Which do you find more all around useful, a 22 pistol or a 22 rifle?

I like 22's in pistol and rifle,but if I just had to have one it would be a rifle.
Preferably in the form of a 10/22.

As Elmer Keith said, a handgun is a weapon of opportunity. It's the gun you always have with you, and many a time when not hunting you get an opportunity to take game with it -- or defend yourself from a feral dog, and so on.

I normally hunt with a .22 rifle (Kimber M82 usually) but always carry a handgun -- even when walking out to the county road to get the mail.

In using the question "what do I find most useful" I have to say the 22 Rifle. The useful and not necessarily enjoyable comes to mind. I have both and shoot both but these days I find myself shooting and enjoying rifles a bit more.

I think people would be shocked at how quickly game animals would be depleted if they were hunted year round en masse for survival.

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I think a large percentage of people would be shocked at how quickly they'd stave in the richest game country.

Hunting pressure in a true survival TEOTWAWKI situation wouldn't be much more than now -- because most people are lousy hunters.

That's interesting. Imagine if the animals were being shot at they'd become very skittish if not move out of the area eventually.

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Given the skills of the average city dweller, how would he ever even see an animal to shoot at it?

If all the roads were lined with city boys looking for a deer, the deer would simply move a couple of hundred yards deeper into the woods and be perfectly safe.

The question implies I find a .22 LR useful at all. Which, for my applications, I don't.

Useful for what?

IMHO, in a survival situation, we would run out of wild critters real fast.

Punching paper at the range is what most people do with most of their firearms, from what I have observed

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Uh, yeah. You need to get out more guy. The vast majority of gun owners use their guns for self defense, hunting and target shooting. Check out the Gallup Poll on the subject on this web page. Self defense is slightly the highest listed use for guns but the difference is very small. What the poll mostly shows is that gun owners use their guns for many reasons. Just for the record of all the guns I own only about 4 or 5 would be used for actual target shooting. I will sometimes shoot a few others at the range but only to practice for self defense purposes. Most of my guns never see a range. That would probably mean at least 80% of my guns never go to the range.

Any good fixed barrel auto is good for at least an inch at 50yds. Many will do better. Some will even halve that. If you can't reliably take small game out to 75yds, it's your own fault.

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I always bring both a .22 pistol and rifle when i hit the range. For general hiking, a Ruger mk III on my hip with a spare mag in my vest pocket and a pill bottle filled with about 50the more rounds.
If I were heading out on foot for an indefinite period of time, I think I would opt to take the rifle. However, i would be able to feed myself pretty well for a good while with my only my pistol.

In short....i dunno

.22 revolver - It fits my trapping bucket.

Cee Zee... in fairness... those of us that hunt, and use our guns for self defense spend more time punching holes in paper WITH those same guns for that same purpose than we do actually harvesting game or shooting bad guys.

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Punching paper at the range is what most people do with most of their firearms, from what I have observed

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Uh, yeah. You need to get out more guy. The vast majority of gun owners use their guns for self defense, hunting and target shooting. Check out the Gallup Poll on the subject on this web page. Self defense is slightly the highest listed use for guns but the difference is very small. What the poll mostly shows is that gun owners use their guns for many reasons. Just for the record of all the guns I own only about 4 or 5 would be used for actual target shooting. I will sometimes shoot a few others at the range but only to practice for self defense purposes. Most of my guns never see a range. That would probably mean at least 80% of my guns never go to the range.

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Condescending much?

I've carried a handgun for self defense purposes for a darn long time. I've never shot a bad guy with one, though. Cleared my coat a couple of times, cleared leather once.

In that same time period, I've fired untold thousands of rounds at the range - target shooting.

Most of my friends are gun owners, and will tell you similar stories, even the ones who have had to use those handguns all the way to dropping a hammer on someone.

Hunters of my acquaintance spend many more rounds at the range punching paper in preparation for hunting than they do on game animals, as do I. Perhaps that means that I am a terrible hunter. That is quite possible. It is even possible that everyone I know is a terrible hunter. But the fact remains that, with all the time I do spend at the range I am a member of, I see people spending lots of time and money shooting ammo at paper with guns of all descriptions.

A gun is a tool for shooting holes in stuff. What are you going to shoot it at most of the time, if not targets? Money can buy lots of guns. It can buy bullets. But it can't buy those perforated targets. That is why I can comfortably say that most gun owners of my acquaintance spend a lot more time shooting paper than they do actually using their guns in any other way, with the notable exception of carrying around a defensive pistol. In that case, you can quite convincingly argue that they are using it on a daily basis, even if they never fire it at anything at all.

Cee Zee... in fairness... those of us that hunt, and use our guns for self defense spend more time punching holes in paper WITH those same guns for that same purpose than we do actually harvesting game or shooting bad guys.

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You guys don't know the same hunters I do. I have always been around people that never picked up a gun unless they were going hunting. And most of my guns have never punched a hole in any paper of any kind. I gave a link to a survey for pity's sake. I wasn't being condescending. I was being truthful.

Lets' talk about my brothers. Both have been excellent shots as long as I can remember. They are both older than me. I have never once saw either one shoot a hole in a target. Never. They were avid hunters for 50 years until their bodies couldn't take them out to do the kind of hunting they love, coon hunting. But they both did a lot of squirrel hunting. For one summer in my life they got together once a week to shoot at pignuts or actually they shot at the stems that held them on to the tree in the front yard of the house we grew up in. Other than that I've never seen them do any kind of practice more than shooting one box of ammo with a pistol once every 4 or 5 years. My oldest brother has never owned a pistol though. He told me recently that he had rarely ever shot a pistol.

Yet those guys hunted hard for many, many years. When coon hides were bringing big money they were making big money by bringing in those hides. They must have shot 1000 of them over the course of 10 years or so when the prices were high. But they went even when the prices were down.

So yeah those guys shot at game probably 30-1 over shooting at any sort of a target and they never shoot holes in paper at all.

Now let's talk about the guys we knew in the outdoorsman club. Those guys were all like us. I never shot at more than 4 or 5 targets in my life until about 5 years ago BTW. Now I shoot targets and my brothers make fun of me for doing it. But all those guys in the club were like us. They didn't shoot for the sport of shooting. They shot to hunt.

You guys are from an entirely different culture than I am. I've been around people like this my entire life. The only practice shooting I ever saw was shooting clays to practice for quail hunting. We didn't need to practice on targets. We had varmints to shoot and we shot them when we felt like shooting. Bats were about our favorite targets. We shot them because they can be a deadly nuisance. They carry rabies, they nest in houses and they defend their nests by attacking anyone who gets near the nest. So we kept them away from our house by shooting them.

Just because the people you know are like you and shoot at gun ranges that doesn't mean the vast majority of people do that. A lot of them do but it certainly isn't some huge majority. I linked to a survey by a reputable company on the subject.

One other thing. You talk about people who carry guns for SD shooting more targets than shooting at people. That might be true but I certainly know people who carried a gun for SD for years and never shot it for anything much less for target practice. He would keep a gun for 15 years and never shoot it more than enough to see that it worked. That guy was my dad. I knew others like him too. Like my uncles and just about everyone else in my community at the time.

Not everyone shoots at ranges. I never went to a range until about 4 years ago. Never. But I can shoot very well thank you. We learned by shooting at things we needed to eat.

All I said was that guns were used for other reasons than shooting targets and it's true. I know that for a fact. I'll give one more example here. My mother's brother was a primary provider of food for my mother's family after my grandfather left my grandmother for some rich woman who liked the fact he was a pitcher for the Reds. My grandmother would give my uncle TWO shells and tell him to bring home something to eat. And he did just that. Yes they were poor but they certainly overcame it. Within 10 years my uncle owned a chain of gas stations in Los Angeles. My mother married my father who made $45,000 at his regular job plus what he made building houses and farming. My mother became a nurse. So back in the late 60's early 70's they were bringing in $100,000 a year between the two of them. That was big money then. But my uncle still keeps his guns around because he knows things can go wrong again and he'll need to feed himself.

I know not everyone is like we were. We were genuine hillbillies and proud of it. My mother went to school with Loretta Lynn if that tells you anything. There are millions of us though and the vast majority of them never dreamed of using a gun for entertainment. It was too expensive. Guns were tools and we used them as tools. From my mother stopping a would be rapist to my grandfather standing down a gang of bank robbers with a shotgun we certainly knew what a gun was good for. And at times we did use them as entertainment but by far the biggest use we had for them was to put food on the table or money in our pockets. That's the hillbilly way guys. And there are millions of us.

So ... most of the people you know are like you, and most of the people I know are like me ... Isn't that interesting?

To me "all around useful" means I would have that particular gun with me at any time that I might need it. That would make a .22LR pistol much more versatile and useful to have than trying to carry a rifle along with me wherever I go.

The obvious answer is...both.
A decent rimfire rifle along with a good rimfire handgun is one of the best combinations in firearms.

I really don't enjoy the snarky arguments here.

Duplicate post, due to screwy wifi.

To answer the question as asked I would have to say rifle as it is more accurate, but I immediately wish to add why not both/

If the challenge is between a guy that uses a box of ammo a year shooting rabbits and squirrels and a guy that burns 20,000rds a year punching paper, my money is on the paper puncher. If it's between those two and a guy who supplements his family's meat supply with wild game throughout the year AND burns 20,000rds at targets, then he has the clear advantage. There are advantages to both but there simply is no substitute for trigger time.

Cee Zee said:

I never shot at more than 4 or 5 targets in my life until about 5 years ago BTW. Now I shoot targets and my brothers make fun of me for doing it. But all those guys in the club were like us. I never went to a range until about 4 years ago. Never.

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I'm curious what has made you take up range shooting?

I grew up in the far far suburbs of a large city and hardly went to a range either since I could just go out on the land or I could drive out to someone else's land. Sure, I did some paper target shooting, but that was almost entirely while in the Boy Scouts.

This all changed for me about 10 or so years ago. Urban sprawl passed me by reducing my access to nearby land so I just moved further into the urban environment to shorten my time in traffic. That's because my job will forever be tied to cities. The result for me is I spend at least 50% of my shooting time punching paper now. I still get to shoot some non-paper plinking targets in the woods about twice a month, but it sure isn't like it was before.

Also, I've never been to an indoor gun range until about 5 years ago either. That is another transition to urban shooting and the increase in my handgun ownership due to that urban transition.

Anyway, I was wondering if what happened to me also happened to others here at THR.

This one is off the rails like a crazy train. Good night now.