My 10/22 blew up today.

TheDoubleD said:

There are places around where these little ground squirrels proliferate. Where I lived in Montana was one. I was transferred there for my job. Stayed there five years, got promoted and left. 6 years later when I retired it was back to that gopher patch. Richardson Ground Squirrel's everywhere. When you tell people you shoot several thousand round of this or that every spring they don't believe you. The come up to visit and bring what they think is lots of ammo. I would loan them a gun for the second day because they ran out the first. Next year they bring plenty.

I started using Remington 581 and a hot rodded Ruger 10-22. The 581 was a better shooter, but the 10-22 with a heavy bull barrel was no slouch. For the longest time that straight 581 was most accurate .22 in the closet. I fired the 581, single shot and preferred it to the 10/22. The down side to the 10/22 was loading magazines. It doesn't take long on the gopher patch to empty 10 magazines, and then you have to sit there and reload all those magazine with gophers running all over. I got more shooting firing single shot. And 10/22 banana magazines-what a joke, they get in the way all the time. They hang up on everything and jam.

I finally went off the deep und and got a BSA Francotte Martini single shot target rifles. First a .22 in a BSA1215. Then I lined and chambered another 1215 for the 17 Hornady Mach 2 cartridge. It is a shame Ruger did not make a serious effort to beef up their 10/22 for this cartridge. Wow what great cartridge. It was a little short on range in the gopher patch, but has incredible accuracy. When the cartridge first came out Hornady had a picture of a wasp I shot in the catalog. It was greenish splatter on the target I was shooting at 25 yards. You could see the imprint of the wasp body on the target, and you could see the shot was a head shot. If Ruger had fixed their 10/22 to shoot this cartridge, I truly believe it would be much more popular cartridge. Ruger and Remington guns of the time would not stand up to this little cartridge, and neither made the effort to fix the problem. I believe they could have, because others did.

When the 17 HMR came out, I sleeved and lined another 1215 and that was my go to gopher gun for several years. That cartridge made up for range shortage of the 17HM2-200 yard shots could be made far more often (first shot). It is a very accurate cartridge, but not as accurate as the 17HM2.

The 17 Hornady Hornet came out just before I went to Afghanistan. I had two of them built up on Martini actions. I only got a couple sessions in the gopher patch with these guns. When I got back from Afghanistan, I was pretty distracted chasing the Okie Widow lady and was spending more time in OK than MT. (Footnote: chasing wimmen at 66 years of age is as brain numbing as it was at 17)

Here is a video I made one afternoon shooting the 17HMR in a 1215



There is only one miss in that video. The gopher tends to run away even after he is dead.

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HoLeChit said:

I’m pretty sure I read your martini renovation thread somewhere on the internet a while back. Good stuff. I need to mess with my 17HM2 a little more, picked up a barrel for my CZ457, but only shot it once. Think I had a bad batch of old eley ammo.

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