I am a great fan for 22Hornet, along with 218 Bee (in single shot rifles), and 221 Fireball! I never worked with the "Improved" versions as they basically duplicated the next cartridge in the line up. In my accumulating brass, I have K-Hornet empties as well as Mashburn Bee cases. To me taking a fine shooting rifle, and "Improving" it risked the loss of accuracy, and gained nothing more over a rifle I already owned.

In the 80's and 90's the quality of factory ammo became so bad, that many fine rifles only produced a "pattern" instead of a group! Hornady broke this trend with their Varmint Express ammo with a 35 grain bullet at 3100 fps. (There were reports of Prairie Dog hits at 300 yards, but I never saw any!)

I have had 3 of the Savage 340 rifles all old enough to not have serial numbers (that started in 1968) the gun went out of production in the late 50's or early 60's, then started again in 70 or so. So that made mine 40 or a lot more years old when I bought them. These are some of the most accurate rifles you can find. With Hornady VX ammo, one inch at 100 is the norm and the one I kept is a 1/2" gun. I had several tip-up action single shots and accuracy was very consistently sub 1"! I had a CZ in the mid 80's that wouldn't hit a barn if shot inside it! I also had a bull barreled Anschutz 54that was a 1+" gun with the 35 VX ammo but not 2" with 45 grain traditional loadings!

For Hornady's 35 gr V-max I found AA1680 at 3100fps was 1/2" to 3/4" in most all rifles that had a good history, but 3200fps was 1 1/4" at best!
For 45 gr semi point, H or IMR 4227 seemed to be best with the Townsend Whelan load of 11.5 gr @ 2700fps usually around 3/4" to 1"
For 40 gr Ballistic Tip, 4227, 1680 and 296/H100 all preformed very well.
I had serious trouble with LilGun blowing out case walls .2 & .4 grains below max. on 218 Bee (Virgin Brass!) and never messed with the success I was having on the Hornet.

I have somewhere around 3000 brass by 4 or 5 manufacturers. Currently, Nosler makes the very best! It has been available for Midway in 2 grades. Ready to load" 100 count and "Needs Prepped" 250 count. The entire batch will be within .1 grain of weight, within .002" case length, and .001" (or less) of neck wall thickness. The "needs prepped" will need flash hole and primer pocket work, as well as sized! This is so much better than the second best-Hornady!

There is some 1950's thru 60's military surplus ammo by Canadian firm CDC, that is 45 grain semi-spritzer FMJ (our Air Force seems to have issued this also) This was for survival rifles. It is known to be very accurate, but you need head shots *** there is no expansion! The brass was of "normal" quality for that time frame; which beat the 80's/90's US stuff to heck!

For primers, the opinions very! I have used Federal 205M with the loads above. Friends use the Remington 6 1/2, with equal success. One friend has phenomenal accuracy with Federal 201M (small pistol match), out of a 14" Contender, But his velocity is more like 22 Stingers or 22 Mag, if paper is all you kill this is worth a try! (with AA1680 powder)

Ivan