If cost is a major consideration, there’s plenty of practice and good shooting to be had with the time honored .22 rimfire.
Pretty hard to beat on all counts.
Matt Burkett used to have a regular podcast once upon a time.
It was very enlightening how many of the folks he interviewed depended on the lowly .22 for regular training and practice for their matches.
For example, didja’ know the .22 at 100 yards nearly identically duplicates the .308 at triple the distance?
Just a thought.
g.willikers:
can you please help me understand your comment about how the .22lr is like the .308 at 3x the distance?
roughly speaking, you have around 100 ft lbs from the .22lr (40 grain bullet) at 100 yards, and from the .308 Winchester, you have around 1400 ft lbs (150 grain bullet) at 300 yards. How are these numbers “nearly identical” ?
(I split this off into its own thread as I think it’ll turn into a great discussion and I didn’t want the other thread to derail too much.)
ok.
we’ll see - I just don’t understand where g.willikers is getting his info or comparison. am interested in finding out what he really means.
simple
use targets that are 1/3 the size
so if you had a full size silhouette and you shrank it down and used it with a 22 at 100 m it would be the same as shooting at the full size target at 300m with a 308 (ballistic characteristic wise).
srdiver:
huh? what does the size of the target have to do with the choice of caliber?
nothing because it will work with any - however shooting .22 at 100 is a lot cheaper than shooting .308 at 300.
You could still shoot any caliber at a shorter range with a scaled target and achieve the same effect.
But this more about economics and something the military has been doing for years (or at least they did) with sub-cal kits or rifles that mimicked the service rifle but in 22. You could use the 50m pistol range with the correct scaled target to simulate shooting further ranges.
Apparently Mr. Burkett and friends were referring to the trajectory, not the power difference.
It was more about competition and marksmanship than hunting.
I figured he was a plenty trustworthy source and didn’t actually test for this.
If you have doubts, there’s plenty of sources for verifying it.