I shot a ton of grouse with 22 longs growing up in Montana. Used them in Dad's K22 Smith stowed in my daypack when hunting elk in the mountains or in the saddlebag when cleaning trails for the Forest Service. Longs were much more effective than long rifle which passed through too quickly. Sometimes the birds would fly off quite a ways. Longs knocked them over and they didn't get up. Shorts didn't have enough poop. LR hollow points put away grouse very effectively but made a mess. It should be a capital offense ruining the breast of ruffs or blues. Spruce hens were dogfood for my black Lab. Great memories.
I haven't seen longs on the shelf up here in a long time. Uh ... no play on words intended.
.22 Gallery Shorts were the only ammunition I ever used and seen used by shooting booth operators at carnivals, fairs, and amusement parks. Mainly due to the short distances (as in 15 to 25 feet) to the targets. With barely enough powder to knock over some of the targets.
.22 Shorts due to these same close, 15 to 25 feet, ranges often damaged the targets over repeated hits.
When the .22 Long Rifle cartridge came out and became the popular small game caliber, since then over the years 1960's through the 1970's the .22 Short and Long Rifle cartridges faded away into obscurity. Although today the .22 Short seems to be slowly making it's way back.
Since the last time at visited a carnival, county fair, or an amusement park was in the 1980's(?), for whatever reason, the last time and since then, I haven’t seen a shooting gallery at such places. With exception to a couple of fully auto BB shooting galleries where the shooter had to try to shoot out a star shaped target to win a prize.
I lucked into maybe a box or so of very old .22 Long cartridges, along with several boxes of .22 Short, and the old crimped mouth .22 Short, .22 Long, and .22 Long Rifle "Bird Shot" cartridges vintage 1960's or early 1970's (judging by the partal boxes amongst the loose mixed cartridges).
lt would be nice if ammunition manufacturers would produce ammunition for these vintage/ antique firearms for those of us that own these firearms so we could take them out and periodically use them again.
