I hadn't messed around with my Ruger 96 in 17 HMR much since I 'made' it; the gun started out as a 22 WMR, but I found a 'match grade' pencil-barrel a year or so ago and decided to do the swap, since there are no other parts needing changed, and the Ruger 96 rimfire barrels swap out as easily as the Ruger 10/22 ones. (In fact my other 'swap' was to put a Thompson 'Operative' integrally-suppressed barrel made for a 10/22 on my 96/22, for a really nice and
quiet levergun that has become my 'newbie' shoot-this-one-first gun.) The rotary detachable magazines are the same durable compact design as the 10/22 ones, but longer to fit either 17 HMR or 22 WMR interchangeably. There are also 'extended' 20 or 25 round ones available for SquirrelMageddon or SquirrelZombie attacks.
Anyway, I finally got some range-time with the 17 HMR one, and hitting the 4-inch (100 yard) gong was trivially easy, so I started trying to pick which 'quadrant' I would hit, which you can tell by the way it swings. Still pretty easy, which isn't surprising since the gun shoots half-inch groups at 50 yards all day long.
17 HMR Ruger 96.jpg
I've never hunted squirrels before, as the small amount of meat seemed not worth the bother of dressing and skinning them, but maybe I have to re-think things now that I have a tool that could harvest them easily with reliable head-shots. Plus. . .
it's a LEVERGUN. . . !!!
P.S. here's the 96/22 in 22 LR that has the Thompson Operative barrel.
"...
Ooohhh - it's even yuckier-looking; nothing like a Winny or Marlin 39A..." Yeah, whatever...
Think a very quiet 'click' then a loud 'ting' as the bullet hits the 100 yard 4" gong...
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
