Short-range varminting on the cheap with rimfire?

Rimfire 22 and little critters are made for each other. Being quiet and not moving too quickly should be pretty easy to get within 75 yards or less of any ground squirrels or groundhogs I've chased over the years. I would recommend a different bullet for the little guys if you have a choice. Bullet type will make a big difference in terminal results. Yellow jackets and other hyperspeed 30-ish grain hollowpoints will give much better performance for the small stuff. The wildcats tend to be a little more durable and may poke holes rather than expand in the little guys. By the way, winchester makes the Wildcats in two flavors. The higher velocity 1435 fps 40gr HPs are very good for dispatching bigger animals like groundhogs, possums, and raccoons with a solid body hit.

.22 is great for small critters. Ammo makes a huge difference. If your shooting round nose lead I would ONLY take headshots, they will not put down a raccoon or possum with any authority if you hit them in the chest. It’s worth spending a few extra cents per round for good quality hollow points.

The 22 is the perfect small varmint gun if you respect its limitations. I have about a dozen 22s and all get used in their turn as varmint guns, whether its a possum in the henhouse or a groundhog in the garden. My go to ammo is CCI mini mags, never had anything crawl off yet. Used to really like Remington yellow jackets, but they're unobtainable now. Regardless of ammo, I keep my shots in the 50-60 yard range, with the occasional 75 yard stretch. Anything further gets the 17 or 22 mag, or the .222 or 243 as distance and critter size dictate.

As to the rifle, I have a CZ 457, it may be my favorite of all my rimfires. Bottom line the most accurate 22 I've ever owned or shot. Mine is the American model, and wears a 4x28 Leupold scope. I can find absolutely no problems with either. If I could only have one, it'd be the CZ, so spend the money for a good scope and rifle. You won't be sorry.

Regarding groundhogs, I've killed many with paps old Winchester 37 16 gadgets and high brass sixes. Given it was the only gun I was permitted to use at the tender age of 12, I learned right quick how to be sneaky! I admit, I usually only shot one chuck at a time; 12 year old me had a devil of a time toting two home at once!

Mac

I have a lot of respect for groundhogs. They are tough, and due to their position on the food chain, very vigilant. Shoot at them once and miss, and they get very smart. Miss twice and they get a PhD. They can be killed with a .22 if everything goes according to plan. In my experience (CCI Mini Mags) body shots usually result in them crawling back into the hole, or under my shed, even at shorter ranges like 30 or 40 yds. For varmint control, that is effective but not sporting by my definition.

Groundhogs are tough indeed. Back when I helped both my friend and a local farmer with woodchuck culling, my friend and I came up with guidelines for 22LR usage. Which were: 50 yards or less was fair game and it was head shots only which is the best way to stop them instantly. Like Laphroaig mentioned, many groundhogs will still make it down their hole when wounded with body shots only to die a slow, painful death. We discovered this because after a woodchuck expires underground any other woodchucks in that den will drag the deceased one out a few days later when it begins to get "ripe". Whereupon all the local scavengers will finish the cleanup job. We always tried to be ethical about it out of respect for those tough little critters.

22250Rem said:

Groundhogs are tough indeed.

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Opossums are the toughest ive encountered. Came upon a sickly one once. It wasnt scared of us or our shouting and lights. Its like it didnt even know we were literally 4 feet from it. After a couple minutes of pondering, i shot it with a 22. Took 3 more bullets for it to stop moving. I am a opossum lover, but dont like animals spreading disease.

I killed several groundhogs and many a striped gopher with a browning buckmark silhouette (w 10” heavy barrel) and a Leupold 4x pistol scope.
It is great fun.
Note: once while entertaining myself stalking gophers and wearing camo head to toe, my wife and 3 vehicles full of garden club ladies made a surprise visit on a member’s garden tour. I was hiding in the landscaping but was able to exfil to the back door of the house when they went around front. Me looking a lot like Carl in caddieshack.

Geoundhogs can be tough dudes.
Ive shot em w .22 rf pistol and rifle, out to 50 yards.

Expect some to die down in the hole. We score those as a miss.

So.....22 mag is mo betta. And .243 win is the cats meow.

I like .22rf but neve shoot promo stuff. Its not consistent enough. I dont consider CCI Blazer promo ammo as it has done repeatedly well in a few rifles and pistols
If you consider an inch or under at 50 yards good ( but not sub half inch ).

Sub half inch has been attained w match ammo.

Old habits i guess, but I won't hunt chucks rimfire unless HV or Hyper V.

The old Winchester Supermax was fantastic in an AMT 10.5". Too hot for it though, cracked MS body where bolt stop pin pivoted.

Ive done OK w yellowjackets. But havent seen any for sale in ages

I have a 14" contender in 22 mag so havent gone after chucks rimfire since I sold my Anschutz 184. And i didnt see any when I took it LOL

My older son and I would hunt prairie dogs out to 125 to 130 yards with a customized 10-22 heavy barrel. Just get or build a good quality .22 and scope and it'll work for you.

BringHomeTheBacon said:

How close will ground squirrels, woodchucks and prairie dogs let you get to them before they spook back into their burrows? Does varminting with a 22 Long Rifle require a lot of stalking skills? CZ makes a number of nice-looking .22 bolt-action rifles. They also make some .22 WMR and some .17 HMR guns but that is not exactly thrifty ammo. At my local Academy, I can now get a box of Winchester Super-X Power-Point 22 LR 40-Grain Rimfire Ammunition - 222 Rounds and just a buck's worth of those could give me up to 7 dead chucks or gophers taken within a half a football field depending on my own personal level of Kentucky windage. Imagine seven rodents for just under an All-American George Washington greenback! The catch 22 of the lowly 22 is severely limited range. I just read that 50 yards is tops for ethical varminting with a twenty-two long rifle. 100 yards might be OK for plinking cans, rocks or two-liters. I was thinking about getting a varminting AR, but I'm now gathering that .223 and/or 5.56 ammo actually worthy of varminting is not terribly thrifty. 22 LR still seems the best deal in town for eliminating small critters if one prefers a gun powered by burning powder as opposed to compressed air or CO2. The CZ 457 American is a pretty-looking little pea-shooter for retail under $600.

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I don't think you would ever regret getting a CZ rimfire. I have 2 am thinking about another one. And you can switch from .22 LR to Magnum or .17 HMR by switching barrels. They do shoot premium ammo really well. Some rifles don't respond to good ammo. I also have a Ruger American Rimfire in .22 Mag that shots really well.

When I was a high school kid I made a little money hunting prairie dogs for local farmers. I used my Dad's old Winchester model 62 pump .22 rifle, with the basic iron sights. The prairie dogs had towns of maybe 10 or 20 individual tunnels, with a pile of dirt encircling the opening of each tunnel. I would find a way to sneak to within 50 yds or so, using natural cover and low spots to slowly belly crawl until I was within that range, without showing myself at all. The prairie dogs would be out doing their thing, eating and messing around, but keeping a watchful eye on everything. The trick was to not let any of them see me before I was within range and had my rifle aimed at them. I would line up on the closest one, aim for his head, and take the shot. I only wanted to hit them in the head, because that would drop them instantly and they wouldn't run down their hole to die, and get lost down there. I needed their tails in order to get paid. So after that shot I would just keep laying there, or maybe move a little to a better spot, and wait. After 10 minutes or so I would start seeing little clods on the dirt piles around the holes getting bigger and bigger. Pretty soon a clod would develop a black dot. That's a prairie dog's eye and he's slowly raising his head, looking around for danger. I would keep laying perfectly still, barely looking under the bill of my cap, watching and waiting. After another few minutes one of the prairie dogs would stand up and start looking around. When he decided things were safe again he would start chirping and then all the other prairie dogs would stand up. It was pretty cool to see. They looked like little zombies popping up out of their graves.Then I would pick out the easiest shot and shoot. Down they would all go again. This process would repeat maybe one more time, and then they would all just stay down for a long time. So I would go get my prairie dogs and move along. So it was one shot, and wait, another shot and wait some more, and then maybe a 3rd shot and that was it for a few days. I think I got 50 cents per tail and that was pretty good money. A gallon of gas for my Cushman scooter cost 30 cents, an ice cream cost a dime, and a box of .22 long rifle shells cost 75 cents. That was a long time ago. A nice modern scoped .22 rifle would be great, but one advantage of the old timey iron sights was that my rifle and I didn't show up very well. It made me harder for the prairie dogs to see. I still have that rifle. It's taught a bunch of kids and a couple of adults to shoot over the years.

A .22 rimfire will kill quite large animals (I've slaughtered cattle and pigs with one) if the shot is precise. The bigger the animal, the more precise it must be to be humane and effective. I would not shoot anything larger than what we call a gopher (Richardson ground squirrel if you want to google it) if the range is more than 50 yards. I have shot many gophers at longer ranges because the round is quite lethal on animals that size, but any wind at all, and you will never be able to hold "on" the animal any more, and that means you do not have enough precision for anything bigger. Add some necessary elevation to the windage and I am guessing most of the time. Sometimes, I have actually "walked" the shots onto the unlucky animal like they do with artillery. It's fun, but not precise. So keep the living targets small, or the ranges very short.

I agree with Aletheia. Most 22 LR rifles don't group well much beyond 50 yards. See the prove it thread. I like to use my .22 Mag beyond that range or a .17 HMR would be great too.

I have killed tons and tons of prairie dogs with a 10/22. One of the ranched I helped work on was near Tahoka, TX. There were millions of pd's and you would go broke trying to thin them with a CF rifle. I have also had good luck with the .22 on most other small critters. When I am purposely going after racoon sized or bigger, I like to switch to the .22 mag or the .17 HMR. It hits noticable harder than the .22lr and is better for racoon, beavers, and other similar sized things that might bite back.

The CZ you are looking at would make a great rifle! As d2wing mentioned you can get a .22 Mag/17 HMR barrel to swap out when needed. I have a set up like this for my CZ 455 LUX and it works great. I like the 17 to get a little more range and the .22 Mag to get more power.

Rimfire varminting can be addicting, so forewarned is forearmed!

Good luck and let us know what you choose and how it shoots.

Great advice given in previous posts...looks like a .22LR should do fine.
Being within city limits I have had to use a .177 RWS Model 48 air rifle to put down several groundhogs that were residing under the garage...but those were 10-15 yd. head shots from the enclosed back porch window. They would immediately scatter whenever they had spotted anyone outside.