I see a lot of posts and interest in shooting the .22LR at long range. It has definitely come a long way since the early days of postal matches and "black death" targets and other silly BS.
That being said, I see a lot of folks really trying to stretch the little .22 case to it's utmost potential. A noble, if somewhat futile effort. That being said, there is no arguing the lessons to be learned in calling the wind, as it is dramatically much more apparent with the .22LR at range than just about any other cartridge out there.
But, if we are really going to push the little .22LR to it's fullest potential, leveraging new powder technologies and bullet designs, I would argue that something will have to change in addition to the aforementioned variables. (This all assumes that we are constrained to the ".22LR" case and caliber.)
All this being said, here's what I have been thinking.
What we really need for a dedicated .22LR long range rig are two things:
1. Ammo, loaded on the .22LR case, but exceeds typical .22LR case length (think of a scaled up Aguila SSS round; which is a 22Short case with a honking 60gr bullet loading on top).
2. A rifle action that supports this longer ammo, and has magazines to support this longer ammo (say, like a precision .22 Mag action, but with a modified .22LR chamber).
With regards to the ammo, the limiting factor for a high BC bullet is the cartridge length. The heeled bullet of a .22LR, while not ballistically optimum, can be over come somewhat just by lengthening the round and making it of a lighter material (think alloy, non-lead). But, this will make the round exceed it's establish OAL.
Therefore what we'd need is an action that can support a longer COAL, and already has a magazine system capable of feeding the longer round (the hardest part of any rifle design). I suspect a .22Mag action would easily support this. The chamber (obviously) would have to be cut for the .22LR case with longer, more pointed and ballistically efficient bullets. As to whether this would be seen as an entirely new round, or just a modified chamber, I'm unsure (since there's no reason you couldn't shoot standard .22LR ammo out of this chamber safely).
The upshot of all this is that the manufacture of the ammo could leverage existing .22LR case drawing and forming machinery, priming and charging machinery, and seating process could (with modifications) likely be accomplished with .22 Mag tooling/dies.
Developing/modifying these two things would allow the development in powder/priming technology and bullet design to be leveraged into supporting a small bore LR capability that would expose many more shooters to LR shooting, but who are constrained to shorter ranges.
At any rate, I've thought about this a great deal, and have my doubts about any of the big manufacturers being interested in this sort of concept, but figured I'd toss it out there for the Hide to chew on (I've mentioned it to a few people in the trade, and never really got much of a response).
If anything, at least it's thinking outside the box a little...and isn't one of my craziest ideas I've ever had.
That being said, I see a lot of folks really trying to stretch the little .22 case to it's utmost potential. A noble, if somewhat futile effort. That being said, there is no arguing the lessons to be learned in calling the wind, as it is dramatically much more apparent with the .22LR at range than just about any other cartridge out there.
But, if we are really going to push the little .22LR to it's fullest potential, leveraging new powder technologies and bullet designs, I would argue that something will have to change in addition to the aforementioned variables. (This all assumes that we are constrained to the ".22LR" case and caliber.)
All this being said, here's what I have been thinking.
What we really need for a dedicated .22LR long range rig are two things:
1. Ammo, loaded on the .22LR case, but exceeds typical .22LR case length (think of a scaled up Aguila SSS round; which is a 22Short case with a honking 60gr bullet loading on top).
2. A rifle action that supports this longer ammo, and has magazines to support this longer ammo (say, like a precision .22 Mag action, but with a modified .22LR chamber).
With regards to the ammo, the limiting factor for a high BC bullet is the cartridge length. The heeled bullet of a .22LR, while not ballistically optimum, can be over come somewhat just by lengthening the round and making it of a lighter material (think alloy, non-lead). But, this will make the round exceed it's establish OAL.
Therefore what we'd need is an action that can support a longer COAL, and already has a magazine system capable of feeding the longer round (the hardest part of any rifle design). I suspect a .22Mag action would easily support this. The chamber (obviously) would have to be cut for the .22LR case with longer, more pointed and ballistically efficient bullets. As to whether this would be seen as an entirely new round, or just a modified chamber, I'm unsure (since there's no reason you couldn't shoot standard .22LR ammo out of this chamber safely).
The upshot of all this is that the manufacture of the ammo could leverage existing .22LR case drawing and forming machinery, priming and charging machinery, and seating process could (with modifications) likely be accomplished with .22 Mag tooling/dies.
Developing/modifying these two things would allow the development in powder/priming technology and bullet design to be leveraged into supporting a small bore LR capability that would expose many more shooters to LR shooting, but who are constrained to shorter ranges.
At any rate, I've thought about this a great deal, and have my doubts about any of the big manufacturers being interested in this sort of concept, but figured I'd toss it out there for the Hide to chew on (I've mentioned it to a few people in the trade, and never really got much of a response).
If anything, at least it's thinking outside the box a little...and isn't one of my craziest ideas I've ever had.
