Local Walmart routinely has Federal Automatch .22lr (******* sweet-*** accurate shizzle) for $17.50/325 regularly... scored about 3000rds in last month. Also routinely has 1000ct boxes of M-22 for $52... cheapest .22lr I've seen anywhere in a long time. I love the Automatch so much that I leave the cheaper M-22 for the next guy.

I really hope the Automatch shoots **** in the new Ruger... it's like Astroglide down the barrel of my AR15 w/CMMG bolt... no problem with a 12" plate at 100yds standing. I can rapid-fire a whole mag at 50yds and make 25 little pings in a row!

 

I haven't seen a single round of .22 at our local Walmart in years...

I know they've had it, just gets cleaned out immediately.

 

My Walther P22 only likes to shoot CCI mini mags. no other .22lr ammo I have tried has reliably shot through it. Also I check Walmart Everytime I go and I still can't find any .22 ammo there.

 

I had one of these for a while. Same issue. I got tired of it and sold it. I really have given up on most 22 handguns because of this. WTF is the point if it will only shoot high end CCI stuff. Now the only 22 I have is a upper for my 17L and it misfeeds as well. I just use it for misfire training.

 

I might have you covered if you didn't find one yet.

 

My ruger mark II is also pretty picky. If it wasn't so hard to reassemble I would shoot it more. Talk about a test of patience

 

PSA has been doing some weird an amazing combo deals for building ARs if thats your bag. The 18" stainless rifle length gas upper I bought last month and built shots some real nice groups, even with the barrel hot and a non-free float front end. Waiting for my JP adjustable gass block to get here so I can put on the free floater.

 

Maybe i acquired a rare one, but my ruger mark III hunter eats everything i have fed it. I usually shoot the cheap walmart fed value packs and it is boring accurate. I have shot a few steel competitions and it is stoopid fun. The last comp i was dam close to breaking into the 1.XXs for 4 targets and a stopper from low ready. I dont even know how they were scoring me. Only mod is a drop-in trigger. It is my favorite and most used gun of my collection.

 

I have a mark II that will eat anything I throw at it and a Ruger 22/45 with tac-lite receiver that wouldn't get through a magazine without a jam until I sent it back to the manufacturer for some machine work. Now it is better but I still don't trust it.

 

My dad has a Mark II that he has owned since the mid 80's. He shot semi competitively with it when he was stationed in Germany. I first got to shoot it a few years back. It was the first time the pistol had probably been shot since 1990. We pulled out ammo that was most likely also that old. It shot that ammo like it was brand new. It also shot the cheapest bulk .22lr I had like it was nothing.

 

I'll top that. Dad worked at a sporting goods store in San Diego in the early 70's before I was born... gun counter. He has a MK1 that I learned to shoot on. Ammo should last a very long time... many many many decades. Not sure I'd dip back into stuff from the 20's or 30's, but I'd have no problem firing stuff from the 50's and onward. Within the past year, I've shot plenty of 1970's "vintage" .22lr with no issues.

 

All the Walmart's here locally have been getting routine (twice weekly it seems) shipments of lots of stuff. One place that gets the most stuff has a "1 box of .22 caliber per customer per visit" sign... and I know there's an employee who is hooking somebody up after hours. The other Wally's are "3 box limit". One Wally is directly on my way to work and I swing in a few times a week for my box. At that one, although there are literally 50 boxes of 50ct CCI Stinger, they'll still only sell me one at a time. There's also about 100 50ct boxes of CCI Short and a row of 100ct Minimags. They're getting the 325ct Automatch (which is my gold), but only managing one of those a week. When I hit 10k rds of that stuff, I'll start in on something else. It'll all triple in price when Hilldog gets the nod in November.

 

Back in the 80's I shot some WWII vintage .45ACP that was like shooting a flintlock... click..Bang click..Bang click..Bang

It was pretty good for practicing trigger control, but I didn't go through the whole box.

Ammo will stay perfectly fine for decades if stored properly... high heat can cause degradation to the powder, and funky stuff like the hang fires I experienced.

 

My Garand loves this stuff, but I feel guilty for burning it up


(Pic lifted from google, I believe my stuff is LC headstamped 1942)

But honestly, you have no lived until you fired rounds left over from The Great War that are loaded with cordite.



It has a VERY distinctive smell



Fun fact: The British experimented with, produced and fielded the above round with a wooden tip to replace the aluminum in the above cutaway.



The bullets were autoclaved before assembly to prevent possible infection from the wood used in the tip. Jolly good, eh?

 

The re-assemble instructions are pretty crazy, but I think if you actually follow them, it falls together.

Tilt this way, move this, tilt that way, press trigger... etc. Available on the web.

Main thing with Mark II (and likely III), is don't release the bolt by pressing down on the stop. Simply reload, pull bolt back and let fly. Otherwise the bolt and stop will wear in bad ways. I messed mine up that way, and the bolt would hang.

So, I sent it to Ruger. They practically rebuilt my MII for the $30 shipping fee. New Stop, New Bolt, New Sear, New Magazine. Maybe some other stuff.

If you are having issues, consider shipping it to them.

 

We pulled a bunch of those .30M2 AP bullets and reloaded them into a .300mag once... got some fun results on steel plates.


I had a friend in high school who chain smoked... drove me nuts. So every once in a while I would pull apart a .303 round and booby trap a few of his cigarettes with cordite sticks. It didn't get him to quit smoking, but it was funny as hell!

 

You guys who can't find .22lr aren't gonna like this. The Wally on my way to work got another shipment last night... that's at least 3 this week. In this picture are:
10 300ct CCI AR Tactical
30+ 100ct CCI Minimags
20+ 50ct CCI Quiets
70+ 100ct CCI Shorts
30+ 50ct CCI Stingers
40+ 50ct CCI green meatless liberal rounds

Yesterday there were about 10 325ct Federal Automatch and now they're gone, which tells me there's a employee not playing by the rules. Since they insist on that 1 box of .22lr per visit bullshit, I'm gonna ask to talk to a manager next time I walk in and find a huge stash from yesterday completely gone of the good stuff. Today I got another 50ct box of Stingers... gonna get 2 more boxes for 200 on hand and then go back to Automatch/CCI SV/Quiets... limiting my .22lr purchases to only 3 types (minus the Stingers which I'll never pile up, just have some hand for a legit critter round.)
Automatch for my plinking semi-autos.
CCI SV for bolt-action trigger practice
Quiets for the kids and teaching

 

[QUOTE=Roda;1362633]We pulled a bunch of those .30M2 AP bullets and reloaded them into a .300mag once... got some fun results on steel plates.







This is the stuff you want. Mean ****. I have only shot a few rounds of this stuff in 7.62. Shot a bunch in 50 cal. SLAP for the win!

 

I have begun watching for deals on AR parts. We'll see where this leads.

 

Now is the time to buy... saturated market with vendors stocked to the gills because of the massive buying over the past couple years. November will be very telling. If Trump wins, prices on everything should drop as manufacturers and vendors currently hording parts will need to dump inventory. If Hillary wins, prices on everything go through the roof and every gun in every store in America is sold in a matter of days.

A good bet right now will be to do what I did... buy lowers. I can get Andersons locally for $50otd... grab a dozen and put them in the back of the safe as an investment. After Sandy Hook, I saw stripped lowers go for $300.

If you want to buy a gun... PSA, AERO, and Anderson are all pretty cheap right now.