22 Creedmoor

The 22 Creedmoor is a wildcat caliber you get by necking down a 6.5mm Creedmoor to .22 cal. From what info I was able to find on the net, it was designed a few years ago by the GAP ( Georgia Precision) folks specifically to shoot long heavy .22 cal bullets at decent hunting velocity while providing a good barrel life and flawless feeding from detachable mags. Great idea.

Last season, after my 220 Swift gave feeding problems during a hunt, I knew I had to change something. As much as I loved the Swift's performance, I had never managed to get it to feed properly from my HS Precision detachable mag. Since I had built this rifle for groundhog hunting, it didn't matter because I used it as a single shot most of the time, but as a coyote gun, I needed more firepower so the gun had to feed. At first I thought of going to a 22-243 or a 22-250 improved but then I came upon a thread on the 22 Creedmoor on some forum and I knew I had my answer. I was already setup to neck down and reload Creedmoor cases for my 6mm Creedmoor so this would just require a different neck bushing. So I ordered a reamer from PTG and decided to rechamber my 220 Swift to this caliber. The only drawback to the whole deal is that my barrel has a slow twist (1-14) so it's designed to shoot really light bullets, not exactly what the caliber was designed for but I will live with that for this season especially since my .243 is my main gun and I only use this one when there is no snow on the ground.

So what are those performances like? I'm happy with the results. My Swift load used to push a 50 gr Nosler BT @ 4130 fps with a stiff load of H-380 out of it's 26 inches barrel. The same barrel is now 1 inch shorter and I am shooting a 53 gr. Sierra match HP @ 4142 fps with a heavy load of H4350. Primers show no signs of pressure, Standard Deviation is very low (8) and the H4350 is much less affected by temperature changes than H-380 so it's a win win situation. As far as the accuracy is concerned, even though the reamer is throated for long bullets, it still manages to shoot those short pills good enough for the job I'll need it to do. All I need to do now is to put fur in front of those bullets.

I knew Francis had a Savage 10 with a custom .223 Rem 1-7 twist barrel on it, and knowing my young partner, I knew that all I had to do was to say: 75gr. bullets @ 3450 fps and I would have a second rechambering to do. Anyone with a ballistic calculator can just plain see that this would be a deadly long range combination for coyotes. So we ordered a PTG bolt head for the Savage action and I gave his old gun a face lift. The barrel was rechambered in 22 Creedmoor, cut dow from 27 to 23 inches, a comp was installed on the barrel and then I did a complete refinishing job on the gun. so it went from looking like that

to looking like this

As for the performance, once again I used H4350 to load. Initial pressure test showed me that 42 grains would push a 75 gr. bullet in the 3470 fps range, so I loaded a couple of test batch and handed them over to Francis for the accuraccy tests. Here's the results from the Berger 75 gr. VLD batch.

Any of these groupes would be acceptable for hunting, but 41.7 is the winner and that's what we will load up for the season, velocity should be around 3450 fps which gives him a trajectory that is identical to the one he has with his 26 Nosler out to 700 meters, so the small rifle will be a great trainer for the big gun.

Now that the guns are done and the season open, hoppefully we'll be able to show you on video how this caliber performs on predators with both light and heavy bullets. Stay tuned.

P.