ds92
GOOD QUALITY bolts with good quality ammo are ~very much~ more accurate than even the best quality and/or highly modified semi auto rifles. let me know if you ever see a semi auto 22 rifle competing in the olympics.
"1/4" @ 50yds"....try one hole instead.
that said, few really need that level of accuracy. surely not for hunting/target practice. and single shot 22 bolts reload painfully slow. you just have to decide your intended use(s) and go with the best compromise.
you can get better results, even with brick ammo from a semi auto by sorting your cartridges with a rim gauge. .22LR firearms are very sensitive to variations in rim thickness, when impact repeatability is the main concern. this way if you are needing a precise shot from it for hunting or target use, a plain vanilla semi can do quite well, compared to when it shoots unsorted ammunition.
BELOW FROM:
http://www.lasc.us/RangingShot15-4.htm
Stoney Point Rimfire Headspace Gauge
Ever have one of those mysterious fliers when shooting rimfire ammo. You know what I mean - where everything is lined up perfectly, trigger pull is perfect, sight picture is perfect, everything’s perfect and yet, in spite of all that perfection, the shot goes off somewhere into the blue. We’ve all had this experience - even when using premium ammunition.
22 benchrest shooters are well aware of this phenomenon and so naturally are really persnickety about their competition ammo. It’s not unusual for them to go through extensive testing to determine not only what particular brand and type of ammunition works best in their gun, but also what lot of that particular ammunition works best. Once they discover that, they’ll often spend thousands and thousands of dollars and buy as much of that lot that they can lay their hands on. It doesn’t stop there either. Then, before a match, they’ll use a 22 headspace gauge to check every individual round that will be used that day in order to make sure that every cartridge has the exact same rim thickness. 22 benchrest shooters know that headspace or rim thickness affects accuracy.
There are three basic philosophies about this issue. One is that you use the gauge to find the rim thickness that your individual gun likes best. The second is that you use the gauge to weed out the 22 cartridges whose rim headspace is significantly thinner or thicker than the average or typical rim thickness for that particular brand/lot of ammo. The third and most common is that you use the gauge for both purposes. A 22 benchrester without a rimfire headspace gauge is either a newbie or a very rare duck.
I won’t even begin to suggest that silhouette shooters go to the same lengths as the bench guys, but never the less, we can take a lesson from them. Sorting rimfire ammo by headspace, even premium rimfire ammo, has value in order to weed out that one in a 100 or even that one in 500 flier that will turn a perfect 40, 60, or 80 into something less. If you’re using less than premium ammo, those odds go up.
gunnie
