22 long rifle in Pisctol cartridge match

Centerfires, rimfires, pistol cartridges and everything in between.
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glen ring
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22 long rifle in Pisctol cartridge match

Post by glen ring »

I have a Marlin 22 lr for cowboy smallbore silhouette. I notice that the 22 lr is also legal in the pistol cartridge class. Does anyone have experience in shooting the 22 lr in the pistol cartridge class ?
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Jason
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Post by Jason »

Yep. I shot a Marlin 39 for a few matches. It worked pretty well for everything but rams. It left about half the rams standing after mid-body hits. I could usually make them fall if I hit them in the horns or at the outside edge of the butt, but I'm not a good enough shot to hit either of those spots every time. I've left several rams standing after mid-body hits with 22 mag rounds from high-speed 40-grainers up to 50-grainers. My souped-up 22 mag rounds (50-grain bullets over 7.1 grains of H110) has no trouble taking the rams off, though. It did the job on 9/10 today and would have done the 10th one in if I hadn't yanked the trigger so hard I miss by a good six inches. Of course, that shot was the difference in finishing my grand slam in pistol cartridge and shooting a master score, as I finished up with 36/40, just missing master. :lol:
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Post by eskuri »

Ditto what Jason wrote, plus, you'll also ring a few pigs!! Nothing wrong with using it though, if you don't have a PC rifle. It's better to shoot, than not shoot, so bang away.
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Post by Mike Sporer »

Hello,

Has anyone had success shooting PC rams with any of the higher velocity (over 1200fps) .22LR selections?

Sincerely,

Mike Sporer
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Jason
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Post by Jason »

Shot the pistol cartridge match with a 22lr Contender yesterday. With the Velocitor ammo, I took down 3 rams and hit 4 others out of 10 with good hits that didn't fall. For the animals other than rams, I used Federal Automatch and rang one pig and one turkey. Next month, I hope to be using my 22 hornet barrel that's on the way to me now. It's frustrating to struggle to hit targets (I kinda suck in in hunter pistol, hehe) and then not have them fall. :)
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Post by jnyork »

You will ring a few targets but so what?? You will still shoot a better score than if you didnt show up because you didnt have a PC rifle!! It's all about shooting and having fun, or at least it's supposed to be. On a good day you might even beat someone using a PC rifle and now wouldnt that be fun?? Grab your .22 and go have at it.
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Post by Jason »

True enough. I would much rather shoot the match with a 22lr than not shoot it at all. I shot it for several months using a 22lr rifle before I got a pistol cartridge rifle. I shot the hunter pistol match yesterday with a 22lr Contender barrel because I don't have my 22 hornet barrel yet. It's always better to shoot with what you have than not to shoot at all. :lol:
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Post by Tlee »

My son and I shoot 22LR for both and we will usually ring one or 2 Rams per relay on the heavier PCCLA animals. In a little over a year of shooting CLA I can only recall losing one Pig, and it was a edge hit on the tail, resulting in the pad "hanging on by a toenail". I do find that hits with the el-cheapo Federal 510 High Velocity "Champion" ammo takes the heavier animals down better, although it's not quite as accurate, than the Wolf or Eley I usually shoot. I've also used the CCI Silhouette ammo with good success on Rams, however it doesn't seem to be quite as accurate for me on the shorter distances as the Fed510s.

Yesterday, I shot my personal best to date of 43/60 in PCCLA using 22LR, ringing 2 Rams and spinning a Turkey almost 360 degrees. This score was only one down from my SBCLA best of 44/60. The spun Turkey was a low edge hit about an inch off the leg on the tail side of the animal. The 2 lost Rams were near perfect dead center hits.

For the Rams, my experience is that any hindquarter/leg or back/horn hits above body centerline have taken them down (although sometimes slowly... almost a slow motion fall off the rail, LOL!). What is odd though, LOW centerline hits near the "private part" seem to always take the Ram down too (I haven't figured out the physics/geometry of that one yet! I figured anything below center mass wouldn't fall, unless it was toward the nose or tail).

my .02,

--Tim

PS - FWIW, everything we've shot has been animals sitting on a iron rail. I've heard that PCCLA resetable animals are much more difficult to take down down with edge hits using 22LR.
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Post by Tlee »

An update to my previous post...

I shot PCCLA this past weekend using the 22LR (Federal 510s) on some auto resets and was somewhat surprised at the results.

Every chicken, pig, and turkey that I hit went down, even the couple left/right edge hits. The thicker pigs fell noticably slower than the smallbore animals, but they did fall. If I consider my success only on the 3 animals, I would be on pace for another personal best score.

I'd been hearing all day from other shooters about how the Rams wouldn't fall with 22LR unless the hits were in the horn or extreme upper half, so for the 1st 8 animals I tried moving up into the animal slightly higher, resulting in misses "just barely" over the back on 7 and one shot THRU the opening of the horn on another. For the last 7 rams I went back to my usual site settings, hit 5 of them and 4 fell. The one that didn't fall was a shoulder hit about mid mass, although one that did fall was also on the same elevation only slightly further back.

my .02 on using 22LR on PCCLA autoresets,

--Tim
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