Shooting a Short in a Rifle

allen griggs

My brother has an old .22 Mossberg, bolt action with a tubular magazine and scope. Really nice rifle he bought it in 1965, back in the good old days when a 14 year old kid could walk in to a sporting goods store and buy a rifle no questions asked.

Anyway he wants to shoot the rifle with his grandchildren. Can you shoot .22 short in this rifle?

Sam06

It will say so on the barrel.

What model is it?

allen griggs

I told him it would probably say so on the barrel. The gun is over at his house I might get a look at it today.

select-fire

It will shoot them even if you have to manually load it. My old 513T shot CB caps or shorts if you wanted less noise.

babun

It will ONLY say so on the barrel IF it was designed to feed LR, L, Shorts.
All .22 lr guns will shoot any shorter than the LR shell.
It may not feed them well, but will shoot them.

Clean the chamber well before using the longer shells.

allen griggs

My brother told me it says on the barrel "MODLL," not "MODEL" but "MODLL" weird, maybe a typo on the barrel?
But it says "MODLL M-6-B" and it says ".22 S-LR"
It is a big long rifle nice weight to it. He told me, as he recalls, it will hold 17 LR. So it ought to hold about 30 shorts.
But, y'all are saying it might not feed the shorts. Seems like you could get some lead fouling on the front of the chamber.

Hawk Carse

Shooting Shorts in a classic .22 S, L, LR rifle is kind of a stunt these days.
Shorts are much less common in stores and not less expensive than Long Rifle.
LR standard velocity will be very quiet out of that long barrel... but he and the kids still need ear protection, and eye protection.

Sam06

Hawk Carse wrote:

Shooting Shorts in a classic .22 S, L, LR rifle is kind of a stunt these days.
Shorts are much less common in stores and not less expensive than Long Rifle.
LR standard velocity will be very quiet out of that long barrel... but he and the kids still need ear protection, and eye protection.

+1

I really like Subsonic 22lr. They shoot great, kill squirrels and are quiet. I shoot them without ear protection but then I am a dumba$$

truthful

It will shoot them for sure. The question is whether they will properly feed from the mag tube to the chamber. There is long rifle length ammo these days that is very quiet and should feed just fine.

SoreShoulder

CCI makes a "quiet" load which has 700 fps in an LR case. If your gun misfeeds with the shorts, it may work better with those.

bambihunter

Like others have said, fed individually it will shoot them just fine. The real question is there a reason you want to shoot shorts? If you have a supply like KenK mentioned, then I could see. Other than that, you can get the same noise level, same (or less) cost, and would most likely be more reliable just shooting .22lr. Recoil would also be negligible no matter what .22lr you choose, and even less recoil shooting subsonic.

allen griggs

My brother, to be honest, doesn't know too much about guns. These grandkids are some real wild apes, boys age 14 and 10, and girl age 11.
We live on top of the mountain in the wilderness.

These kids have never fired a gun before, have never seen a real gun before, have fired a bb gun quite a bit.
My brother is afraid one of these yard-apes might point the gun at the sky and just pull the trigger, and the bullet fall to earth and hurt somebody. I told him, the short is not much safer than the LR, but this is what he wants to do.


Here is the satellite photo of my brother's place, the log cabin with the green roof and the barn with green roof. Dark blue pickup in the drive way. Zoom out, and you can see how far out in the woods his place is.

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7852768,-82.7211285,188m/data=!3m1!1e3

Hawk Carse

Well, get him some Shorts and turn the little twerps loose. It sounds like everybody would be better off if the rifle would NOT feed Shorts from the magazine and had to single load.

hillbille

he should be close enough to keep the yard apes from shooting in the air, if not doesn't sound like any of them need to be handling a gun, kids or him.......

casting

I have a Mossberg B/A 22, I forget what mod#. It is a S,L,LR on the barrel. I don't think I've ever tried to load it with shorts. I have found out it doesn't like to be loaded to the max amount. There's a spring down in there that lets out one round at a time. It looks more like clip. When mine gets a lot of magazine pressure, it seems to just give up and lets 22 rounds spray out of the chamber. So one recommendation from my experience is 10 rounds at a time. I would also suggest you try CCI's CB Long. I believe the case is a true long not long rifle. But they're quiet. My trigger makes more sound than the round going off.

11b6r

Hi there! I'm addicted TO OLDER Mossberg 22s. IF the rifle in question is a Model M slide action, yes, it will handle shorts- and it will hold 20 of them. Here are the Letter model Mossberg 22s. There IS significant collector's interest in these. Made 1928-1931.

https://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6069409

allen griggs

OK, you .22 gear heads here it is:






I always thought this bolt handle looked cool.




He got the model number wrong. It actually says "MODLL 1 4 6 B"
Why does it say "MODLL" and not "MODEL."

Hawk Carse

MODLL
Broken roll mark stamp didn't get noticed until at least one rifle was completed.

casting

Your 146B likely has an adjustable trigger in case you feel the need. Was talking with a M-berg collector at a gunshow about mine and was advised of this.

He Dog

It says 22 S-LR, it will shoot them all, and the action should work with all three as well. My 22 from 1960 still does.

roswellnative

There is a faint E

I love my moss berg 22. It?s an old army trainer