What limits a 22 at distance: the rifle or the ammo?

About a year and a half ago, I picked up my first precision 22lr, a Vudoo v22.  If you know anything about high end 22s, you know they come with a significant price tag, and a correlated expectation of precision. Well let me tell you, this thing did not and does not disappoint when it comes to precision. However, after a few matches, you find yourself wanting to squeeze a little bit more performance out of them. So naturally, I consulted some fellow rimfire enthusiasts and landed at my 2 next steps: Lot testing and dope truing at distance. This story will mention the former but focus on the latter and some of the rather eye-opening findings on why precision rimfires do what they do at distance.

To put some perspective on what you are about to read, I make no claims that what I will say is bible or law or anything of the sort. I simply want this to be thought provoking as you, the reader, venture down the road of truing up your precision rimfire. I would love for this to be a conversation starter to see if people have observed the same or different or see if we can arrive at some rhyme or reason for how 22’s perform at distance. Nonetheless, the findings you will read do give credence to theories I’ve heard and will likely affect my decision-making process moving forward in precision rimfire.

As I mentioned, this all started with lot testing. Obviously, reloading for rimfire isn’t really a thing, so in order to find the best ammo for your rifle, you not only find the brand that shoots the best, but you can take it as far as finding the best lot and buying all you can afford or get your hands on. Many are familiar with sending your rifle to Lapua for testing. Not as many people are familiar with various suppliers who will send you ammo from various lots of various lines and let you test that yourself. This is the route I went. I tested 5 lots of Center-x and arrived at one that was averaging under .7 MOA 10-rd groups at 100 yards. Let it suffice to say that’s better than I can typically shoot my centerfire. I was pleased. But what’s next? Truing dope at distance to arrive at a truly reliable BC. And so comes the true purpose of this article.

Let me quickly explain my method for truing. My core motivation for this is the new NRL22x series shooting out to 400 yards. In my mind, I wanted to be able to shoot that distance as reliably as possible. Therefore, I found a calm morning, set up targets every 50 yards from 200-400, and intended to shoot 5 shot groups at each as many times as it took to get groups that were at least spot on for elevation. Luckily, I was joined by good friend (and closet ballistician) Lou Smith IV who Mr. Miyagi’d me through his process for truing up DOPE. When I tell you this opened my eyes….. Well. I’ll never be the same.

Now that targets were set and freshly painted, we set up our firing point. Kestrels mounted to a weather vane, double Labradars to extra ensure we picked up every shot of the tiny 40 grain projectiles, multiple optics and a Phoneskope, and most importantly, a data sheet of Lou’s own design that includes capturing impact location on target as well as the correlating speed to each shot. I would have never guessed how valuable this granularity of detail could be.

I started the morning by shooting my wife’s Vudoo set in a McMillan A-10 topped with a Burris XTR3 5.5-30×56 and shooting Lapua Center-x ammo. This is quite the combo and was the perfect set up for what we were about to observe. I started the day using a .140 G1 BC in the kestrel and 1085 fps for speed.

Engaging the 200 yard 14” plate in a  3 MPH 5:00 o’clock wind, I proceed to lay down a .79 MOA group with perfect elevation and just right of center ( i.e. a little too much wind hold). Lou recorded the hit locations while viewing through his trusty Leupold spotter as well as the speeds of each shot. Impressive group! Acceptable 17 ES . 1085 on FPS was a little high for speed but nothing crazy. We move on.

Next, I shoot a 5 shot group at 250 yards, 16” plate assuming zero wind. First and second shots were almost dead center at 1086 and 1082 FPS, or right at my input speed. Shot 3 goes a bit higher and reads at 1089 fps. Interesting. Shot 4 reads 1082 and drops right back into the original group, followed by a 1095 FPS shot that goes a solid 5” or so high, and thus it starts to click in my head. We may have some predictability here. Nonetheless, a 1.7 MOA group with a 22lr at 250 yards centered for both elevation and wind I suppose is nothing to be too mad about.

Now we move on to 300 yards. 24” plate assuming a 4 MPH wind from a 5:45 direction. Shots 1 and 2 land just high and right of center with respective readings of 1091 and 1086 fps respectively. Shot three reads a mere 6 FPS higher at 1097 and impacts a solid 6” or so higher. Then shot 4 breaks. Through the scope, I can see it lands about 8” or so below shots 1 and 2. “That’s gotta be slow”  I call out to Lou. Sure enough, 1069 FPS. Shot 5 comes in fast again at 1095 fps with almost identical elevation as shot 3, and thus we a start to see a couple of trends. Not only are high and low shots predictable speed wise, but the groups are growing vertically at a ‘faster than proportional to distance’ rate.

350 yards and 400 yards continue to be more of the same. 350 yard group had one of the poorer ES’s of the day, and it really came through with some obvious vertical stringing. 400 was rather interesting as shot 5 was a miss, leading me to take a 6^th shot to have 5 on target. Shot 5 was the fastest of the day at 1101 and we watched it land behind the target, i.e. a miss over the top. The other 5 shots were an ES of 12 between them and, predictably, would have had the second best vertical spread of the day were it not for shot 5.

I could go on and on about how the rest of the day went, but I’ll keep it concise. Lou laid down behind his Nightforce ATACR topped, XLR envy chassi’d Vudoo v22 and shot three different types of ammo: SK Long range rifle match, Lapua Center X, and Midas +. The results were almost identical honestly regardless of ammo. Great groups at 200 and 250, vertical stringing at distance that was still centered for elevation, and shots whose speeds could almost be predicted to the digit simply by seeing where on the target it landed.

	Speed (fps)	Group size (moa)	Group Height/ Speed ratio (moa/fps)
Target (yds)	Average	ES	Height	width
200	1078	17	0.79	0.43	.046
250	1087	13	1.62	0.55	.125
300	1088	28	2.98	0.86	.106
350	1088	26	3.34	1.13	.128
400	1088	22	4.32	1.17	.195

Above is a chart that combines the data I discussed for the targets earlier in this article. One thing that should be explained is the Group height/speed ratio. It is pretty obvious that the extreme but predictable vertical stringing is what really caught my eye. However, given the highly differing ES between groups (along with my fervent belief that every FPS matters), I wanted to come up with a value that accounted for ES. Thus, I divided my group height in MOA by my ES in FPS.

While a lot more replications would have to be ran and some variables removed to consider this officially scientific, I believe some anecdotal conclusions may be drawn. First, the question I hear a lot (with rarely a good answer) is what limits precision rimfire? The gun or the ammo? Well I believe I have to put my money on the ammo.  I mean after all, in order for the shots to be called predictable as I mentioned we were able to do, the gun has to be doing the exact same thing every time. Elsewise a lack of precision in the gun could make a fast shot go artificially low or a slow shot artificially high. As shown above, that never happened.

 However, that is not to detract from how impressive the ammo truly is. For one, it’s consistent enough to print 10 shot groups at 100 yards that would make most centerfire handloads jealous. Furthermore, when we know that even popular centerfire projectiles suffer with bullet to bullet BC variation. BC has to be dead on bullet to bullet in order to truly vertical string by speed, as well as stay centered elevation wise all the way out to 400. I truly anticipated quite a bit of BC bleeding at 400 yards and as shown, .140 lined up all the way out. But the speed ES really rears its ugly head, as with such a low G1 BC, there is no forgiveness for speed variation.

22ELR is in and of itself a quickly growing niche discipline. I believe the current record for cold bore impact plus two more consecutive impacts on a 12” square sits somewhere around 480 yards. I have shot in one of these matches, and let me tell you, that’s flat out impressive. After what I’ve observed in  the past and now tracked this past weekend, I  tell you one thing I would make sure I do at my next one: figure out how to run a Chrono in the match. Whether that’s a Magneto with an off-barrel mount or somehow a Labradar, there is a lot of value created by having a shot that felt great go low, and being able to see that it was also 12 FPS below what was input in your DOPE.

I’ll be honest, at the time of writing this, I still have no solid answer that I can land on for what makes the vertical stringing grow unproportionally at farther distances. Why did the height/ES ratio grow 250% from 200 to 250 yards? Why did it grow 80 % from 350 to 400 yards? Inevitably human error is part of it, and I don’t claim to be the world’s best shot, But that can’t be all . Is it the ever-increasing impact angle? Is it something else?  I would love some feedback there. It should be noted that the wind increased as we went throughout the day and I believe that would be what caused the group width to slowly increase. However, considering group width was 1.2 moa at worst all day at such extreme distances, none of it strikes me as odd.

So there you have it, my observations of trying to find a rhyme or reason for why precision rimfires do what they do at distance. In case I was way too wordy, here’s what I am left with. Precision rimfire rifles have gotten absolutely silly good. Precision 22 projectiles are surprisingly and impressively consistent. When you ask yourself what limits precision rimfire at distance, my answer would be this: speed ES is the real Achilles’ heel of ELR rimfire.

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