What good are .22 LR shotshells?

I've used them to kill quite a few rattlesnakes. I keep the range very short - two or three feet - and the results are final. Head shots (which I use exclusively, because I enjoy snake meat) bring things to an immediate conclusion. Efficacy drops off very quickly as the range increases, which is of course part of the point, and I doubt they would do the job much past six feet or so.

Having written that, I'll admit to having switched to homemade snake loads in the .500 Magnum. A larger payload of larger shot is comforting when traipsing around the desert with the intent of encountering rattlesnakes - and a 3/4 ounce of #9 shot at over a thousand fps would likely have some kind of effect on two-legged predators, in a pinch.
 
TTv2 said:
I'm putting this in handguns as that's the intended use I'd have for these, but if you have a rifle story using these do share your experience.

I was going thru some drawers and saw a pack of CCI shotshells for .22 LR I bought once to get free shipping. I knew at the time they weren't all that good, but over the years I've read some user experiences and I can't think of any that sounded successful.

If you have used or seen someone else use the .22 LR shotshells, have you ever come away satisfied?
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Yes, I use them frequently for welcoming the neighbor's dogs. They work great for that and little else if more than 5 ft away. 🙂
 
I have taken dozens of rattlesnakes with .22lr shot shells from a 4” revolver. From that rifled barrel the spread was about an inch per foot.
Usual range was 5-10 feet. A couple times at my feet. Never had to shoot one twice.
 
I have used 9mm and 40S&W shotshell rounds from CCI to dispatch snakes on the property. Only really works well with a good placed headshot. In 22LR your shot capacity is about half the grain weight compared to 40S&W but only 20ish grains lighter than 9mm. Personally I don't have a use for a 22LR shotshell round that I can't handle with a regular round or something in the 22 Short variety.
 
Long ago - used to attach balloons to trees. Kids like to see the results of hitting a target. Worked well for that.

Have also dispatched rats. They (.22 shotshells) have a purpose, always some available in my selection. Along with .38 Special shotshells too. Made up my own .45 Colt shotshells once but it really wasn't worth the trouble...
 
I spent a couple weeks trying to chase off a woodpecker who decided to make Swiss cheese out of my cedar roof. One CC 22lr shotshell at 10 yards from my Ruger Mark II took care of the destruction. That was a couple decades ago, I still have 19 of them left. I appreciated that I didn't have to worry about my neighbors experiencing any fall out from the venture.
 
When young and dumb I used to use CCI .22lr shot shells out of a 6’’ HRA revolver on the local bats with very limited success. The last time I used them was with the same pistol on a barn rat which absorbed the contents of two shells at 2’ without even flinching.
Not a fan.
Now #8 shot in a .45 Colt is a different story!
 
My father in law's family had a farm, and a pig they needed to slaughter. They borrowed a revolver from a neighbor, without anyone asking too many questions. The .22 was full of snakeshot.
After, unsuccessfully, trying to kill the pig, they went back to the neighbors for a bigger gun. They told him they had shot the pig in the forehead, and it hadn't worked.
The neighbor asked "What's the pig doing now?"
"Standing with his head in the corner."
Thirty eight snakeshot works well enough at short range, .22s are good for a rat in a corner...where you don't really want to make a hole in that corner.
Not sure I'd take on too much of a snake with the .22 version.
Moon
 
.38 Special said:
I've used them to kill quite a few rattlesnakes. I keep the range very short - two or three feet - and the results are final. Head shots (which I use exclusively, because I enjoy snake meat) bring things to an immediate conclusion. Efficacy drops off very quickly as the range increases, which is of course part of the point, and I doubt they would do the job much past six feet or so.

Having written that, I'll admit to having switched to homemade snake loads in the .500 Magnum. A larger payload of larger shot is comforting when traipsing around the desert with the intent of encountering rattlesnakes - and a 3/4 ounce of #9 shot at over a thousand fps would likely have some kind of effect on two-legged predators, in a pinch.
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Pretty close to a 28 gauge shotgun load :thumbup:

Stay safe.
 
Carl N. Brown said:
I have always had a few around just in case, but really haven't used rimfire shotshells that much.

Decades ago my mother-in-law who lived alone on 16 acres reported that she had what appeared to be a copperhead snake (poisonous) in her house. My wife told me if I didn't take care if it, her mom would have to stay with us.

In previous years I had live captured a black snake in mother-in-law's kitchen and hand carried it a quarter mile into the woods and released it. My sister- in-law had once killed a copperhead in my m-i-l's dining room.

I took it as a real threat, put on my combat boots, loaded CCI shot shotshells in the magazine of my Ruger MKII, and sallied forth.

I located the snake coiled underneath the clothes hamper in the bathroom. With left hand I tilted the clothes hamper over, with right hand brought the Ruger down and made a perfect outline of the snake's head in #12 shot on the floor. The snake writhed awhile and died. It was a bit under two feet long.

That is my one successful experience of using the "CCI Shotshell 22 LR".

My semi-successful experience involved a large home invading nor'way rat. Shot at 6 feet from a Garcia Bronco bicycle rifle. The rat ran away but never came back.

View attachment 1195479
Left to right.
_ Classic .22 LR Bird Shot - full LR cartridge length brass case, crimped to hold in the #10 shot
_ CCI Shotshell 22 LR- 31 grain weight of shot in a plastic cup loaded in a CCI Stinger case.
_ CCI Stinger "long rifle" hypervelocity
_ Classic .22 Long Rifle 40 grain lead round nose.
_ CCI Shotshell 22 WMR- 52 grain weight of shot

The CCI plastic shot capsule does protect rifled barrels from the lead shot.
A few guns have problems extracting/ejecting the classic crimped cases.
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Hopefully that rat told all the other rats about its bad experience.
 
In my meager experience you have to be very close to dispatch small animal.
As a boy I shot a bird with a crimped .22 shot shell out of my uncle’s rifle at about 15-20 feet. The bird died but it was not a clean kill. Last time I tried on game.
Best use probably against snakes at close range. I did shoot them as a boy years ago in 22 smooth bore in the Boy Scouts, miniature skeet shooting. I didn’t hit anything, lol.
 
Out of a rifle-length barrel (or possibly a long pistol barrel?), they can be effective at short range against rats and small snakes. However, I can unfortunately vouch that out of a 1 1/8” barrel NAA mini-revolver, even a small snake can shrug it off even at close range (it was probably wounded but slithered away).
 
TTv2 said:
.22 Mag tho, not .22 LR. I'm sure the ahot charge being nearly double helps, but 12 shot still sounds like it's nerely useless.

9mm Flobert would be significantly better and at the price .22 Mag shotshells are, 9mm Flobert can't be that much more.
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I believe Chiappa still imports these little single-shots into the US every now and then.

Product Details

www.chiappafirearms.com www.chiappafirearms.com
 
In 2019 my dad had a stroke, so for several months I lived at his place up in VA. The carpenter bees were in full assault mode on his log house. So I drove down to LGS and they had Win ratchet shells that look like 22WMR cases crimped down, and the CCI withe the blue translusent shot capsule. Bought both and did so e real high tech patterning. Used a cereal box at about 15 ft. The CCI stuff used the entire box as it's pattern with maybe 10-15 holes.
The Win Chester's on the other hand shot about a 3-4" diameter pattern with many impacts to where a carpenter bees wasn.t getting through that pattern at 15 ft.
Removed the side mounted scope off of dad's old JC Higgins 22LR and proceeded to go 16 bees for 22 shots that day. So hits were from the ground to the peek of the 12/12 pitch roof 2 stories up on the south side of the house.
Went back to the LGS and bought the remaining 5 bx of that Win crimped end ammo.

Carpenter bee issue was resolved in a cou ppl le of days. Great fun.

Steve
 
For the materials cost, the mfg's get top dollar.

Instead of $0.10 a round.

F63AB7AD-8A04-45F5-B8E2-B6F5710475A0.jpeg

They get more than $1.50 a round.

694B9228-3B09-4096-8898-85C803EE2899.jpeg

I bet they wish they were more effective that they are, so they could sell even more of them.

I know that's not a consumer benefit but I don't blame them for making all they can sell.
 
TTv2 said:
I'm putting this in handguns as that's the intended use I'd have for these, but if you have a rifle story using these do share your experience.

I was going thru some drawers and saw a pack of CCI shotshells for .22 LR I bought once to get free shipping. I knew at the time they weren't all that good, but over the years I've read some user experiences and I can't think of any that sounded successful.

If you have used or seen someone else use the .22 LR shotshells, have you ever come away satisfied?
Click to expand...
For shooting Carpenter Bees flying......Tons of fun to kill those boring pest.
 
I’ve used the .22lr shot shells to good effect on numerous occasions.
My mother rented a house to get my youngest brother into a different school district as he was being badly bullied after a school district integration. We found out that the old residential neighborhood had something of a rat problem as they were constantly getting into our house and after the dog food. My mother left me and my two brothers home for a weekend while visiting a sick relative.
We took turns staking out the dog food with the pantry door open. Using his Iver Johnson break open .22Revolver, we killed about 3dozen. I also set up a trap line around the property perimeter and over 3 weeks caught about 3 dozen more.
About 6mos after we moved away at the end of the school year, the city closed its open dump. Within another 6mos the rat issue resolved itself.
We would go to the dump on Saturday nights with the.22 revolver and my Beretta .22 auto, with regular.22 ball, and wait 10min, then turn on the headlights, and blast away!
One night the local police came up! After wanting to know what we were doing, decided to join in the fun. (Using their.38’s and .357mags!). Great fun we had back in the 60’s and early’70’s…

Several years ago, I was hunting elk with a buddy in Wyoming. He lived in an upstairs apartment in a large metal warehouse size garage. I used ratshot to take several grouse taking refuge in the garage with rat shot at 15’ to avoid ventilating the building.

For carpenter bee’s, I use a .410 o/u with.45lc cases loaded with walnut hull polishing media and card wads cut with a 7/16” punch and 5.0gr of Bullseye powder. More effective than a .22lr shot shell, and dramatically cheaper! Since installing 6-bee traps I built, the bees aren’t as bad a problem.
My wife thought I was crazy and didn’t think they would work.
I’ve amused several people by telling them that they are “hillbilly” porch lights! Asked how they work, I tell them that I catch several lightning bugs, and put them in the jar… some even believe me…😂
 

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Rodfac said:
Yep, that's my experience as well. Rod
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Your southeastern rattlesnakes scare the hell out of me. At least our western rattlers have the decency to stand around in the open where you can see them. In your shoes I'd trade the .22 for a flamethrower.
 
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