.22 Hornet: Stung by the Fine Varmint Cartridge

My first experience with a .22 Hornet was back in 1980, when I was a brand-new kid editor at sister publication Guns & Ammo. One of my early assignments was to write up a Ruger No. 3 in .22 Hornet. I was quite the magnum maniac back then. Even so, I was impressed by how gentle the little .22 Hornet was—it had no recoil, a mild report, yet was wonderfully accurate despite its old-fashioned tapered case.

I should have bought it but couldn’t afford it back then. I sent it back and have regretted it ever since. I’ve had other .22 Hornets, a T/C Encore barrel, and a CZ 527, but I always wished I’d kept it. Funny, my dad bought few rifles. One day he marched into a gun shop in Kansas City and bought a Kimber of Oregon .22 Hornet. I have no idea what got into him, but he loved that rifle. He shot prairie dogs with it. And turkeys. (Yeah, I know, purists are cringing. Where legal, it works.)

I had Dad’s Hornet for a while; daughter Brittany has it now. Lefty that I am, I kept remembering that Ruger No. 3. Last year, I asked friend and Ruger collector Lee Newton if he had one. Instead, he had a No. 1 International (short barrel, full stock) in .22 Hornet. Couldn’t resist.

If I buy a gun, it’s because I want to hunt with it. I carried it for a few days during spring turkey season in Texas (where rifles are legal). It was a disaster. I was pending cataract surgery and lens replacement, blinder than I realized. Got into a group of gobblers, but couldn’t see well enough to figure out which one to shoot.

Merits

In North America, the .22 Hornet is a fine short-to-medium-range varmint cartridge, plenty adequate for coyotes and bobcats when calling, but most of our game is too big. I’ve seen whitetail bucks fall to it, but I wouldn’t try it. I have taken hogs with the Hornet…head or neck shots only. It is theoretically perfect for javelina, but they’re not good-eating, so there’s no reason to take another. I wracked my brain for a good situation for my new Hornet.

Brad has a lot of blackbuck antelope on his ranch. Hmmm. About 100 pounds. That’s in the range; just need a good, close shot, placed well. In June, with wonderful new eyes, ranch manager Ethan Cook and I were bumming around, and I got that close shot. Quartering away. Absent recoil, we saw the bullet enter the pocket behind the shoulder. Of course, the ram ran into thick brush on a hot June afternoon. Handloaded 45-grain Hornady Hornet bullet at about 2700 fps. How sure was I this was a good idea?

We waited an hour, as it was too hot to wait longer, and then we went in with Nitro, the Jack Russell. No blood to follow; didn’t expect any, there's no way the bullet passed through. The ram went maybe 100 yards and piled up. Blood long dried. He ran until he couldn’t. Nicely intact bullet under the hide on the far side. We observed very little damage to the cape or excellent meat. The Hornet stung.

I’m ashamed to admit this, but with 45 years of Hornet history, this is the first time I’ve handloaded for it. Back then, ammo was cheaper and more available, and Hornet came in boxes of 50. In the last six months, I’ve had a ball. I’m using H110 and Li’l Gun powder. 40-grain bullets with H-110, 45-grains with Li’l Gun. Eleven-something grains of each. At 7000 grains to the pound, I can get over 600 .22 Hornet cartridges out of an expensive pound of propellant.

Case Design and Accuracy

Despite the antiquated case design, most .22 Hornet rifles I’ve encountered are wonderfully accurate. We who love the Ruger No. 1 accept they aren’t all tack drivers. I wasn’t worried about the short barrel, didn’t have long range in mind, and in .22 the barrel is mostly steel and not much hole. I was worried about bedding with the full-length fore-end. Needless. This little rifle is a rock star, about one MOA with anything I feed it.

It's extra-fun to cook up a handload, get accuracy, then take it hunting…and get the desired result. However, the blackbuck exercise had much to do with trying out my new eyes. Which are marvelous, thanks for asking. Also, maybe to stretch .22 Hornet limits just a bit. Six weeks earlier, with my old eyes, I wouldn’t have tried.

When I was young, Dad and I shot a lot of prairie dogs with his Hornet. Last year, friend Gordon Marsh had a CZ .22 Hornet on a Wyoming prairie dog shoot. It’s an amazing little cartridge, with astonishing reach for its size. However, for varminting in the windy West, it’s fun but can’t compete with faster .22 centerfires, even the mild .222 and .223 Remington. Maybe 200 yards, then wind and bullet drop reduce hits.

I think of it as a bridge between the rimfires and faster centerfires. It’s a small niche. Much faster and more powerful than .22 WMR; much heavier bullets than the .17s. The wildly popular .17 HMR is great for small varmints but lacks bullet weight for coyotes or anything larger. The .22 WMR punches above its weight class. The .22 Hornet punches harder. The problem is, other than furbearers and javelina, the Hornet isn’t ideal for much North American hunting. Ours isn’t the only continent. I haven’t seen a .22 Hornet in use on European roebuck, up to 75 pounds. It would be perfect, but some jurisdictions have a 6mm minimum. Oddly, it’s in Africa where the .22 Hornet really shines.

Where Does It Fit?

Yeah, I know, that’s the land of Big Nasties and big-bore cartridges, but Africa also has an amazing variety of small antelopes and small predators as well as large ones. This publication’s founder, Bob Petersen, loved the .22 Hornet. Crawled through chaparral and rattlesnakes to shoot ground squirrels with his Hornets. And he always took a .22 Hornet to Africa, using it for the many dwarf antelopes up to impala.

25 years ago, I borrowed a page from Pete and took a T/C Encore barrel in .22 Hornet to Namibia. My primary quarry was Damara dik dik, the largest of the dik diks and only found there. An arid-country antelope, you can’t get close enough to use a shotgun. Larger centerfires do too much damage to paper-thin pelts, and the .22 Long Rifle lacks both power and range. Enter the .22 Hornet.

Pete wasn’t the first to figure this out. The .22 Hornet remains popular in Southern Africa, used for shooting small game for the pot…and for larger animals than it should be used on. Dating to 1930, the .22 Hornet was the first varmint cartridge. Soon surpassed by faster .22 centerfires, the Hornet has faded over here. In part because it isn’t an ideal match to our larger game or our style of varmint hunting. In South Africa and Namibia, handloading is more popular than here. Cheap bullets and small charges of costly powder.

In Namibia a few years ago, octogenarian Harley Young was in camp hoping to finish his Tiny Ten, needing a Damara dik dik and a klipspringer. He had a 6.5 Creedmoor, perfect for the “klippie” but too much gun for dik dik. Outfitter Barry Burchell had an Anschutz .22 Hornet, no ammo. He and his son Frederick retired to the loading bench, whipped up some Hornet ammo, checked zero, and Harley took his dik dik. Down on the spot with no damage.

Field Testing

For some years I’ve been hunting Coutada 11 in coastal Mozambique, with a good selection of pygmy antelopes: Oribi in open country; Suni and blue duiker in the thickest forest, and red duiker about anywhere. Oribis and red duikers are taken with the plains game rifle on hand. Until a few years ago we used shotguns for suni and blue duiker. Pelt damage was avoided, but it was inconsistent getting enough pellets through the thick stuff. It seemed to me a .22 Hornet might be a better solution, so the next year I took a CZ 527.

I used Hornady’s fast 35-grain V-Max load, was concerned it might make a mess of the smallest antelopes. Quite the opposite: The bullet expanded so fast that it didn’t exit…even on a tiny, thin-skinned blue duiker. Yet it had plenty of reach for oribi and enough power up to reedbuck. In the deep shadows of the forest, I found it easier to find a hole to shoot through with the scoped Hornet than to use a shotgun.

Mark Haldane, PH and owner of Zambeze Delta Safaris, was so impressed that he found a magnificent old single-shot Holland & Holland in .22 Hornet. Knowing that awesome rifle is in camp and shoots straight, my new Ruger Hornet may not see Africa, but I’m sure it’s going to do more stinging. Varmints for sure. Maybe turkeys where legal. I hope the purists can forgive me.

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