.22 LR. The good, The bad, and The Ridiculous.

Over the course of the last year with the unavailability of lots of different types of ammo especially .22 LR I decided i had to open my door up to some new brands. Ive been very concentrated on shooting Rimfires because of their inexpensive nature and overall cheap fun.

I live in a northern state in which spring summer and fall is the only time to shoot outdoors comfortably. This past winter i spent scrounging the depths of the earth to find ammo to stockpile especially .22 LR. I Found Alot and have spent the better part of the summer studying them.

Here's the list which consists of mostly bulk packs from your large retail stores.

1. Federal 525 bulk pack
2. Federal automatch 325
3. Remington 225 golden bullet
4. Winchester 555 White box bulk
5. Winchester M-22 1000 round
6. CCI Tactical 375 bulk pack


Most of us i believe know the technical data associated with these brands so i won't get into it. I really wanted to include blazer but i couldn't get my hands on enough of it.

Let me start off by saying im an average guy and an average shooter. I really don't want to get into any huge debates about ammo, my guns, or my skills.

For my little test i used my two favorite rifles, S&W MP 15-22 and a Ruger 10-22. Both of these rifles are equipped with TRS-25 red dots. I decided to us these two cause i feel they are the most popular and amongst the smoothest running .22 semi-auto rifles out there.

The results were almost identical for both rifles so i will just share the 15-22s results.

I decided to just shoot a half a brick through each gun for function and dirtyness first. If i dont like a way a particular ammo ran i would not use it for accuracy testing. Both rifles were clean to start. The results were as follows.


1. Federal 525 bulk pack
very clean and 2 duds
2. Federal automatch 325
very clean. About 6 FTEs
3. Remington 225 golden bullet
Dirty and a wide variation of different sounds when fired.
4. Winchester 555 White box bulk
very dirty and a few jams and duds actually gummed up the barrel up so bad i couldn't use a bore snake.
5. Winchester M-22 1000 round
Dirty and broken bullets in
bottom of the box.
6. CCI Tactical 375 bulk pack
very clean and 3 FTFs in ruger.

Based on my results this far i decided only 3 would make it to accuracy testing. They are....

Federal bulk pack

Federal Automatch

CCI Tactical


All shots were fired at my backyard range at 65ft with me laying prone and the grip of the gun rested.

I started with federal automatch. I wasn't impressed at all with the results. I adjusted the red dot a couple clicks until i hit center target then I ran 2 magazines.


1 more adjustment and then another 25 rounds


Another adjustment and another 25 rounds


At this point i was fed up with the amount of fliers so it was on to the next. I will be selling my remaining 9 boxes of this on here so keep an eye out if your interested. It just doesn't work in my two rifles.

Next was the Federal value pack. I ran one magazine and the results were similar to the automatch. Previous to this year i had fairly good results with this ammo. Not sure what happened just couldn't get any consistency no matter how much i adjusted.


Finally was the CCI Tactical. I was surprised after every 3-4 shots when i looked through my binoculars and saw how well it was hitting compared to the others.


After 1 adjustment



In conclusion I've always known CCI was the best and now i think im going to shoot it exclusively. Its clean, accurate, and consistent and worth every extra penny.

Thanks for reading and feel free to share your thoughts.

Thanks so much for putting all this together. It makes it so much easier to narrow down preferred ammo. I'll now be keeping a lookout for the CCI Tactical ammo. In the heartlands (Wichita), .22 ammo is still scarce. At Cabela's, the shelves have been bare for the past three days. Extensive comparisons such as you've provided are appreciated.

I hadn't seen anyone really do it. Just talk about it so i figured id take the time and help my fellow forum members out in anyway i can.

I've never shot the AutoMatch and have only shot two boxes of CCI Tactical. I have shot something over 12k of Federal Champion and I must say your experience does not match mine for that ammo. My 25 yard targets are under one inch day in and day out. 0.75" is common. 50 yard groups are normally 1.5" or a tad more.

My M&P22 pistol hates the Federal Auto-match. I have failures of every sort with it. My ruger SR22 has no problem with it .

Majorlk said:

I've never shot the AutoMatch and have only shot two boxes of CCI Tactical. I have shot something over 12k of Federal Champion and I must say your experience does not match mine for that ammo. My 25 yard targets are under one inch day in and day out. 0.75" is common. 50 yard groups are normally 1.5" or a tad more.

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I know i stated that. The box was bought in January of 2013. Im wondering if i had a bad box. Even if that's the case I've never had a bad box of CCI

every firearm is different. shoot em all and find what it likes.

Remington Golden Bullets didnt even make the final cut. At least we are on the same track to say those golden bullets are trash.

I just gave my last few boxes of that stuff away. Not even worth dirtying my guns up anymore.

Federal 525 and 550 bulk boxes are the cleanest of the cheap ammo i've found (blue box and brown box).

CCI is clean and very accurate, but a little more pricey. All in all those 2 are the ones i'm sticking to running through all of mine from now on.

We recently did a similar round of testing at the range (didn't take pics). We used 6 different ammo types fired each through two 15-22s. The results were the same as shown in the OP. The CCI ammo beat every brand we tried. In both guns and at 25 and 50 yards, solid performance and consistency. Some of the ammo was just terrible with 2-3 times larger group size. Good news, only 1 FTF which was nice.

I have had similar results with the CCI Tacticals being clean and having consistant groups.

Also the Remington GB value packs are very inconsistent and the firearms require a lot more time and effort to clean.

I have shot a lot of the Fed Auto Match and have had very good results in both auto loading pistols and rifles.

The other types of ammo mentioned have produced varying results in different firearms.

It is important to try differnt ammo in each firearm to see what it has a taste for. Some have expensive tastes others dont.

Bill

erick1987 said:

every firearm is different. shoot em all and find what it likes.

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I've got around a dozen different types of .22LR on hand for trying in different guns. Usually the top end ammo is consistently more accurate than others, but sometimes the cheap stuff will amaze you.

Does anyone know if hollow points are less accurate as a hole? Or no difference?

I have had no experience w/ CCI Tactical .22 LR ammo as I've not seen it for sale. I have however had a lot of experience w/ the Fed. Auto-Match. It has been superlative in my rifles and pistols. It burns very clean. I have not ever had a failure of any sort. I have had extremely good results w/ CCI Mini-Mags. My experience w/ Remington Golden Bullet .22 LR ammo is not extensive. However, in firing it in my 15-22, results have been fully equal to the CCI Mini-Mags in on target accuracy. On my last trip to the woods, I fired 400 rounds and had 3 failures to fire. When tried again, those rounds fired.

nexus010 said:

Does anyone know if hollow points are less accurate as a hole? Or no difference?

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As a whole, there's little difference ... primarily because calling a tiny hole in the nose of the bullet a "hollow point" borders on the ludicrous.

Majorlk said:

As a whole, there's little difference ... primarily because calling a tiny hole in the nose of the bullet a "hollow point" borders on the ludicrous.

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I've always said the same thing. .22s aren't hollow points

Funny how 15-22's can have different results with 22 ammo. Mine loves Automatch ammo, but has trouble with CCI of the Choot Em variety.

I haven't tried regular CCI ammo in mine and I don't know if there's a difference in the ammo or if it's just packaging, but I do have some so I suppose I should try it out to see if my other CCI shoots better.

Mine will shoot anything without a hickup but accuracy is a whole different thing. The first one i had shot federal bulk fine, very accurate

Excellent work. Nice shoot'in. Glad I have 1000 rounds of this AR Tactical. Just wish I had a working 15-22 to use it! Regards, John

Majorlk said:

I've never shot the AutoMatch and have only shot two boxes of CCI Tactical. I have shot something over 12k of Federal Champion and I must say your experience does not match mine for that ammo. My 25 yard targets are under one inch day in and day out. 0.75" is common. 50 yard groups are normally 1.5" or a tad more.

Click to expand...

So today i got thinking about what you said and right. Federal bulk is usually much better than that.

This afternoon i decided to shoot 1 mag of federal bulk. Before, i had shot so much of the automatch that i think maybe my eyes had gotten tired.

Here's the same scenario but with different targets and shooting bulk first. 25 rounds at 65ft.


Heres 25 rounds of cci. Still considerably better. Half the rounds landed inside the 1 inch circle opposed to 4 with federal bulk.


Thanks majorik

For those doing accuracy testing with a variety of ammo ...

You need to clean the barrel between ammo brands. It doesn't have to be spit shined, but two or three passes with either a patch and brush or a BoreSnake is a must.

Then you need to put a minimum of 10 rounds of the new ammo downrange to season the barrel to that ammo before any firing for accuracy.

Just swapping ammo brands without doing the above two steps will yield undependable and inaccurate results.