BenchRest .22 is a sport involving lots of money and high-end, hand-fitted guns.

I think that is a good testbed to ascertain how accurate the .22lr cartridge platform may be.



I even hear how .17HMR beats the hell out of .22 every day and twice on Sunday.



So, how accurate .22lr REALLY is?


 

I can't can't say vs. .17HMR, but .22LR can be very accurate. It does vary widely by ammo (seems more so than centerfire, IMHO). Not sure what you mean by define.

I can place 10 rounds in pretty much the same hole at 75 yards with my 10/22 and the shitty scope that came with it for free so yes it can be fairly accurate.

Here is 10 shots at 100 yards...circle is 1 inch  10/22 modified/ kid barrel/kid trigger

I know there's some guys in the savage mk 2 thread who have rang steel at close to 200yards

Disregard.  They don't list caliber.





CHRIS

A good 22 with ammo to match will shoot into one hole at 50 and be very close at 100. I have some pics posted in the MOA all day thread.

So, would ayone of you say that a match 22 carbine, with a good choice of ammo, would be a 1/4 or 1/2 MOA cartridge?

That is what I'd define as absolute accuracy.


 

I have a bench 10/22 super modified that will shoot 1/4-3/8 moa all day with proper ammo if I do my part.   I also had a remington 22 bench rifle as a kid that would shoot 10 shots 1/4 moa with it I had a unertl scope that was almost as long as the barrel! It was single shot bolt action..

1 MOA All Day

Best I can do. Very gun and ammo dependent. I've shot a 0.27" 4 shot group sitting  in the dirt once at 25 meters. But most of the time guns are more accurate then shooters.

I was shocked. My $90 pawn shop savage Mk 2 at 100 yards, hot, and shooting rem bulk At 100.



Off bipods, in the cheap stock, shooting fast, with $30 used glass.

That's a two inch group. If I strip the flyers it's a one inch.

The guns rock.

That's Mah Boy!Better yet- my 9 year old son at 100 on skeet. 10-22 , ram line stock, $30 used optic.

Same Remington bulk ammo.

My point being $150-$250 .22 rifles will perform above your expectations. Don't sink $500_$1000 till you try a normal .22

Clay pigeons @ 200 with my CZ452 varmint....all day long.

This is the best my Green Mountain barreled, Kidd 2-stage 10/22 has managed at 100 yards. SK Std +. When it is calm it is easy to keep around an inch.

Let's clarify some things...

1) 1 MOA at 25 yards is a lot easier to achieve than 1 MOA at 50 yards or 1 MOA at 100 yards with .22LR.   If you look at the sizes of the 10 rings on small bore rifle targets you'll see being accommodated as the rings get larger in slightly greater proportion than just the linear increase in range would suggest.   So "MOA" means something different with .22LR then it does with a high velocity centerfire rifle caliber where MOA has a much more linear relationship to range.  

2) High velocity .22LR (around 1280 fps MV) goes subsonic around 25 yards, so a rifle that shoots great 25 yard groups, might look significantly shittier at 50 yards as the bullet destabilizes as it goes through the transonic region.  Consequently, most target shooters shoot standard velocity .22LR ammo with a velocity around 1080 fps at the muzzle. For this reason I pretty much discount any accuracy claims at 25 yards, especially with high velocity or hyper velocity ammo, as it is pretty meaningless beyond 35-40 yards.  

3) Bullet groups tend to display a normal distribution pattern.  If a rifle shoots an average group of .75" at 50 yards (about 1.5 MOA) with a standard deviation of .25", then 67% of it's groups will be between .50" and 1.0" at 50 yards - half greater than .75" and half less than .75".   It also means that 13% of the groups will fall between .25" and .50" at 50 yards with another 13% falling between 1.0" and 1.25" at 50 yards.  About 3.5" of the groups can be expected to be smaller than .25" and the same 3.5% can be expected to be larger than 1.25".  

What that means is that a decent .22LR rifle that might average 1.5 MOA at 50 yards can turn in an MOA or better group about 20% of the time. But the other 80% will be greater than 1 MOA.

A truly accurate rifle will turn in small groups, but will also do it with much greater consistency so the standard deviation is smaller and the distribution curve is then a lot smaller than is the case with a less accurate and less consistent rifle.

4) That's the long way of saying practically everybody has a picture of a great group their rifle shot - but unless it does it on a regular basis, you can't call it a ____ (whatever fraction of MOA you want to call it) rifle.    In this case I'd accept 67% of the time, and no one would argue with you if it did it 95% of the time.

5) To make that happen you'd need to have a rifle that averaged groups that were at least 1 SD below the MOA level you are looking for to ensure that the 67% that fall within 1 SD of the mean all fall below that MOA performance level.  So if you had a rifle that had an SD of .1", it would need to average groups of .4" tat 50 yards to ensure 67% fell under .5" at 50 yards to claim "MOA".  If you want that same rifle to shoot to that level about 95% of the time then the average group size needs to be .3" if the SD is .1".

6) My Anschutz match rifle will shoot groups around .4" off a bench at 50 yards with low end ($5 for 50) target ammo like SK Standard Plus and do it with a high degree of consistency. So I can usually count on MOA performance at 50 yards with that ammo - with the exception of the 1 or 2 fliers that seem to end up in every box.  However that slightly better than 1 MOA accuracy 50 yards increases to around 1.25 MOA at 100 yards, and that's pretty much the norm with .22LR, or any other comparatively low velocity and low B.C bullet.

7) Accuracy costs money in .22LR.  I have rifles that will shoot 1.25 MOA with 3 cent per round bulk ammo, but shaving that to 1 MOA may cost 10 cents per round and getting  consistent accuracy approaching 1/2 MOA will cost 20 cents per round.

8) How much accuracy you needs depends on what you're doing.  I practice shooting small bore three position shooting 2-3 times a week.  If I shoot 40 rounds in each position on each trip to the range, the ammo cost is $12 per range trip (plus some sighters) if I use 10 cent per round ammo.  I am not going to set any records, but I am also a better than average shot, so the ammo I use makes sense.  If I use cheaper ammo, it won't shoot as well as I do and I have no way to monitor progression or improvement.   As it is, better ammo would improve my score but we are talking a matter of a 2-3 points per 40 rounds.  In a match that would mean something, but for practice purposes, it's enough that I know that when a cleanly made shot scores an 8 or 9 rather than the 10 it should have been, that's it's the ammo and not me.   And when I shoot an actual match with 20 cent per round ammo, I have some confidence that if I do my part, I'll pick up a few points and several Xs over my practice sessions.

I have shot 2 consecutive  .5" groups at 100 yds with my Savage TR. I used to shoot flies on the targets at my budfies house with a 10/22 target and a Adams & Bennet combo 10/22.

This is harder than it looks. If you hit them dead square you just punch them through the paper so there is no splatter to show off on the internet. Yoy have to hit one end to get a good picture.

My MK2 FVSR will shoot 1/2 MOA all day it gets even better when I am using my sparrow.  No mods to the gun at all using a 4-16x44 PA scope going out tomorrow I'll snap some photos of some results for you.

So did I answer the question?

What range is that at? How many shot groups?

with proper dope and a quality optic

This is all center fire stuff.  

I think it's all 100 yards and the aggregate of 5 5-shot groups.

what's the best .22lr ammo?

Whatever your gun shoots well.

Lapua and Eley are the top performers.

Rimfire BR would be A LOT more interesting if they could modify the ammo and use more modern bullets.

Eley Ten-x
Lapua X-Act