My Henry 001 Lever-action takes shorts, longs and long rifles. The longs probably don't have any special advantages, but a local store sold me a CCI hundred-pack of .22 shorts that some shoplifter had taken a few rounds out of. I got a good deal due to damaged packaging. I found the shorts good for 25-30 foot close range target practice. During the "Great Ammo Shortage of 2008-2009 it was good to have a rifle that fired shorts because a lot of the stores still had them on the shelves when the .22LR was not to be found.