Lucky Gunner looks at "practical" ballistics for the venerable .22 Long Rifle - to wit, out of shorter rifles. Here, a 16" Savage Mk II.

You can find numerous ballistic tables for .22 LR online. There are multiple ballistic calculator apps that’ll give you excruciatingly detailed information about what a bullet should do at a specific distance. These can all be very useful tools. Of course, ballistic tables are just a starting point. You have to actually shoot some groups out of your own gun to find out what your specific rifle and ammo combo are going to do.

But the issue I have with a lot of ballistic tables is that they’re often based on the velocity you get from something like a 20 to 24-inch barrel. A lot of the most common .22 rifles today have barrels closer to 16 to 18 inches. That means the ballistic data from a longer barrel might not even really be useful as a kind of ballpark starting point.

So, we did some of our own testing to give you one more data point to work with when you’re considering .22 ballistics.

To be completely honest, for me this is more of a theoretical than a practical exercise. For pest control, I’ve never needed to take a shot more than 50 yards away. My property is just not that big. So I use subsonic ammo with a suppressor to stay as quiet as possible. I zero the gun at 50 and it’ll hit within about a half inch of that between 15 and 50 yards. It’s pretty straightforward.

But, of course, .22 LR is viable far beyond 50 yards. In the comments on that last video, some of you guys mentioned using your .22s to take out squirrels, prairie dogs, and other pests at 100 yards and beyond. So, for these six loads, we fired five-round groups from a benchrest at 50, 100, 150, and 200 yards.

https://www.luckygunner.com/lounge/prac ... -for-22lr/

Of course, I'd love to see the ammunition selection expanded a teensy bit. Still, thought it would make an interesting resource.

50-75 yards is all I need on game. I hunt with open sight rifles, and with my eyes a 75 yard shot on a bunny is harder than Chinese Algebra.

I like the 28” barrel on my rimfire CZ.

I think my GSG STG-44 has a 16" barrel...and it has one of those new fangled scopey things...

Did they actually compare velocities from several medium barreled (16-18") vs several longer barrels? Maybe SOME 16" .22s shoot slower than SOME 24" .22s, but i'd be willing to bet a dollar that the relationship is weak, at best.

Looking at the Ballistics By the Inch tests, except maybe Velocitors, you don't see a real increase beyond about 12".
http://www.ballisticsbytheinch.com/22.html

This isn't surprising to me. You have to think of the expansion ratios, the ratios of the volume of the case and/or the volume behind the bullet at the moment of peak chamber pressure and the volume of the total case + barrel. When that ratio is large (if calculated as total/case or total/(case + barrel behind the bullet at peak pressure) then velocity gains are going to plateau because the pressure in the last few inches of travel down the barrel just isn't that high any more. (I'm assuming that the evolution of new gas from the burning powder drops off rapidly after the moment of peak pressure, which may not be exactly true but is a very convenient simplification! It's probably not so true with the slower burning powders, but it will have to do.)

How far does the bullet move before the moment of peak pressure? I've never really seen this specified, but my bet is that with the fastest-burning pistol powders (target ammo), the bullet doesn't really move much at all, so the ratio is the case volume / case + barrel. For the slower pistol powders, I assume the bullet moves a little way before peak, but not hugely, so the expansion ratio is slightly less severe. This would be the case in magnum pistols, 9 mm +P or "SMG ammo" (loaded with AutoComp or AA#7, say) and probably .22LR HV or "hypervelocity" rounds like Velocitors and Stingers. Bottlenecked rifles use much slower powders, so I expect the answer is that the bullet actually gets somewhere farther down the bore, but of course these also have much bigger case volumes per inch of bore, which makes a huge difference in the ratio and how fast it changes as the bullet moves forward.

For straight-walled cases, you only have to consider the length of the case, practically. Sure enough, the really short ones, .22LR and 9 mm, see very little gains in the top few inches of the BBTI tables, while longer ones like the .357 Magnum do show actual gains at the top of the table over ~10" barrels. Comparing 9 mm and .357 is really apples to apples, since they have nearly the same diameters and peak chamber pressures.

I'm inclined to think of 20"+ barrels on .22LR as something of an affectation. Maybe long barrels pay off with iron sights due to the sight radius, but in velocity? I'm skeptical.

Yeah, this was just looking at ballistics in one 16" carbine. Not meant to compare barrel lengths. You're right though, most pistol caliber cartridges level out on velocity before the 16" mark. The point of the article was to compare bullet drop at extreme range as a function of ammunition, that's all.

What lots of us do is to try many brands in our guns and find out which give the most consistent performances. For my old Marlin Model 80 bolt gun and my Ruger MKII Government Model target pistol I have made notes, and I have the sights set for those brands/velocities. I have, you know, some of the proper rounds for each in the gun closet. I do enjoy reading about the performances of brands and velocities I have not yet tried. .22LR is still pretty cheap.

CDFingers