Its the .22 Hornet. Its not just any Hornet, this one has a 1/7 twist .223 barrel on it.
When shooting suppressed rounds, the original barrel would not stabilize anything over 50 grains. Attempting to use some 55 grain .223 bullets at a speed of 1000 FPS only resulted in having the bullet hit the 25 yard target sideways...if it hit it at all. It simply did not work.
So, thinking that a round that could be reloaded to mimic that of a .22 LR or be loaded much hotter than that might not be a bad thing to have in the future, I got to thinking about it for awhile. The suppressed Hornet is great with 40 or 45 grain rounds, as it penetrates stuff that a full speed .22 wont even think about. I think that may be due to the bullet design as the Hornet has a nice smooth pointed bullet whereas the .22 LR is pretty blunt.
Since suppressed rounds give up energy to stay below the speed of sound, they attempt to make up what they can in bullet weight. That's why we see the 300 Blackouts shooting 220 or 240 grain bullets. They work, easily shooting completely through deer and I have yet to recover one.
We figured out that we needed a faster twist in the Hornet barrel to stabilize any thing over the standard weight bullets. So, using a Green Mountain barrel blank that I bought for 99 bucks, I chambered it and profiled it with a target weight barrel. Shooting it with 55 grain bullets which I have a gazillion of, its accurate and easy to load for. Its extremely quiet when used with a suppressor.
The 55 worked out so well that I tried the Sierra 62 grain bullets. Same thing, tight groups, very quiet.
That worked out well enough that I even tried the Sierra 69 grain bullets. I had my doubts as to whether that big long bullet would stabilize at subsonic velocity's, but they were put to rest. Working up a load using Red Dot and using small rifle primers, I think that I have found my " go to" load. This thing whacks steel plates so much harder at 100 yards than the 45 grainer did that it is immediately obvious. The two predominate sounds are the *poof* of the shot and the WHACK of the 4" steel plate that we were shooting at.
So now, we have an accurate Ruger M77 Hornet that can use the 69 grain bullets that is as quiet as anything out there that penetrates even better than the subsonic 22 LR loads and the best thing is that it is reloadable with easy to get .223 bullets.
I'm happy with it.
What do you think? Worth it or not?
