Walther P22 Range Report

[Vic303]

Finally made it to the range to shoot the LNIB P22 I bought early this month. Whew! Shot it in the 5" config, with a box of STingers to start with. Dang! Those things are snappy!
The Stingers ran flawlessly, and it grouped pretty well although I wasn't trying too hard. No malfs with the safety, or premature slide lockback, or feed problems with Stingers.

Then went to Thunderbolts--YUCK! FTF's, FTRB's, FTE's. Nasty slow dirty ammo. The rest of that brick is gonna have to be run thru my little H&R wheelgun to get rid of it!

Then Win Wildcats--Not a lot better, but no FTF's. Still had a couple FTE's and FTRB's though. Probably gonna run the rest of the Wildcats thru the H&R too.

Then onto Rem Golden bulk box. Snappier than Tbolts or Wildcats. Better functioning too--no FTFs, or FTE's. I think there were a couple FTRBs, but by then the pistol was getting dirty, and the Tbolts/Wildcats may have gunked up the action a bit. I think with a bit of work, the Goldens will run fine.

Saved the last 10 Stingers for my husband (the Ruger Slabside man) to try. He loved the pistol! He says if I don't like it, he wants it! And he's a guy who loves his Ruger Mk I-II_Slabsides! He now wants me to swap barrels so he can see the muzzle flash from the 3.5" barrel! He then shot a bunch of Eley Target (brown box?)thru it, and it ran perfectly. Go figure, std velocity Eley, and it groups nearly as tight as his red-dotted Slabside 6"! Guess I'll have to lay in a supply of Eley now! Oh, he also ran a bunch of cheap Aguila thru it, or I should say TRIED to run it--the Aguila failed to fire on hard primer hits so often he pitched it! So NO Aguila for my P22 from now on!

Too bad for my husband though--I LIKE this pistol! I'm keeping it!

 

[Sharps Shooter]

Yeah, that's about the same thing we found out with my wife's P-22. If it likes a certain ammo, it really likes it. But if it doesn't like a certain ammo, it can find numerous ways to malfunction. My wife's P-22 runs great with Federal High Velocity stuff, either solids or hollow points, and it's fairly accurate too. But it would take a person a couple of hours to run a box of Win Wildcats through it.

 

[ftierson]

I've had good luck with Winchester Super-X solids (copper coated) in mine. But then again, the ammo was bought at least a decade ago, so it may be loaded hotter than present stuff.

Winchester Dynapoints (at least the one lot that I tried) suck in it. Not enough power to cycle the action.

I've never tried Stingers in the P22... European chambers are usually cut somewhat different than the standard American SAAMI spec chamber, and often the longer case of the Stinger will cause functioning problems. I have experienced this with a number of good quality European produced handguns. I just assumed that the P22 would be the same. I might have to try them...

 

[HighVelocity]

That's great Vic. Thanks for the headsup on the Thunderbolts too. I'll avoid those.

 

[lyricsdad]

Glad you like the p22!
as a p22 owner and i have approx if not a little over 17,000 rounds through mine. I advise running CCI mini mags through yours for the first 500 or so rounds. It will loosen up the slide action a bit. I federal bulk through mine w/ no problems at all. I was once loving the remington golden bullets but I ran into a box of bulk w/ lots of FTFs and that was it. Since the federal bulk was on the same shelf w/ the remingtons, I switched to federal. No problems since.

I would love to get a supressor for mine.

The only thing I dont like about mine is the teardown. I got spoiled w/ my p99.

 

[FPrice]

I only have about 100-200 rounds through my P22 but it has performed flawlessly other than one failure to feed from a new magazine. Since then though, no problems. I have used mainly CCI Standard Velocity rounds and Stingers. The one thing I can tell you about Stingers is that they do not seem to want to break a clay SG bird, merely put a hole in it. At least when hit in the center. I don't know how outside hits will do.

But it is a fun little gun and I plan on using it to teach my sons how to shoot.

 

[XLMiguel]

What lyricsdad said - they need hot stuff to break in, become more tolerant over time, but still may be finicky eaters. Hotter is better. YMMV.

I like mine alot, its a fun plinker and a good teaching tool. Mine's quite accurate with Velocitors and Super-X HPs.

 

[lyricsdad]

I was also going to say, mine shoots stingers fine, w/ the exception that sometimes.. rarely now i will get a fail to feed. only happened w/ the stingers. also when ejecting a spent round, sometimes they will get crimped when ejecting. they get crimped on the end. I should shoot some sometime and post a pic.