Building the ultimate night critter and small game forest gun

[IvW]

Hornet has 2 bore sizes 223 is the original, it was changed to 224 later.

Gonna fit a 224 barrel

 

[IvW]

I have a HR single shot in 22 hornet, shoots great For coyotes out to 200 it is a fantastic little rifle. For the use on Common diker and down to the little blues I would just reload it with the 55gr FMJ military surplus bullets and wouldn't have to worry about any cape damage, or the Vmax option the Marius mentioned. Either would fit the bill. I keep looking at getting a barrel for my TC encore but just haven't yet.

233Rem/5.56 FMJ military is 62gr or 70gr...

 

[AZDAVE]

@IvW You are correct, but I have a bunch of the 55gr fmj that I picked up like 25-30 years ago that I thought were military surplus. I bought them from a guy at a gun show that was selling them by the pound and had a barrel full of them so I bought 10lbs worth and have been shooting them ever since in the hornet and my 223 bolt gun.

 

[IvW]

@IvW You are correct, but I have a bunch of the 55gr fmj that I picked up like 25-30 years ago that I thought were military surplus. I bought them from a guy at a gun show that was selling them by the pound and had a barrel full of them so I bought 10lbs worth and have been shooting them ever since in the hornet and my 223 bolt gun.

Lucky man...here I will use Rhino 50 and 55gr controlled expansion bullets.

 

[crs]

A photo (taken in a New Mexico prairie dog town) of my solution to the "kill all gun" from years back;

Savage varmint/ turkey hunting combo with scoped .22 Hornet over 3 inch 12 Gauge.
Plus an 18 inch 45-70 barrel insert that is good for deer and such out to 100 yards.
Has taken a lot of game in years past.

 

[spike.t]

.22 hornet

 

[steve white]

I will be ordering a Bergstutzen in calibers 9.3x74R/7×57R 22" (brush gun short range from duiker to eland) and a second set of barrels in 7x65R/6.5×57R 24" (more open areas and mountain terrain duiker to zebra but mostly springbuck, blesbuck, black wildebeest), so there I am covered.

This combo will be for small night critters and forest duikers eg. Genet, African wild cat, Serval, Civet, Caracal, Porcupine, jackal, Honey badger, Guinea fowl, green pigeons, blue duiker, red duiker, Suni, common duiker, monkeys etc. Etc.

Then why not the ..22 WMR?

 

[IvW]

Then why not the ..22 WMR?

Rimfire, not legal for what I want to hunt.....cannot reload for it either....bullets are also too light for my liking.

 

[csmiffy]

disregard. wrote down a stupid answer and cant delete it lol

 

[F. Vaccaro]

The Hornet is a good ctg. I’ve used the Hornet a lot, I will ad if you handload, the brass is soft & you can get case-head separation's, sometimes in as little as 4 reloadings. I load them 3 times then throw them.

 

[Philip Glass]

Currently in the same boat. Looking for a .22 Hornet that will be used on Blue Duiker, Grysbuck up to Common Duiker.
Used a 17 HMR with Hornady V-Max on Dik Dik about two years ago upon advice from the local Namibian. Worked rather well. Their theory was that you won't have an exit with the V-Max, so no damage on the Cape. Looking at implementing that here.

The problem is that for a traveling hunter the .22 Hornet won’t be suitable for larger game. My point is that the .223 can take down other stuff if they get in the way!
Good discussion and I have a .218 Bee, similar to .22 Hornet, that is fun to shoot.