I have had just about all 17 rifles, for 500 bucks or less, that are made out there. when all was said and done, I stuck with the mach 2. I dumped all my hmrs. Why you ask?
cost is one thing... I shoot alot, a whole lot> I try to shoot every weekend, when a gunshow is not going on , or i have something I have to do around the house. I can easily shoot 2 boxes at a time, more like 3.
So lets say, your hmr ammo, with tax, comes to 15 bucks a box, or you buy eleym2 from ammunitiontogo.com off the net, for 5 bucks a box. And you shoot 3 boxes a weekend, for an average of 20 weeks a year, out of 52. that is a 30 dollar difference per weekend times 20 weekends. 600 bucks a year is nothing to sneeze at.
Cool factor-- the mach 2 is so diff that people at the range typically go" wow!!! I never heard of that, mind if I try it?" which when they do, the accuracy and the combo of no recoil is a mind blower.
Sick factor-- it also fires the 17 aguila round, the best squirrel round getter ever made. comes in a solid or a hollow point. It is based on a true 22lr case, and a 20 grain round. It does a fair bit slower at about 2000fps, but is not near as explosive as the mach 2 round. Typically , I have found them to be either pretty accurate near the m2 round, or hunting accurate. I happen to have a ruger 7717/m2 that does the unusual... can drop them into the same
hole at 50 yards, but this is not the norm.
Lastly, the 2 rounds that are usually the most accurate for you are also the fastest... the Eley/remmy rounds. remmy is made by eley in this case, I think it is their rounds that didn't pass specs mustard to go in a eley box, but they said, " meh... good enough for remmy..."
these rounds typically leave most dudes' bbls at or near the 2300 fps mark.
Slower than the hmr round for sure, but fast enough for a 100 yd zero, to only be about 4 to 5 inches low at 150... and that is really the max distance you want on a kill shot with a rimfire round anyway. the hmr can do a kill shot longer, for sure, I know a dude who took out a coyote at a marked 168 yards, but for most, 150 yards is all you really need.
Don't worry about ammo production on the m2 round; Eley made about 30 million rounds of this in the last 2 years from what i understand...
yes fewer peeps are making a mach 2 rifle, but you can still find them in 2 diff types of cz, 2 diff types of ruger, excel arms, savage, marlin , nef, ruger 10.22' transformers, even the mighty
anschutz/ also you will find them in kimber, cooper, t/c, and browning if you look really hard.
Sako , Weatherby, and Volquartzen as well.
proly the best bets for the unusual and good, would be to find a marlin semi in 717, but keep that chamber clean!!!... or a Sako quad bbl, there you will get all your rimfires in 1 rifle.
