them . The true measure of THE SHOOTER is using the 25 dot target faces , firing one shot per target. Even with that combo i wasnt able to shoot better than 20Xs. The X was a pencel point sized dot in the center of each .3 sized circle, 25 per face. Its a humbling experience.

 

[Canhunter35]

Eley edge and federal hunter match are the two best ammo I've found in my 22. It's a cz455

these are 100yard groups

these 200 yard groups

 

[Tesoro]

I have a lightweight anschutz hunting gun. Before that had accurized 10/22's. I tried many of the expensive target ammos but hated the smell of some of the powders! For me a 22 needs to smell like cci from my childhood days!
I have had acceptable consistent accuracy with good ole cci round noses and thats what I use because I like the plastic boxes. I dont care for paper boxes in the field and in my truck.
WIND is much more the enemy than accuracy for any particular better quality ammo.
Also - Contrary to conventional centerfire ballistics, lower velocity rimfire loads are less susceptible to wind than the faster ones.

 

[73driver]

Shooting 2 KIDD's and a CZ455 Varmint and a ACZ455 American I have gravitated to SK rifle match and Eley Club. The CZ American and 16" KIDD like SK Rifle Match, getting sub .4" groups at 50 yards with .35 being the tendency, these two are shot at NRL22 and small bore silhouette matches. My KIDD 20" SS barrel likes Eley club the best getting .4/.45 groups at 50 yards, I call this one my Vudoo killer because between its accuracy and being semiautomatic I can clean up on the Vudoo's at matches. Tried Federal GM target and it tried to keep up with the SK and Club but it would tend to throw 2/3 fliers out of ten shots. The last lot of 1000 rounds of Club was purchased for $5.84 a box two weeks ago and SK gets purchased when it comes up at around $7.00 a box.

 

[corsair4360]

I have a lightweight anschutz hunting gun. Before that had accurized 10/22's. I tried many of the expensive target ammos but hated the smell of some of the powders! For me a 22 needs to smell like cci from my childhood days!
I have had acceptable consistent accuracy with good ole cci round noses and thats what I use because I like the plastic boxes. I dont care for paper boxes in the field and in my truck.
WIND is much more the enemy than accuracy for any particular better quality ammo.
Also - Contrary to conventional centerfire ballistics, lower velocity rimfire loads are less susceptible to wind than the faster ones.

What is the reasoning behind your statement: "lower velocity rimfire loads are less susceptible to wind than the faster ones" ?

 

[Tesoro]

Here is an old article out of nra publication that explains it.

http://team40x.com/page15.html