The Tikka Model 595 in .22-250 with a Leupold Mark 4 16X Tactical scope. The .22-250 is an excellent cartridge for long-range target and varmint shooting and also has tactical applications.

In 1963 the Browning Arms Company made history. The firm began chambering its Browning High Power rifle for the .22-250--a wildcat cartridge for which there was no commercial ammunition available. John T. Amber, reporting the development in the 1964 Gun Digest, called the event "unprecedented."

"As far as I know," he wrote, "this is the first time a first-line arms-maker has offered a rifle chambered for a cartridge that it--or some other production ammunition maker--cannot supply."

Amber foresaw difficulties for the company but "applauded Browning's courage in taking this step." He said he had his order in for one of the first heavy-barrel models--expected in June 1963--and added, "I can hardly wait!"

That was 40 years ago, and ever since, as far as I can determine, there has been a Browning rifle of some type offered in .22-250.

Two years after Browning broke the ice, Remington took the next big step. The company adopted the .22-250, added "Remington" to the name and offered it in its Model 700 along with a line of commercial ammunition.

Overnight, it seemed, the .22-250 established itself as the dominant high-velocity .22. Winchester had just discontinued the .220 Swift and replaced it with the oddball .225 Winchester, a rimmed cartridge that was gone in less than a decade. Everyone ignored the .225 while falling over themselves to chamber the .22-250. Even Roy Weatherby got into the act. Until 1967 the Mark V rifle was available only in his own proprietary cartridges. That year, for anyone who did not like the cute little belted .224 Weatherby, he began offering the Mark V in .22-250 as well. Later, it would be chambered in the .30-06. For many years, it was the only other non-Weatherby cartridge to be accorded that honor.

Left to right: .218 Bee, .219 Zipper Improved, .22-250 Rem., .220 Swift--the first generation of high-performance .22s, all developed in the 1930s. Only the .22-250 has survived as a front-rank cartridge.

Today, .22-250s are as common as dandelions in May. Everyone who makes a varmint rifle offers it, and every ammunition maker has it in the lineup. It is the most successful centerfire .22 in history.

Lovers of the .220 Swift can claim greater velocity (and rightly). Shooters of the .223 outnumber us, and benchresters are absolutely right when they say the .22 PPC is more accurate, measured in microns, shot after shot.

So how, you ask, can the .22-250 lay claim to being the greatest small-bore cartridge of all time? Simple: Longevity. Flexibility. Popularity. It has more than sufficient velocity combined with excellent accuracy and a personality like a golden retriever. This is a wildcat that forced both rifle-makers and ammunition companies to sit up and take notice because it was just too good to ignore.

Over the .22-250's lifetime--now approaching 75 years--other cartridges have come along, challenged it and fallen by the wayside while the .22-250 has just kept getting better.

.22-250 HISTORY

Over the years I have read many accounts of how the .22-250 came to be, and few of them agree. However, Philip B. Sharpe was around at the time and knew the principals involved. He was a fanatical rifleman and ballistician, and took an obsessive interest in anything to do with rifles. According to Sharpe, the initial work on the design was done by Capt. Grosvenor Wotkyns, a ballistician who worked as a consultant to Winchester. Wotkyns was one of the designers of the .22 Hornet, the original centerfire .22.

In the mid-1930s there were very few factory smallbores around--the Hornet, .218 Bee and .219 Zipper. All had rims, and all left something to be desired in the new bolt-actions that were rapidly gaining favor. There was a frenzy of wildcatting going on, with cartridges being necked up, down and sideways as every rifle nut worthy of the name tried to come up with the ultimate .22. Most of these developments have long since been forgotten, justifiably so.

Grove Wotkyns approached the problem scientifically with the goal of developing the best-balanced, most ballistically efficient .22 possible. While others played around with the .30-40 Krag or .30-06 case, Wotkyns settled on the medium-capacity .250-3000. There followed several years' work, experimenting to determine every aspect, from case taper to shoulder angle to neck length. Rifle after rifle was chambered, tested and discarded while Wotkyns made notes.

According to the original plan, when development was completed the cartridge was to be adopted by Winchester as a factory round. At this point the facts become cloudy. Winchester did indeed introduce a high-velocity .22 in 1935 and even adopted the name Wotkyns had been using for his wildcat: the .220 Swift. But instead of the .250-3000 case, the new Swift was based on the 6mm Lee-Navy, modified somewhat for added strength and semirimmed. Why? No one knows. The records are lost, the principals are dead, memories are dimmed.

The .22-250 was originally known as the .22-250 Varminter, a name that was copyrighted by its designers, Capt. Grosvenor Wotkyns and J.E. Gebby. Early loads for the cartridge are listed in Phil Sharpe's Complete Guide to Handloading. Users should be wary of the loads listed in early publications because dimensions of the cartridge had not been standardized and high pressures could result.

Understandably infuriated--he later refused to discuss the Swift--Wotkyns continued work on his brainchild, drawing in a noted handloader, J. Bushnell Smith, and a gunsmith and shooting champion, Jerry Gebby. Together they perfected the ".22-250" design, developed loads, built rifles and even copyrighted a name for it: the .22 Varminter.

That was in 1937. Phil Sharpe became involved when Gebby built him a rifle for the new cartridge. Since by this time Sharpe had been working with Winchester's new Swift for more than two years, he was in a good position to judge the relative merits of the two cartridges. The first thing he found was that the Varminter was far more flexible than the Swift.

"[The Swift] performed best when it was loaded to approximately full velocity," he wrote, whereas, "The Varminter case permits the most flexible loading ever recorded with a single cartridge. It will handle all velocities from 1,500 up to 4,500 fps."

Sharpe credited the steep 28-degree shoulder for this performance. He insisted that it kept the powder burning in the case rather than in the throat of the rifle, as well as prevented case stretching and neck thickening.

"[Shoulder angle] ranks along with primer, powders, bullets, neck length, body taper, loading density and all those other features," he wrote. "The .22 Varminter seems to have a perfectly balanced combination of all desirable features and is not just an old cartridge pepped up with new powders."

Accuracy was consistently excellent, with little need for either case trimming or neck reaming, and Sharpe pronounced it "my choice for the outstanding cartridge development of the past decade." He finished by saying he looked forward to the day when it would become a commercial cartridge.

Alas, Sharpe--and everyone else--had a long wait. Because the name "Varminter" had been copyrighted, gunsmiths building rifles for the cartridge almost universally called it simply the .22-250, which is how it is generally known today. And in the ensuing quarter-century, many rifles were built with tiny chamber variations. There were all sorts of so-called improvements and little or no standardization. Again, this was partly because of the copyrighted name and dimensions of Wotkyns's .22 Varminter.

Left to right: .222 Rem., .222 Rem. Mag., .223 Rem., .22-250 Rem.--the second generation of high-performance .22s. In the early years of benchrest competition, the .222 and the .22-250 went head-to-head. The .222 Magnum died shortly after birth, while the .223 has achieved wide popularity, largely because it is our military round.

World War II intervened, bringing cartridge development to a standstill for the better part of 10 years. It was several years after the war before rifles, ammunition and components became freely available once again.

In 1950 Remington introduced the .222, a completely original cartridge with a new case that took the shooting world by storm. It exhibited none of the problems of the Swift; it was quiet and docile and extremely accurate. About this time, benchrest shooting became formalized, and the .222 dominated the game. Its major rival in the early years, however, was the wildcat .22-250, which at one time, according to Jack O'Connor, held most of the major benchrest records.

With so much interest in the cartridge, why did it take so long for any ammunition maker, or rifle manufacturer, to make it legitimate? Part of the reason is that the .22-250 existed in so many minor variations, all called the same thing. This creates not only logistical problems but potential legal ones as well. In the 1964 Gun Digest, John Amber said that Browning was asking for trouble. Without standardized ammunition and loading dies, what would a Browning owner do if he was not a handloader or if he already owned a .22-250 with custom-made dies and the dimensions were not the same?