Anyone shooting Ruger 77/22 in 22 Hornet?

Nope, but am interested....I got one to use about 15 years ago and have never fired a shot out of it. It's brand new in the gun cabinet. I always wondered how it would shoot.

i have a M77 mkII and the 99% drop in timney trigger made mine like 2lbs...nice and crisp

a relative is shooting one and his is not floated. That rifle is a tack driver with a Weaver fixed 4. He is reloading.

had one a couple years ago mine to also had a weaver 4x. great little rifle, carried well and shot excellent, traded on a whim and although i didnt shoot it often i regretted it.

after performing all the usual accuracy related handloading and smithing tricks my 77H target model was at best a 3MOA rifle on average.

Needless to say it didn't stay long

I have had mine for about 17 years and liked it very much for small game hunting. Not all that accurate but fun to shoot. If your looking for it to be a sub moa rifle, you may find it frustrating

I loaded mine with between 10.5 and 12 grains of WW296 and 40 grain nosler ballistic tips and it would shoot about 1.5 MOA at 100 yards (on a good day).

I found 10.5 - 11 grains to be the sweet spot with respect to speed and usable accuracy, I would get about 2850-2950 fps with the 40 grain ballistic tips with those charges.

I killed about 10,000 jack rabbits, a dozen feral cats, 5 coyotes and 1 javelina with it between 1994 and 2007.

In 2007 I sent it off to Connecticut Precision Chambering and had it rechambered to 22K Hornet.

I fire formed my hornet brass to K hornet with a load of 11 grains of WW296 and Noslers 40 grain Ballistic Tips.

That load would shoot bug hole groups at 100 yards. The same load in the fire formed k hornet brass would open up to 1.5".

I tried to get Speers 33 grain TNT's to shoot in it but accuracy with those was terrible regardless of the velocity/powder charge.

Noslers 35 graiin ballistic tips shot ok regardless of speed ( about 1.5 MOA).

After having CPC rechamber it and that not helping accuracy all that much I switched over to using 223 for small game hunting and the K hornet has been sitting in the safe for the last 3 years.

mine shoots 35 vmaxs ahead of 1680 into 3/4s of an inch. Guns as it came out of the box.

mine shoots very well with 40gr v max and Lil Gun, get great velocity and accuracy. Mine is not floated, I floated it one day with a shim to see if it would shoot better and it shot worse so I put it back like it was and left well enough alone. I get 5 shot groups between 3/4- 1".

1680 and 4227 work well too.

An interesting article on the Ruger 22 Hornet.

http://www.leverguns.com/articles/paco/22hornet.htm

I need to buy some lighter 224 caliber bullets. All of the slugs I have around here at 65 grains or more. I need to find some 45s and 50s. Plus I need to make a trip up the highway so I can buy some Lil-Gun powder.

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Try the Hornady V-Max in 35 grains. I load this bullet for my Kimber Model 82, and its short nose makes it easy to load right into the rifling without being too long to run through the magazine.

I use the cartridge itself as a power measure -- dip it full, tap it to settle the powder and put it in the loading block. Once the loading block is full, check with a flashlight to be sure all cases are full to the same level.

Finally, I use the Lee Collet die and put a couple of washers on the shell holder. This causes the die to activate early, and only size the front half of the neck, leaving the rest of the neck to act as a pilot, centering the bullet in the throat.

FloatPilot;
Thats about what I got from the M77/22 carbine I had. Take a look at your brass. If it dosen't look just right, (expanded and odd looking) it was cut with the same worn-out reamer they cut the one I had with......

One "trick" I found out back in the '70's with a T/C Contender I had was to full length size the brass just enough to "uniform" the body of the case so that they would lie uniformly in the chamber. This at least made them shoot a little more consistently. It works with my current "Hornet" too.

You have to "spank" the 50gr bullets good to get adequate stabilization from some Hornets. However, most Rugers are cut with a 1/14" twist, so should shoot even 55gr bullets "ok". Mine have, but I prefer the 40-45gr bullets personally.

Except with a few loads that MY rifle LIKES, that is generally what you can expect from the Hornet. Thats about what my M77/22H-KBZ (stainless bull barrel w/laminate stock) does. I've tweaked the trigger to about 2.5lbs, free-floated the barrel, and glass-bedded the action.
Lastly, it can take over 500rds to get the barrel to shoot in initially, so give it a little time to smooth out.......
Welcome to the club. You'll forever love/hate the little cartridge.

I have tons of experience reloading for my awful Anschutz 22 Hornet, with the help of an outside expert I finally got it shooting well, though I get high pressure signs even with Lil' Gun and brass life is very short.

Recently my neighbor loaned me his Ruger 77/22 Hornet with the request to find a good load for it. Factory ammo of all types that he had on hand yielded 1.5-2.5" 3 shot groups at 100. And the trigger, WOW, SO BAD! 35 grain Hornady's were sadly lacking in accuracy. 40 grain Sierras (crimped) with 12 or 12.5 grains Lil' Gun and small pistol primers got me right at 1" for 3 shots at 100 with a 4x Leupold. I'm satisfied with that, I feel it's quite reasonable for a Hornet with an awful trigger and a sloppy two piece bolt.

Vern did you glue the washers on the shell holder and then cut a open channel or just slide them over the whole cartridge case?

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I just drop them over the case.

I seem to be on the right track. While making it longer does not let me use the magazine, at least I might eventually might be able to hit something single shot. Ruger obviously made the throat too long.

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Have you tried the Hornady 35 grain V-Max? The various weights of V-Max bullets have the same shank length, and differ in the length of the noses. The 35 grain bullet has such a short nose I can load it right into the rifling and it still feeds through the magazine of my Kimber M82.

It's not so much that Ruger made the throat too long, it's that the Hornet was originally designed and intended to use more blount bullets. Hornady did a great job of designing the 35gr V-max. On all the .22Hornets I've loaded this bullet for, you can easily load it to touch the lands and still feed them through the magazine. Ditto the Sierra 40 and 45gr "Hornet" bullets. But, I've not found it to aid accuracy significantly. YMMV. I do prefer H110/Win296 powder for this application.

I've found that by using a dremmel tool on the foward portion of the magazine insert on the Ruger magazine, you can get a few thousandths of bullet clearance and get almost 1.8" of space. However, what that exactly gets you is debateable.

My favorite load is a 40gr Sierra "Varminter" hollow point loaded to 1.78" with Winchester primers over 12.5gr of Lil'Gun. This gets over 3,000fps in my rifle and does quite well anything I can reasonalbly ask of my "Hornet". Shoots reliably to 1.25moa. One evening I killed 4 deer with 4 shots with this load and didn't even move from my prone position shooting under a barbwire fence onto a field. All four were taken with head shots........ The deer couldn't tell where I was because of the mild report, and ran back and forth like squirrels in a road..... Till there were no more.
My Hornet just works.... Not a sub-moa tack-driver, but still; it works.......
I now feel the urge to take in out to the range an burn up some of those 33gr Remington V-max's I bought on sale a while back.....

BTW- FloatPilot; I enjoyed your web-page. I'm too am a CFI,CFII, MEI, own a C150 I use for instruction, and fly a C421B and a PA32RT300 for a couple of clients.... Hope some day to spend a summer flying in Alaska......

I have two of the 77/22H SS Allweather rifles both shoot 0.6 to 0.4 inch 5 shot groups at 100 yrds off the bench when the wind is not to brisk. In one I installed a Volquartsen target sear and sear spring and in the other a Jard trigger. I could not make either rifle shoot less then 1.5 inch groups until I had free floated the barrels. I found the 40 gr. V-Max seated to an OAL of 1.80 inches (just feeds through the magazine) works well in both rifles and the bullet is only about 0.035 off the lands. Powder is 13.0 gr LilGun for one rifle and 13.3 gr. for the other. Small pistol primer and partial full length sizing using FL sizer and sizing only the front 0.25 inches of the neck, leaving part of the neck at fired dia. and just "touching" the body but not the shoulder. I don't crimp the bullets and don't have any problem with the bullet being pushed in or moving due to recoil. Pressure with the 40 gr bullet and LilGun is very mild and with partial FL sizing case life seems my fine, most of my current group of cases are on their fifth loading and I am not seeing any case head separation indications, I think I may eventually start loosing cases to split necks, but haven't seen that yet.

Good luck with your 77/22H, I have really been enjoying mine.

Rockhunter