G22 comments
I like my G22 a lot, but it is not perfect. I have been very pleased with the accuracy out to 50 yards (<2 inches), but the groups spread out a lot at 100 yards. On the other hand, firing from a bipod I can put 40 rounds in an 8" circle at 75 yards very quickly, which is a great deal of fun for about $1 in ammo cost.
Most of my competitive shooting is metal silhouettes, so I am mostly shooting CCI mini-mag (36 gr), which has an incredibly flat trajectory for the four distances that our rifle club uses for silhouette matches (25/50/75/100 yards). This ammo gives me more failures to extract than I like -- about 1 out of 20 rounds -- but it is worth it to not have to worry so much about estimating holdover as I switch distances.
I also shoot CCI Green label, CCI Stinger, Federal Match, and some miscellaneous stuff. The rifle seems happy enough with all of them, though some brands seem to have a lot of primer failures (especially the cheaper Federal stuff). About 1/3 of the time these will fire if you rotate them 90 degrees in the chamber. (I eject them and let them sit for several minutes before trying this -- no sense getting a hangfire in the face....)
I do not like the trigger at all. I am not comfortable with the dual-stage approach -- it goes against my safety training to pull up the slack on the trigger and then wait to fire. I am much more comfortable keeping my finger off the trigger entirely and then having a single-stage pull when I am on target. Several folks have reported good luck with replacing the trigger bar with a stiffer and slightly longer version, and that is likely to be my next project.
The rifle is currently equipped with the Walther laser (that I cannot see at all when I am at the outdoor range) and with a 4x (32mm) fixed magnification Nikon scope. I hacked an M16 bipod to fit on the front rails, since I don't have a lot of interest in tactical flashlights.
Important things to consider:
(1) I keep a plastic clamp in my ammo box to grip both sides of the receiver as I remove it from the frame for "deep cleaning". The plastic clamp covers and restrains both of the microscopic springs that love to run away and hide.
(2) Opposite the ejection port is a metal plate that covers the (unused) ejection port on the other side. This metal plate contains a tongue that projects horizontally into the chamber and is used by the bolt as a guide. Unfortunately, this plate can fit in place with the tongue toward the front of the gun or toward the rear. In both cases it fits into the groove in the bolt -- at least until you fire the weapon
If you have inadvertently installed the plate with the tongue toward the front of the rifle, the bolt will slip off the back of the tongue as it retracts after firing. Gravity will then cause the front of the bolt to drop and the springs will drive the front of the bolt into the top of the next round coming up from the magazine -- bending the cartridge quite impressively. Fortunately there was no permanent damage to the rifle, and the rifle club keeps "dud" containers conveniently located near the firing line. I don't recall exactly how many cartridges I destroyed before I figgered out what was happening, but it was probably a dollar's worth of my hard-earned income.
My last comment on the G22 is that I have had trouble finding an easily repeatable eye position that I can quickly acquire when shooting in various positions (prone, kneeling, sitting, standing). The relatively large vertical distance between the bore and the scope makes repeatability critical for accuracy. I get the best results when I take a lot of time to reproduce a particular sight picture, but the effort involved takes a lot of fun out of whole process. Maybe a piece of velcro on the stock could attach to my beard and hold my head in the right place?