22 Long Rifle usage and reputation during the years.....

[bassjam]

Both of my grandparents were born in the early 20’s and the only guns each owned were a shotgun and a .22 rifle.

One of them grew up poor and on a farm in Hazard, KY, and both the shotgun and .22 were used for hunting to put food on the table for small game. My other grandpa grew up in the city of Cincinnati. His family was not rich, but still lived comfortably and often drove out to the country to hunt recreationally, he only talks about using a shotgun to hunt for rabbits. I don’t think he owned the .22 until he was an adult and moved into the country where he had a garden and chickens, and I assume the .22 was needed at that point to dispatch pests.

Unfortunately both of them have had those older firearms stolen, but it sounds like they were all pretty basic workhorses like Stephens models. Both being fairly practical, I can’t imagine either would have owned a .22 purely for plinking; if it wasn’t necessary to spend money on something, they didn’t buy it.

I don’t think we always realize how lucky we have it now days. People complain about not making enough money to have a decent living, but we still manage to have enough to own more firearms than we really “need”. Not to mention all the other unnecessary stuff we buy (cell phones, multiple TV’s, houses 3x larger than the “great generation” raised the baby boomers in). Heck, when I have a groundhog that’s needs taken care of, I have multiple .22 rifles or handguns to choose from, and multiple types of .22 ammo to use.

 

[JohnBiltz]

The only thing I want to point out that isn't necessarily correct doesn't really concern .22 rimfirea.

A deer carcass won't go bad before you can eat it, even with no refrigeration. You just have to be quick about getting a fire going and slicing the deer up to make jerky. Just a little tip for anyone that might have to someday shoot a deer, in warm weather, for survival.

Edit: And don't forget to keep flies off of it while you're starting that fire and slicing meat.

I've made jerky, you will not get more than few pounds jerked over a fire before it goes bad. If you could figure a way to smoke it maybe or salt it but in survival situation most of its going to go bad.

 

[KansasSasquatch]

I've made jerky, you will not get more than few pounds jerked over a fire before it goes bad. If you could figure a way to smoke it maybe or salt it but in survival situation most of its going to go bad.

In a survival situation I'd start smoking the whole carcass (minus organs and excess blood) while I'm cutting jerky strips and skinning it.The key would be to have smoking racks already set up around a fire pit or know how to quickly build some. It becomes more feasible if you have another set of hands to help out.

 

[caribou]

.22lr is an excellent 'meat maker' due to the low ammount of damage to the meats your procuring.
Small game, like Squirrles and Rabbits can be skinned, gutted and dryed whole.
I dry up at least 10 Caribou every year, Spring and Summer.
Meat is dryed by the wind, not over fires.... cut into 'sheets'. hung and dryed, then the sheets reduced to strips the next day. If you can, keep it in the shade, the sun will ripen meats quickly.
If flys lay eggs on your meat, remove them.

Eat the organs while your meats hang.

The fire is for smoke, to keep the flys off. Poplars,(called Cottonwood here) Alders, fruit woods and hickory make good tasting smokes.

Skin a Deer and hang it, the outside will crust, but it wont go bad right away unless left in the sun. Just be sure no 'meat to meat contact' is keeping anywhere moist.

 

[Sistema1927]

.22 and .32 were popular calibers back in the days before antibiotics. While nobody wants to be shot, even a non-incapacitating wound could prove fatal due to gangrene and/or septicemia back in those days. As a result, those little lead pills were given more credence in the self-defense arena.

 

[Mn Fats]

My Grandpa told me his dad would send him out whitetail hunting (among other animals) with a 22lr at 9 years old. When he was about 85 years old I asked him if any whitetail got away on him using a rimfire. He replied "never, I plugged them in the ear, then fed my dad and brother". Along with, ".22lr has killed more deer in this country than the 30-30". Not sure if that's true but he grew up real poor and .22lr was all his dad allowed him.

 

[FROGO207]

Dang it Gunnie you have two more .22 rifles in your safe than I have in mine! Gotta go shopping now. Yep I cut my teeth on a single shot .22 Stevens bolt rifle that was handed down to me in the mid 60's. As a youngster of 8 I can relate to the two bullets and the need to bring back two rabbits for lunch in return. It was understood that this was my job around the farm.

 

[caribou]

When I was a kid, insted of an allowance, my dad gave me a few box's of .22lr. 2$ got 4 box's back then,and I had a semi auto Marlin 60 my mom gave me (she got it in a garage sale). Monday was ''payday'' and I shot all week, when I had time.
We live in a place called 'Patrick Creek'' just out side of Kalispell Montana, and1/4 mile to a mile between neighbors then, I had a 100 yard .22 range by a pond in our back yard , and I spent endless hours working and earning , then shooting my ammo.
By the time I was 12, Grouse, Rabbits, Squirrles, were one shot deals, even the Dragonflys were scared to hesitate along the pond.....

 

[Captcurt]

At age 15 I had 2 jobs that funded my shooting habit. My closest friend's dad owned a drive-in theater where I worked at night and he would order us a case, we're talking 5000 rounds, of 22LR twice a year. We had a summer day job seining and selling crayfish to the local boat docks. The 22's went to the ponds with us 3 or 4 days a week along with 2 or 3 boxes ammo apiece. We never brought back a round. Nothing was safe. Frogs, herons, kingfishers, skunks, and turtles all paid the price for invading our ponds. That would take care of the first case of ammo. By fall the other case took care of squirrels, rabbits, coons, ground hogs or anything else that got in the way. The statute of limitations have run out so I can say that there were a few whitetails that went to the house too. Not proud of it, but it happened. Between the two of us we would shoot 10,000 rounds of 22 a year and that was the scenario for 4 years until college. I still love a good rimfire and just bought a gorgeous CZ 455. In fact, I think that I will sight it in tomorrow.

 

[JohnBiltz]

.22lr is an excellent 'meat maker' due to the low ammount of damage to the meats your procuring.
Small game, like Squirrles and Rabbits can be skinned, gutted and dryed whole.
I dry up at least 10 Caribou every year, Spring and Summer.
Meat is dryed by the wind, not over fires.... cut into 'sheets'. hung and dryed, then the sheets reduced to strips the next day. If you can, keep it in the shade, the sun will ripen meats quickly.
If flys lay eggs on your meat, remove them.

Eat the organs while your meats hang.

The fire is for smoke, to keep the flys off. Poplars,(called Cottonwood here) Alders, fruit woods and hickory make good tasting smokes.

Skin a Deer and hang it, the outside will crust, but it wont go bad right away unless left in the sun. Just be sure no 'meat to meat contact' is keeping anywhere moist.

For most of the lower 48 that will not work. When humidity is over 90% the wind doesn't do a good job of drying which describes the south in the winter and the summer. In the mountainous west where you see humidity between 9 and 20% that would work. Not that many people live in the mountains though and in a survival situation you are not going to have much in the way of resources. Although I will say in a place like Arizona or southern Nevada you could get some window screens and rig something up pretty easily. I really don't know anything about smoking meat other than fancy barbecue grills have them and I think they used smoke houses in the old days. I'd think it would be easy with a structure but tough to do in the field with limited resources. Salt was the old stand by through most of history. It could be found easily enough, water softeners, ice prevention in the north but its not something you would carry in quantity.

Then there is the other problem, so you have shot, processed and preserved 100 pounds of meat. You can't carry it. It weighs too much with your other stuff.

 

[caribou]

Arizona, Nevada, I dont know about. I'll take yer word.

The drying methods I described worked well enough in Montana, when I was a kid. We learned it in school, (Indian stuff) Elk, Buffalo, Deer jerky's galore. I took that info home and dad and I made rough shack, when we were in Billings, which are Plains, and again when we moved back to Kalispell , the mountains.
The humidity wasn't a factor we consitterd. We made alot of jerky out of lean Deer, seasoned and such, in the shed , hung in strips a fan moving the air, no problemo.

Her in our camps, we move to the seaside in Spring and stay until Fall, the humidity is plenty high, but it is cool and breezy, which keeps mosquito numbers down, one of quite a few of our reasons to move each year.
The .22lr is an excellent Seal round as well, not ''pushing'' the Seals head under the water, and all shots are close (50 yards or less).
Seal meats, which are VERY oily, are also dried in the breezes...

If its an emergency and you have 100 spare lbs, sit it out and eat well, let the rescue come to you.

If you can not carry 100 lbs of anything extra, you make several small loads, put in on your horse, your back, etc. or make a cache and store it like Indians and Eskimo's did.

100 lbs of meat will give you 30 or less lbs of dried meat.

Meat also drys in winter, although slowly...... ''Freezer burn'' is just that.

 

[Sniper66]

There are lots of folks who have killed deer and turkeys with a .22. Some of our country folks have probably killed more large game with a .22 than any other caliber. Many of us here have killed lots of coyotes with a .22. It's all about shot placement and distance. Have never personally killed a deer with a .22, but have had lots of opportunities when squirrel hunting.

 

[caribou]

22lr is a meat maker....
.22lr has a place with some bigger animals. We used them to kill Reindeer in the pen, and as a kid in Montana we used them to kill steer and goats in a chute.
Today, .22lr for big game, has limited application, but are still in use for meat hunting. Its making meat

Fall hunts with the kids....




Some are hung whole in the skin for later, some are cut up and dried.....



hers an older vid (was easy to find for a link), we used .22 except criss, who used his 9mm, and you can see his pass through and the bullet skipping across the water....then, thankfully, he missed the cow, and we took only bulls....not that she has a calf or was illegal, just that we wanted prime bulls...


I live in a river delta thats 69% water, and willows and trees line the sides
We shoot Caribou Bulls in the Brain from our boats every fall as they cross our rivers. Its strictly for meat, just before Rut when the bulls are fattest and prime, as well as cool enough to keep the carcass whole as we descend into dark Arctic winter and our waters freeze.

My father inlaw, born in 1903, an Inupiaq Eskimo in a tent camp here in the Arctic, as a child helped his mom set and check Caribou snares along side the river for them. While they did this, is father took a kayak and pursued swimming Caribou , shooting them in the head with his .22. He took the floating Caribou he caught down to the camp. Following his mom and sisters in the skin boat, they would take a lance, and lunch, and they went up river , poling and using dogs to pull an Umiaq upriver and dispatching and working the Caribou in their snares. At the turn around point, they stated loading the skins and meats and returned to camp in the evening. This was survival (food, clothing, bedding) and trade with surplus meats and skins. Dogs had to eat too, so they had to catch alot of Caribou by the time the migration passed and they settled into the freez up. When Caribou come along, they do so enmass, and when they quit the country its like Salmon fishing in Febuary.....nothing.

In 1922, Koksiinaq bought his self his first outboard motor, and Evinrude. The Eskimo adopted them as soon as they were available, and the name ''evinruuruk'' is Inupiaq Eskimo for ''outboard motor'' The very first came up about 1915 or so.
The transportation may have changed, but the bullets, people and Caribou did not, as the need to eat as well as the survival of cultural aspects of food from the wilds....Caribou the Eskimo here is like Spaghetti to Italians and Croissants to the French....

Now we do that with motors, and bag limits. We also hunt to feed others, we pay our baby sitters in Caribou, we are given gas for Caribou and we catch and work Caribou for others and as presents. We have, thankfully, no lack of Caribou for the 8,000 residents of this borough, which is larger than the state if Indiana....Some people understand the redistribution of foods, and that not everyone can hunt, but some folks dont understand giving half the pay away..... and some do.

We hunt in a place that archeologists have show have been hunted for more than 12,000 years, so were just the latest.

W use /22lr's specifically and legally; they dont pass through and wound other Caribou, who pack up close while swimming, we dont wound any, and if we do, a second follow up shot is made. We get to pick the best eating, we dont get ones we dont want like smelling rutty, sick, too young, etc.....importantly, also is that we dont spook the animals and have the baby's separate from the Cows. This can and does happen on land.
The kill is quick and sure, theres no time between shot and down, just ''lights out''.
We save meats/animals so to get, say 500 pounds of meat, we shoot 2 Bulls and not 3, because a head shot rather than a 'through both shoulders shot'' with a high power rifle saves meat.

Its hunting, but were not sportsmen, were butchers.....same as the guy who kills and cuts meat for a store, its about food and being efficient.

.22lr is a VERY versatile and surprising round, when used properly and in circumstance......I also think about the old lady with the .22lr and the big Brown bear, and the old saying 'when a Bear comes at you, the gun you in your hands at that moment have IS the best gun you have''

 

[John Joseph]

A lot of farm animals have been humanely put down with a .22
In the farming communities of our ancestors, and that's kind of important.
A .22 easily can put down a steer or hog for the larder, or a horse with broken leg.

In addition to small game hunting, there were pests to deal with.
In some parts, being overrun with tularemia tainted jack rabbits was a really health issue!

 

[warnerwh]

I watched someone clean a deer that had been shot with a .22 hollow point. This was before there were hi tech .22 rounds like the Stinger. Anyway the bullet went in one side going through both lungs and stopping just under the skin on the other side. The bullet was mushroomed perfectly. It was only about a 90lb doe but I was still impressed that it only took one lung shot to drop it. So as others have stated a .22 is far more capable than many people think it is.

 

[Charliefrank]

My little Remington 581 loaded with CCI Stingers has accounted for game upto and including bobcats and red fox, not to mention a very angry fisher cat.

 

[Chaparral]

I seem to recall reading that more homocides are committed with .22lr than with any other single caliber. However, is a function of .22 rifles and handguns being inexpensive and plentiful, rather than of their lethality.

 

[homatok]

I grew up in South West Manitoba, on a farm, off the grid. We got power in 1950 (or so) and a telephone in 1954. I started hunting at age 10 using the old, beat-up Winchester .22 “Rabbit” gun. My Dad was not a hunter. He kept the old .22 around mostly to shoot at pests, including stray dogs and cats. The old gun had been broken (stock) and wired back together. It was a model that had the trigger on a pin that passed through the stock. Because of the wire repair, the gun had a hair trigger, so you only pulled back the cocking piece just before you were going to fire. The ejector/extractor did not work so my Dad had filed it off and you took the empty out with a jackknife. I was told to use only .22 Shorts as Dad considered the gun unsafe for long or long-rifle ammunition. I shot my first deer with that gun using a Super-X copper head cartridge. The case was later pried out in 3 pieces and I got a lot of flak from Dad. I got the Deer from about 30 feet, hit it right behind the ear and it was DRT. Mother spent most of the night canning the meat in jars. Today I watch some of the TV shows depicting people living “off the grid” and I laugh at the idiot commentator’s portrayal of how those poor folks would starve if they did not manage to get a “whatever”.

 

[entropy]

Both of my grandparents

I hear banjos. Most people have 4 grandparents.

 

[Charliefrank]

I've made jerky, you will not get more than few pounds jerked over a fire before it goes bad. If you could figure a way to smoke it maybe or salt it but in survival situation most of its going to go bad.

You can build a simple smoker by lashing 3 small tree trunks together at one end and standing and spreading into a teepee. Smaller branches can be used to construct a rack. Throw a tarp over the whole thing. Build a small fire under the rack. This is an old cold smoking method.

 

[Ru4real]

Caribou - your posts are very good. You have a good ability to explain things clearly. And it's obvious you have experience to share. Thank you for posting.

 

[CajunBass]

Every deer jacklighter I knew, and there were a few "back in the day" used a 22 rifle. They were by far the most common rifle around, the rifles and ammo were cheap, and they were quiet. With head shots little if any edible meat was wasted. And the fact that every other truck/car had one on the rack behind the seat, or in the trunk probably helped too if the game warden happened to out prowling around. If they'd had a 30/06 that would have drawn attention to them. Those old boys killed a lot of deer. Get close, aim small, load the cargo quick and put some distance between you and the scene. .

I was a kid back then. I didn't think anything less of those guys for being poachers, than I did the one's who keep a still going back in the woods. Now that I think of it, they were mostly the same men.

 

[Demi-human]

Excellent experiences! I was right earlier, wasn't I? I love the twenty-two rim fire. I probably shoot a cubic meter of snows worth a year and get most of mine in the mail, my poor mail lady!(She is super nice.) I have more firearms of this caliber in my safe than any others! It is true that the twenty two can do almost anything any other cartridge can do if the user is sly enough, it's usefulness is legendary. Maybe this is why so many were perturbed at it's disappearance in the before times.

 

[jrdolall]

I grew up in Alabama where deer basically didn't exist until the 1960's(at least as far as the 20th century goes). I don't think I ever saw a deer until the mid 70's and by the mid-80's they were the most dangerous animal in Alabama.
I grew up shooting squirrel and rabbit with a BB gun and then moved into a 22 bolt action. We shot tin cans for practice and I believe I was in college before I ever shot a manufactured target. I was out of college before I owned a semi gun of any kind and guess what it was...a 22 LR.
Deer hunting as a sport is actually a fairly recent thing. Up until they were re-introduced there wasn't a lot of need for "high power" rifles in the Southeast(where I grew up there was nothing to shoot with them) so all we had were 22's and shotguns for hunting.38 revolvers and .357s were by far the most popular handguns. I knew 2 people with a 1911 when I was growing up.
As far as a deer going bad I guarantee that didn't happen often. Country people knew how to can, salt, and smoke meat. They butchered pigs and cows and certainly didn't consume it all within a day or two, even in July.

 

[entropy]

I assume they had refrigeration in Alabama by the 60's.....