Not much has happened in the .22 LR rimfire ammo world in about a thousand years, so I read with interest about something that Federal has done. But first, some background.
There’s always been a ballistic difference between the standard 40-grain solid (LRN) ammo and the 36-grain hollowpoint (HP), for obvious reasons — the lighter bullet “flies” a little higher at any range greater than 25 yards, sometimes as much as an inch higher at 50 yards. Given that .22 shooting is generally aimed at small targets, this means that you have to adjust your scope each time you swap ammo — at least, that’s been my experience when shooting CCI’s Mini-Mag 40gr LRN / 36gr HP ammo through my Marlin 880SQ rifle.
So some smart guys at Federal claim to have done something about this disparity, and made their 38-gr (not 36-gr) “Field Pack” ammo ballistically matched to their cheaper 40-gr “Range Pack” offering — although there’s a 60 ft/second difference between the heavier and lighter cartridges, Federal claims that the “drop and drift” disparity should be pretty much unnoticeable. Here are the two packs under discussion:
I like this idea, so I’m going to give it a try as soon as I get them shipped to me*. Range report to follow.
*No local retail outlet has the two in stock, when I checked. Lucky Gunner has the Field but not the Range, and its price on the Field is phenomenal: $19.00 (6.9c/round) vs. CheaperThanDirt’s $24.12 as pictured above. CTD, however, does have both variants in stock and their shipping is quite a bit cheaper (the warehouse is located just a few miles from where I live), so this time I’ll go with CTD.
Update: I needed a couple other items from CTD, so I added them to the basket and qualified for free shipping. Hubba-hubba.
Fortunately for me, I bought within minutes of obummer’s 2012 “win” being called on the teevee.
Bought a rather copious cache at $0.027 per round. The next morning, the price had skyrocketed to over $0.09 per round!
Still, I shoot them at a bit of a miserly rate. It’ll be interesting to track ammo prices, post-Vegas.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
I enjoy shooting our family’s .22s more than anything.
The old 1932 “Ace” single shot bolt action our son inherited from his prairie farmer grandad is now my mostest favourite gun. It turns out that shooting a sitting grouse or pheasant using iron sights, a cheap gun, with one bullet, is very, very challenging. My father in law used to do it regularly, from the shoulder. He claimed he did it from a moving tractor he was steering with his knees, but he was a western Canadian prairie farmer, and therefore unreliable where the strict truth of hunting claims was required. He did bring in many a bird though, with a single .22-ish hole in it.
For me, the grouse and pheasants are having not just the last laugh, but all of the laughter. But I don’t care, I still get to ramble over the prairies and through the brush.
Anyway, I’ll try your new-fangled 38 grain stuff and I’m sure the Ace will do as it pleases with it.
Just as a by-the-way, were you aware that up here in Canada we can buy any ‘legal’ long gun we want by mail order? We send the seller a scan of our acquisition license, email the money and the seller sends a gun.