.22 CCM - Whisper

The Lovely Bride threatened to move some of my crap off the kitchen island so I started doing some early spring cleaning in the reloading room lest she start piling my crap up in there indiscriminately.  I happen to be very discriminating about how my crap gets piled up and I wasn't going to let her do the piling.

The day wore on and I found myself in a full-blown project involving a broom,  a dust pan, a cordless drill, shelving, a new tool box on wheels and I forget what else.   There was a lot of crap piled in that room and a lot of the piling hadn't been done by me.

Along the way, I found a couple of primed .22 CCM cases and I also found a can of .22 caliber air gun pellets.  Sometimes events just overtake us.

The pellets measured about .219 so they went  into the cases pretty easily.  I didn't know whether the primer by itself would get the pellet all the way out of the barrel but I knew how to find out.  At fifteen yards they were a couple of inches below my point of aim but dead on left to right.  The really impressive thing was the sound.  There almost wasn't any.  Less than a CB cap.  Less than a pellet gun.  Somewhere between a pellet gun and a gnat fart. 

The Lovely Bride wasn't watching the target at the first shot and it was so quiet she asked if the pellet had gotten out of the barrel.  If I hadn't seen it strike the target I would have wondered too.

When I'm done with the cleaning and re-piling in the reloading room, I'll have to prime a few cases and do some more shooting to see how they penetrate cans (and  whether a few tenths of a grain of powder is desirable without making it too loud) but I think I have stumbled onto what just might be the ultimate suburban squirrel gun.

Nobody in their right mind is going to go buy a Cooper in 22 CCM just to shoot pellets out of it but the thing is that its case is just a tad smaller than a 22 Hornet so the same thing ought to be do-able in a Hornet;  probably even a .223.  Being able to use something like a .223 to quietly take small game without altering the rifle might come in handy.