I used to shoot in competition with a Wincheter Model 52D target rifle. For day to day practice I shot plain jane subsonic Winchester T22 ammo, bought by the brick, and adequate for club and league matches. For serious matches I switched to Eley Tenex and achieved admirable results, at least for me, placing highly and consistently in national postal matches (I won a Pewter medal once) and regional league matches, but Eley was out of my price range for regular practice, if not out of my skill level, so T22 was the fodder I fed my gun most of the time.Cedar Park Dad wrote:.22s are also especially finicky on their ammo, both for reliability and accuracy. Even pistols/rifles known for eating all types of ammo will have definite preferences for accuracy.
I had a ruger pistol that shot golden bullets like a laser and never jammed but would jam up with thunderbolts, whereas the other ruger pistol liked the really bad Thunderbolts and would jam with the golden bullets. Weird.
One weekend I got to the range for the usual club match and found that I had missed the announcement that we were going to be competing in a team postal, and all I had was box ofter box of T22 in my range bag, I had run dry on Eley and not bothered to resupply. A friend offered me a loan of some of his Eley ammo, but not Tenex, Eley Match, which he used in his Remington and consistently won matches with.
My rifle, which was perfectly happy with Eley Tenex did not like Eley Match at all, and my results in the first stage were so poor that I switched back to T22 and was consistently better in the later stages. I did not place well individually and only the superior scores of my team mates allowed us to place well as a team.
My Ruger 10-22 cheerfully chews through just about anything I put through it, but does not like the ultra velocity stuff.