I’ve been asked a lot recently about the 22 Creedmoor.  Having run fast 22 cal cartridges for the past 40 years now I’ve pretty much seen them all and have built most of them.  The 22-243 and its variants were always a popular one.  The problem was it was very finicky.  My favorite up until recently has been the 22-250 Ackley.  This case had the perfect capacity for performance, yet it wasn’t so overbore that any environmental change would push it over the edge.  Folks have been wildcatting the 22 Creedmoor for years now, ever since the 6.5 Creedmoor came out.  Recently Hornady submitted it to SAAMI for approval after being pushed by Kaspar/Horizon Firearms here in Texas.  This is a good thing since more brass and ammo will be available now.  I decided to build one for myself as a hog and coyote rifle awhile back.  It has quickly become my favorite high performance 22 cal.  Performance is a little more than the 22-250 Ackley but no fireforming and it doesn’t have the finickiness of the 22-243 cartridges.  It is also one that I get asked for frequently here in Texas for predator control and even deer hunting.  This past week while I was breaking in rifles, I had 3 of them in different barrel lengths ranging from 20-22”.  My rifle is built with an 18” barrel so I thought it would be fun to run the same ammo through all 4 rifles and see what the speeds were since a common question is “how short can I go?”.  This is with my standard load consisting of Varget, Sierra 69gr TMK, 210M Primer and Hornady brass.  All rifles have an 8 Twist, which will stabilize the 80gr bullets easily at this speed.

As you can see, this is very good performance.  Velocity from 18”-20” is 15.5 fps/inch and 20”-22” is 38 fps/inch.  The handloads were 10 round strings each to come up with the average speed and extreme spread.  The factory ammo pretty much followed the same pattern, but I only shot 5 rounds of it through each rifle, so I didn’t record the extreme spready numbers.  It was very consistent and shot under ½”.  Accuracy with the TMK load is outstanding as can be seen below on the test targets a 5 shot 300yd group out of my rifle that can almost be covered with the case head of the 22 Creedmoor (and yes, it was witnessed by 3 other guys at the range, they took the photo).

In my personal rifle I have shot 69 and 75gr bullets out of it at around the same speed using Varget with the 69’s and RL16 with the 75’s.  Now before people start saying these loads aren’t safe, I have an Oehler ballistic lab that I can and do measure chamber pressures.  This along with the fact that my brass is on its 9^th firing does not indicate high pressure and I’m running Hornady brass to boot.  My loads are on the upper end, but they are not over pressure.  The 69gr TMK load is running just under 63K on pressure, but it shoots so well that I’m not going to mess with it.  Really any more speed and it may not work as well on hogs when shot in the shoulder.  I run a 40yd zero and out to 320yds at my normal hunting elevations it never goes above or below 2.4” from the center of my crosshair.  Makes for quick “point and shoot” under most night hunting situations with a thermal.

If you are looking for a high performance and easy to tune/shoot 22 cal rifle, the 22 Creedmoor is a tough one to ignore.  A person can run heavier bullets such as the 80gr for smaller deer like we have here in Texas and other Southern states and then switch over to some lighter stuff for predator/hog hunting.  Low recoil and great performance make it a great option for youth and women hunters as well.  I’m not saying that people should be out hunting elk and bear with this round, but a 140lb whitetail would not stand a change if using a proper bullet and sensible ranges.

This was an interesting test, and I’ll hopefully be making some more comparisons over the next few months with other cartridges.  With suppressors being easier to acquire these days my guess is that we will start seeing shorter barrels becoming more common.  The key will be to see where performance really falls off vs the convenience of having a shorter rifle.  Stay tuned for more……….