Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Power of a Shire with the speed of a sprinter
Once we all used a classic .22 rifle for pest control but Richard Hardy thinks the .17HMR has now well and truly knocked it off its perch
Sometimes it’s healthy to fall out of love with the most familiar things in life. Sometimes loyalty isn’t a virtue and it’s good to allow the novel and unfamiliar to become an infatuation. Recently, I’ve waved goodbye to more than 25 years of Land Rover ownership, put down my last Blackberry and no longer have a .22 rimfire in my gun cabinet.
My daydreaming is rudely interrupted by the orange blob in the handheld thermal imager, running straight down the tree trunk and into the long grass on the field margin. Now represented as a slightly fuzzy, extended white blob, it bounces out on to the newly rolled pasture, dipping and then sitting upright.
Leaning to my right, I exchange the technicolored world for a crisp sight picture set at 8x, nestle my cheek on to the extended laminate stock and breathe out slowly, letting the cross-hairs alight on the fifth fence post. First 90m, then count out five more for a total of 95m and settle again on the upright grey squirrel. I breathe in, slowly out and take up the imperceptible creep on the tuned trigger. Crack! And another treemunching alien meets its maker.
Frankenstein
The miniature bolt on the Sako throws the spent cartridge case nearly 18in to my right and I go to recover it. The familiarity of this brass is only half the story, to be precise the rear half: it is a Frankenstein assemblage of the familiar .22WMR case, albeit neck down, but the business end is the very different
.17 ballistic-tipped thunderbolt.
It’s this combination of .22 Shire horse power in tandem with .17 Thoroughbred sprinter that has made me a zealous convert to the cult of the Hornady Magnum Rimfire.
Introduced in 2002 by Hornady, the diminutive .17HMR can be traced back to the mid-western US in 1992 when early development work started on a new generation of long-range, hardhitting and extremely accurate cartridges and rifles for the stateside varminter. His chosen quarry species included ground squirrels and prairie dogs, often engaged at distances of well over 200 yards. The features of relatively long-range, hard-hitting ballistic tips and great accuracy suit the UK shooter’s needs well too. They also offer significantly reduced
ricochet risk in comparison
with the venerable .22 rimfire, which is particularly comforting on some of my flint-strewn arable ground.
With this in mind, my head shifts back to the thermal scope, scanning the ragged edge of silver birches, alert for the next volunteer, flitting from drey to branch and then back to the ground. Then an altogether different silhouette appears in my eyepiece and makes me head back to the rifle scope with a sharp intake of breath. Strutting towards my recently downed squirrel is the lustrous black form of the unluckiest crow in Wessex. The second round down at 95m is just as true as the first.
Supersonic crack
After those two shots it’ll be time to move to another part of my patch and that is possibly the only negative. The stubbornly popular .22 has a wide range of ammunition options, including the ever reliable subsonic, but the HMR has a very limited choice and it all comes with a considerable supersonic crack. The perfect sound moderator is probably the only thing lacking from my current set-up and moderating these barky rimfires seems to be a considerable challenge.
Over on the other side of the ridge and almost half a mile from the earlier disturbance, I slip into position above my favourite flightpond, making the most of the cover afforded by this comfortable location. My view of around 120 degrees includes the automatic feeder at the far end of the pond at 40m and my most productive Larsen trap on the field margin at 120m.
The Larsen has a relatively contented crow as its current inmate and a hidden trail camera acts as unblinking guardian, offering both information on the passing fauna and a sadly required element of insurance against a spate of misguided trap tampering. I have yet to
“Strutting towards the downed squirrel was the unluckiest crow in Wessex”
see any nefarious human activity recorded but have seen a magpie making regular visits. It is intrigued by the interloper in its territory but is much too clever to join it.
The automatic feeder offers the first chance with two gluttonous woodpigeon dropping in from their raids on the arable field over the boundary hedge. They greedily fill their crops on the spun barley that missed the green watery surface and landed on the dry bank. A neck shot at 40m puts the third spent cartridge into my pocket and the first portion of the best wild food into my rucksack.
Diminutive
That is indication alone of the biggest selling point for this diminutive hunting calibre. A 40m pigeon and 95m crow or squirrel required not a scintilla of hold over or under, nor a ballistic calculator nor practised range-finding flair. Deadly success at both points was merely a matter of laying the centre of the scope reticle over the intended point on target and the rest was accomplished by practised position, breathing control and good trigger discipline.
For me, time spent with terriers afoot and binoculars in hand is never wasted. I’ve always found the studied observation of my natural environs fascinating and educational in equal measure and today was no different. A hare could be seen deliberately traversing the edge of a more distant copse and the aerial ballet of a red kite overhead was spellbinding to behold.
Indeed, it was so thrilling that the magpie’s appearance is only betrayed by the audible displeasure of the crow beneath its feet. As I move to get more comfortable and drop the bipod slightly, the pulse in my neck is visible as a wobble in the scope. Magpies are the only thing in the world that ever do this to me; the ultimate hedgerow nest raider is far rarer than a medalwinning roebuck in my rifle sights. A handful of calm seconds set me right, allowing the end to be both swift and true.
Time to move again. The internet is chock full of opinion and tabulated data, foot pounds of energy, ballistic coefficients and examples of
lightweight ballistic tips versus heavier rimfire rounds. Some of this opinion is learned, some who opine are frankly fantasists. But for terminal effects in a rimfire there is nothing I have ever handled to match the 17-gr HMR round wrapped in sensible Hornady brass but topped with the red lipstick of which your grandmother would certainly not approve.
Calf-high wheat
Red is also the colour of my next appointment and according to the farmer’s youngest son he was keeping a schedule that you could “set your watch by”. I head downhill and push out of the busy woodland. The noticeably flagging terriers are content to settle on the wide strip of shaded headland overlooking a wide vista of calf-high wheat, a shock of monocultured green after the rampant verdance of the coppice and new tree planting behind.
Sitting with the rifle on low sticks directly on the end of the directed tramline I set about scanning the far side of our 90-acre plot, a reassuring cool breeze directly on my face. He appears about 30 minutes late in a determined trot, russet back and darker ears coming in and out of view eclipsed by the emergent crop. His brush is curved and remains slightly visible for most of the time.
Turning right at the bottom of the field then dropping out of view into dead ground, he comes back into view at 60m a full minute later, which seems like an age.
Suddenly stopping and pushing his nose upward — possibly sensing something amiss on the swirling air currents of his daily routine — he stands square on the tramline and drops from view in a millisecond. The terriers course along the parallel tractor rails before stopping at precisely that spot.
Assorted know-all experts aside, being able to despatch a magpie at 120m and take our largest predator cleanly, at sensible range, is precisely why I’m hooked on this terrific little calibre. But the day is not over yet.
Looping back around the wood we cross the stile and walk back into
“The round is topped with the red lipstick of which your grandmother would not approve”
the block of Christmas trees. Here, an old shed is a store for rarely used implements and the trailers used for harvest carting. It’s also home to a reasonable rabbit population, somewhat a rarity for the past few years but now bouncing back to the point where a sustainable harvest is sensible again.
Fattest bunny
I carelessly rattle the broad fore-end of the laminated stock on the metal gate and the bunnies scatter. They return with confidence in only a few minutes and even in the failing light enough choice is soon on offer for me to select the fattest specimen for the game bag. At 50m a simple head shot protects the meat from damage but still drops the substantial coney on the spot.
Grey squirrel, crow, magpie, pigeon, rabbit and fox, six shots for the four most important species to control on my wild bird shoot and a bonus two of the tastiest treats in our wild larder. All are shot with the same ammunition and the same rifle and at ranges of under 50m to well past 100m without any appreciable change in point of aim. The .22 king is dead, long live the new HMR king.
Due to the COVID-19 lockdown we have again engaged the superlative skills of illustrator Simon Trinder