Last year I had a old Rem. in a 222 that would shoot around corners and was about ready to get rid of it. I had heard about the .17 MK4 and thought that would be a good thing to play with, so I called Manson and was going to order the MK4 reamer. He suggested the .17 Rem Fireball . . and that was a good choice. It is a kick to shoot, still a bit loud for a quiet gun that you are looking for. If you want a fairly quiet gun to shoot, try the .17 MK2, that is a standard 22 LR necked to .17, that may fill the bill a bit better, but the cost of ammo will be the deciding factor, it is considerably more than .22 LR ammo. If you are not shooting much over 75 yards, a 22 will do the job very well, been there and done that too. I had a Savage 880 SQ with a 4x12 on top of it that I used to shoot Ground Squirrels with, that was back when the Peoples Republic of California allowed 22 caliber lead bullets. It would reach out to 100 yards pretty well, but if they were inside that they were history, outside that it took some creative adjustments to hit one consistently. . . .

The .17 Rem Fireball is one nice cartridge to shoot, it will reach 300 yards and put the hurt on a Prairie Dog, done it !! So little recoil that even at that distance you get to see the impact of the bullet. I used a McGowen Barrel, 1:10 and shoot the 20gr. Hornady V-Max bullets with 4198 powder, I load for accuracy not velocity and it chrono'd at 3890 fps last time I did it with that load. I had purchased a couple of boxes of factory when I first got it together and they were going 4023 fps. I have not been able to attain that velocity with any of my loads yet, and found that when I did get to that threshold accuracy with away. It is really impressive out to the 200 yard line, nearly no drop at all . .

That was a really good link to the 6mmbr and the .17 wildcats, but building a wildcat is very time consuming for brass and all the sizing dies that go along with it. There is a place you can go to get more information on the .17's it is the Woodchuck Den, Tod Kindler has a book that you can buy and he has done an excellent job of putting the information together on just about all of the .17's, besides it is a very good read on some of the more exotic of them.

The only thing that gave the .17's a bad name is the fowling in the barrel, and it is True !! They will foul quickly, but there is some material out that will give that some life . . Ultra-Bore Coat. I put that down the barrel and now I get upwards of 100 rounds before I have to clean it with a foam cleaner, one 15 minute setting and it is back to it's ole self again . . neat material !

Phantom . . .