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.22 Hornet in a Ruger #1, older Ruger #3, Thompson Centre Contenders and Encores, Ruger M7722 Hornet, CZ model 527, or the little Anschutz bold action all made modern .22 Rifles.
By modern I am referring to the use of Remington brass and 40 through 50gr. bullets with Lil'Gun powder.
No longer is this a 150 to 200 yard ctgs for vermin. My CZ's ran under 1/2" sat 100 meters and put 40gr. bullets out at just over 3,300fps. My longest gopher kill with it was 454yards using the Nosler 40gr. Ballistic Tip.
Euro brass is too small in capacity to utilize this powder to it's best performance as RP brass holds almost a full gr. more than WW brass and WW is almost 1/2gr. capacity over the Euro stuff like RWS. In a 10gr. capacity ctg. 1 1/2gr. over RWS is a lot. It's also 100fps faster than WW brass.
So - the hornet comes of age depending on what rifle you are shooting it in.
WW brass uses up to 13.5gr. Lil'Gun with 40gr. bullets and R-P brass holds up to 14.4gr.
Crimped with the Lee Factory Crimping Tool, SD's are lower than 20fps. Without the crimp,performance suffers with huge shot to shot variations in speed. This is due to the small weak case.
I have put over 10,000 of these loads through my 2 CZ Hornets, my buddies Contender and another friend's Ruger M7722Hornet, so I know the loads are safe in these modern rifles. The older ones, probably not, even though Hodgdon lists low pressures for these loads. They also list lower speeds than I obtained in all 4 of these rifles.
With those loads in a modern rifle, the old Hornet pretty much matches the .221 Fireball from a rifle.
LG powder is quite incredible in the smaller case - high vel. low pressure.
With it, I never lost a single case to primer pocket expansion, yet that 'problem' is normal in this case with standard Hornet powders of old.
So - mild or wild, the Hornet is still a king.
All the guys with them on CZ's rave about the accuracy. Both of mine were the Euro "Lux" model.

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