Category: Gun/Ammo Tests

Last week I had to go to Academy for something or other that New Wife wanted me to get… and as any fule kno, this is dangerous for Yer Humble Narrator because Academy has frequent sales of ammo.

And so it came to pass that yea, they had a sale on ammo — specifically on CCI Subsonic 40gr, of which type I had absolutely none on hand in Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere.

So I picked up a few boxes thereof — at 4c per round yippee — but on the road home, a thought occurred to me:

Would the lighter-loaded subsonic ammo have a different point of aim than the Mini-Mag 40gr?

Two hours later found me at the range, duly equipped with Marlin 880SQ, ammo and sandbag to make the test.

Poop:  the rifle range was closed for maintenance, so I had to use the 25-yard pistol range.  The distance was not really a problem — it’s just an informal comparison test after all — but sadly, the shallow shelf in the pistol bays precluded using a sandbag, so I had to shoot off the bipod, which tends to be less accurate than a big sandbag.  Oh well.

I’d recently cleaned the 880, so I popped off a few fouling shots, and then got down to business.

Double poop:  since the last time I did a .22 test, my eyes have gone totally shit, ergo:

If I stare through the scope long enough, the two lines eventually resolve into one, but after while, as we all know, the gun starts to shake a little after a prolonged hold.  Ugh.  This getting old shit really sucks.  Anyway, I decided to shoot using the right-hand cross-hairs, but it wasn’t an optimal situation.  [le sigh]

Anyway, I observed the usual discipline:  no fiddling with the scope between shots or strings, same hold on the target (dead center of the diamond), and so on.  So we have the same rifle, same scope settings, same location, same day, same shooter (gawd help us), same bullet weight, same ammo manufacturer.

Here are the first two 5-shot strings with the Mini-Mag 40gr.

(with called flier)

…and here are the two best 5-shot strings with the Subsonic 40gr.

 

There’s some drop, but not a substantial one methinks. When I fired a full magazine (10-shot) string, however, the group tended well towards the bottom-right quadrant of the target circle.

On the whole, however, the Mini-Mags are consistently more accurate than any other .22 LR ammo I’ve ever fired.

Anyway, I fired off a few more strings of the subsonic, with no appreciable difference, and put the gun down to let the barrel cool and to take a bathroom break.

Comment 1:  even with hearing protection, there was a pronounced difference in the sound between the Mini-Mags and the Subsonics — I mean, I’m pretty sure I could have fired the Subs without hearing protection.  (I couldn’t test that, of course, because there were other shooters on the line, and they weren’t using subsonic ammo, believe me.)  In the open air, though?  Hmmm.

Comment 2:  I’m not sure why all my shots were pulled to the right, unless I should have used the left-hand crosshairs.  Aaargh.

When I came back, I decided that I’d had enough testing, and instead fired off some other .22 ammo I happened to have in the shooting bag — mostly just cheapo plinking stuff.  The results were quite interesting:

 

 

To be fair, I think the Remington Golden is actually a 36gr bullet (not 40 as noted), so maybe that would explain the different fall of shot.

But the Aguila?  I think MOAR TESTING is required…

…but I maintain that the CCI Mini-Mag .22 LR ammo is my go-to feed for my Marlin 880SQ rifle, and pretty much every .22 gun I’ve ever fired.  YMMV.

I’ve often spoken about how a specific .22 rifle or pistol will have a “preference” for a specific kind of ammo.  Last time I said that, I got an email from Reader Don K., who asked simply:  “Got the targets from that exercise?”

Well, it’s taken me nigh on three days to find it, but I have.

The test was done indoors at the DFW Gun Range in Dallas, back in 2003 or 2004.  Here’s the rifle used in the test, my Marlin 880 SQ topped with a 4x fixed scope (don’t remember the brand, sorry — I’ve since replaced it with the variable Bushnell in the pic):

…and here’s the ammo I tested:

I don’t remember the distance — I think it was 25 yards — but it’s irrelevant because the 1″ targets were all stuck on the same piece of paper.

I first checked the scope’s zero by firing a 5-shot string of my go-to .22 LR (CCI Mini-Mag High Velocity) just to set the scene, so to speak:

…and then I got serious.

The barrel was allowed to cool between each 5-shot string, and one of the range guys loaded each mag for me so that I never knew which ones I was shooting at any given time.  All shots were aimed-deliberate (i.e. not timed), and the scope was never adjusted in any way during the shoot.  For clarity, the results are listed clockwise as in the picture above, but I don’t think that’s the order in which I shot them.  When I say in comments that the shot “felt good”, it means that as far as I could tell, it should have hit the point-of aim, i.e. the bottom of the little black diamond.

CCI Mini-Mag Standard Velocity

(no flyers called;  all felt good)

Remington Target:

(the 12 o’clock miss was a called flyer)

CCI Green Tag:

(the 6 o’clock miss was a called flyer)

RWS Dynamit Nobel Target Rifle:

(no flyers called;  all felt good)

Remington Eley Club Extra:

(no flyers called;  all felt good)

Remington Eley Target Rifle:

(no flyers called;  all felt good)

So:  same gun & scope, same shooter, same distance, same session… and different results.

I have to say that my memory tells me that I was most surprised / disappointed by the Green Tag and the Dynamit Nobel results, and most impressed by the Remington Eley Target Rifle.  Here’s why.

As you become more and more accustomed to shooting .22 LR, you will find that it becomes easier within a string to call a “light” or “heavy” strike, caused by a lighter or heavier powder loading respectively.  You can pretty much overcome this variance by weighing each round before shooting it, by the way, but I didn’t do that before this range test.  Perhaps I should have, but I assumed that spendy target ammo should all be consistent within a box;  well, they weren’t.  When I later shot off some Green Tag, I could tell that at least two out of seven rounds felt “light”, which frankly is unacceptable for premium ammo. (Why seven?  That’s what the magazine holds.)

All the Eley Target Rifle rounds felt absolutely consistent when fired, so that seven o’clock “flyer” is the fault of Yours Truly.

Anyway, that’s how that ammo worked for me, in that rifle.  I have no doubt that the results might be different in another rifle, in the hands of another shooter perhaps, but that’s the fun of the thing, isn’t it?

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Addendum:  here’s a consecutive set of targets I also found (from a range session at about the same time as the above test) which show the benefit of practice and concomitant familiarity.  All three 10-round strings were fired offhand from my then-new Ruger MkII Target Bull Barrel pistol, with the same ammo, distance unknown.

It was the first time I’d ever fired that gun.

Note the tightening of the group as I got more in tune with the trigger.  (I wish I could still shoot that well, but two decades or so have had their way with my eyes, damn it.)

The kids at GarandThumb have some fun shooting hollowpoints through heavy clothing to see if the old saying is true:  that hollowpoints are “useless” (i.e. they don’t expand) when fired through thick winter clothing, because the hollowpoint cavity gets clogged up with material before entering the body.

My thoughts are below the fold.

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