22 rimfire smooth bore
 

i am curious about something,i know that at one time they made 22s without rifeling.these 22s shot a type of bird shot.anybody out there that can give me killing distances for small game or varmits. old semperfi

Re: 22 rimfire smooth bore
 

I have an old Cooey smooth bore .22 in my collection. I have never shot it. CCI still makes the "bird shot" for .22 smoth bores. From what I have read, they have very little killing power and are good for about 15-20 feet. I think they were designed originally for shooting at birds in warehouse type buildings or barns where the shot wouldn't cause any damage to the building.

Re: 22 rimfire smooth bore
 

They were also used as ''garden guns'' for killing small rodents in urban gardens when you could do such a thing. We had one at the warehouse where I worked at for a MAJOR food supplier in Florida.

Re: 22 rimfire smooth bore
 

I have an old Winchester model 61 that is designed for rat shot. I would assume that it is a smooth bore. When I was younger I would spend weekends at my uncles farm and take out the rats in his barns. It worked great for that.

Re: 22 rimfire smooth bore
 

Often called and labeled by Remington as Routledge Bore on their pump 22's to be used in a parlor game of Mo-Skeet. I had the Rem 121 Routledge pump and it got the best distance and pattern with the still currently offered Winchester crimped #12 shot. I found the CCI shot shells kept too much of the shot in the blue capsule giving a limited pattern and shot count. The Winchester and I believe Federal still offers a crimped shell, both shoot open like a shotgun shell. Even with these like stated earlier the killing distance would be about 20 feet. Probably most often used as pigeon control inside a building so as not to put stray holes in the roof. I've used the Winchesters out of a revolver to be a snake killer. The effective kill range for snakes was no more than 5 feet.

Re: 22 rimfire smooth bore
 

25 feet would be the farthest I would shoot it. Not that powerful!:)

Re: 22 rimfire smooth bore
 

A .22 pistol, either smoothbore or rifled, with birdshot is a decent snake gun. I don't know if any smoothbore .22 pistols were made.

Re: 22 rimfire smooth bore
 

Sad thing is, it was totally un-neccesary to make them smoothbore...
rifling has little-to-no-effect on ratshot at close ranges.

The difference between a Marlin 25MG Garden Gun and any other 25-series was the smooth bore.
The downside is that's ALL the MG is good for, snake/rat/close range pest control...
whereas you could use the ratshot ammo in any of the .22lr/.22WMR 25-series Marlins and still use them for other things.