Is the .22 Short dying?

dont know if they are dying, but they are certainly not very common.

i have a little bolt action single shot that i shoot shorts out of, and have maybe a hundred rounds.

the 22 short is somewhat sentimental to me as it was the first thing i ever shot with my dad who's been gone for over 30 years now. fond memories.

The 22 short is going to be buried right between the 20 gauge and 30-30 Winchester.

I was just recently looking around for a 22 short rifle. It didn't seem like anyone is offering anything. Anyone know of any current offerings?

Not much need for the short any more due to the wide variety of options available in the long/long rifle case. You can buy CB longs, long rifle subsonics, long rifle standard velocity, long rifle high velocity, and long rifle hyper velocity cartridges. The only reason I can see for using the short cartridges is to fit more shells in a tubular magazine.

Why is it still around? I have never found a need for it, though I know others have due to it still being made.

lizziedog1, what makes you think that the 20ga. and 30-30 are dying out?

Anyways, I hope that the .22 short lives on, I like the extra capacity when just trying to have fun, and if you have a single shot, its uber quiet.

Live on shorty!!

Remington 552 Speedmaster. Here in New Mexico we use the .22 short exclusively for cottontails. Most cottontails are taken with a single bullet to the head as they sit motionless in mesquite bush from a distance of about 10'-20'. It kills them cleanly and no meat loss.

.22 Short and .22CB are pretty common and popular in my area, though most people I know with .22s shoot all three flavors depending on the situation.

The .22 short is THE cartridge for around our farm for pests. It has a low muzzle report, is accurate and deadly on barn rats, etc.

Dan

I like the Short. I'm probably a little too young to have seen it's heyday, but I still respect it and think it has a place in the scheme of .22 shooting.

I think 2 things really hurt the Short nowadays*. #1, it's not friendly to most semis (Speedmaster notwithstanding), and even a lot of box-mag bolt guns. #2, you have CBs (and other makers' equivalent) that fills some of the role the Short occupies.

That being said, I personally wouldn't expect the CB to dispatch of anything (pest or small game) in a humane fashion - where the Short actually can in some circumstances.


It just depends on if you have guns that can shoot it. A tube full of Shorts in a rifle is pretty fun.




* oh - and modern-day cost. Make that 3 things.

lizziedog1 said:

The 22 short is going to be buried right between the 20 gauge and 30-30 Winchester.

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I hope not I love my 20 gauge 870 and my 30-30 winchester.

I hope not my Glenfield model 25 eats em right up. I use the 22CB for quiet pleasure shooting and occasional pest control. Lately been stocking up on it because it does appear to be disappearing.

I really didn't have any use for the .22short until I bought a beautiful Mossberg M146B-A that really fits me. At 7 pounds and its 26" barrel, it certainly doesn't feel like the typical .22LR of today when shouldered. I probably wouldn't want to carry the thing for extended periods, but I love this rifle.

Out of curiosity, I purchased some .22 short to cycle through the 146B-A and was amazed that the accuracy hardly differed from the .22LR and plenty accurate for chipmunk at 25 yards, squirrel at 50 and so on. It's also surprisingly quiet with the .22 short.

I still don't have a lot of use for the .22 short, but I see it outliving the .22 Long. It's also interesting to know that my Mossberg tube-fed bolt action made probably back in the early 50's (and back before Mossberg serialized their rifles) holds 30 rounds of .22 short.

30 rounds! That would've lastest Opie Taylor weeks on a single tube.
Thirty rounds should have provided plenty rabbit for the pot. But I digress.

I don't think the .22 short holds the same value/important today as it once did, but I think it'll be around for a few more decades before it reaches complete obscurity to the degree of the .22 Velo Dog and cartridges of the ilk (that I would describe as being "dead").

There will probably always be someone loading it, even if for just limited runs (Fiocchi still offers the Velo Dog, for goodness sakes).

P.B.Walsh said:

lizziedog1, what makes you think that the 20ga. and 30-30 are dying out?

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He doesn't. That was just his way of saying that the .22 short would not die.

The 22 Short is alive, but not commonly seen in most stores that carry 22 ammunition. Shorts have their use. I see 22 Shorts for sale (retail) at Sportsman Warehouse when I stop, but it certainly isn't common. Most stores only stock what sells in terms of volume and for general plinking it is certainly cheaper to use 22LR ammo.

I suspect that the popularity of the semi auto 22 rifle is what caused 22 shorts to be not commonly sold and used. These rifles will not generally function with the low powered 22 short.

The 22 Long is indeed probably "dying out".

We also used shorts for coon hunting. The object of shooting a coon is to get it to jump out of the tree and then let the dogs do their thing. We didn't want a high powered round. We just wanted to make the coon mad enough to fight.

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I'm afraid that is a new one for me. I thought the object of coon hunting was to shoot the coon out of the tree for the pelt, NOT let the dogs tear them up.

Slowly, but yes

You can't train a dog without knocking a few coons out on them. And coon hides are pretty much worthless now and have been for 25 years at least. There was a time when those torn up hides brought $40 a pop and they didn't worry about a few holes here and there. I started coon hunting when I was maybe 9 or 10 and hunted for 35 years. It's the best form of hunting there is IMO. I'd still be doing it if I could. My brother had two dogs that were Nite Champions and could easily have been Grand Nite Champions but the first one he had was stolen because it was worth $10,000 for being a Nite Champion. Grand Nite Champions were worth $100,000 so he never entered his dogs in any of the Grand Nite Champion hunts because he knew it would be very hard to keep his dog from being stolen as it was. But he turned down $10k for each of those two blueticks out of Diamond Jim. I'll tell you what, you couldn't stand right next to someone under a tree with one of those dogs barking and scream loud enough for the other person to hear you. That's not just not hearing what you're saying. You couldn't hear them at all. The ground shook when those dogs were treed.

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I grew up around hounds. Treeing Walkers, Running Walkers, Blueticks, Redticks, Redbones, Plotts, Beagles, & Black'N'Tans. There is no finer sound in this world than to hear two or three hounds workin' a trail.

22 shorts......... have a narrow window of useage.
Plus, not all 22`s are designed for them. Still a great round when used as intended. IMO.

You can't train a dog without knocking a few coons out on them.

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I have seen it done once. A swamp many years ago in Northwest Indiana. Multiple shots from a pistol loaded with shorts hit the coon. Then a stick was thrown to knock the coon off a lower branch into the water. The coon was screaming its head off as the pack killed it.

22 Shorts are generally not as accurate as their LR cousins.

Coon hunting as well as generally any hunting with hounds is all about the dogs. A measure of success may well be "how many you get", but it really is about the dogs. Fun stuff.

Shot a lot of tree rats with .22 shorts through my Stevens as a kid. The local gun shop has them but they don't sell many.

I hope not. The tractor-trailer load of squirrels that I dispatched during my reckless, misspent youth all fell to the little .22 Short, and I never used anything other. It came about as a condition of being allowed to hit the hardwood stands unsupervised around age 10. Dear ol' Dad was insightful enough to provide me with enough power to get the job done while cutting down on the risks associated with the extra range of the Long Rifle cartridge, and I just never saw the need for more...so the habit stuck for the remainder of my pursuit of little Bushtail. I called a truce with him some 15 years ago, and now only hunt him in order to watch his antics...but when we were at odds, the .22 Short was plenty medicine for the exercise.

Great little cartridge, if you don't see it around, you ain't lookin' for it.