Hello Rolf and yes, Happy New Year..

I use a 22-250 all year around as one of my truck guns.. works perfectly on coyotes, pronghorn, mule deer, or anything else I need to take care of on the ranch including badgers and priarie dogs if I get to an area that has the p-dogs..Its a great caliber in my opinion..

As Daryl stated I have never had an issue with excessive case stretching..

As to barrel length, 24" is more than adequate and frankly with the small powder charge, you could get by with a 20 or 22 in my opinion and give up very little in terms of muzzle velocity.. especially with a 22".. I have 24" on 2 of the 3 I own..Two I have are sythetic Tikka's..both shoot great with factory ammo.. I had purchased 5 cases of it 2 years before the ammo shortage started...again, I use this caliber a lot on the ranch.. I have another that is a heavy barreled Remington Sendero with a 26" barrel..use that for longer varmint hunting..however I like the the handier 24" over the 26"for carrying..and loss of speed is less than 80fps between the 2" less barrels..

My son shot his first mule deer with one this fall.. One shot with a 55 gr bullet at 234 yds.. deer took 3 steps and tipped over dead.. Just shot a coyote on the ranch last weekend with my kids, calling him in early on a Sunday morning..

If you went with the shorter barrel and installed a suppressor to eliminate noise, you would have a great fox gun or any other varmint you may choose to go after..

Hope this helps..

Ripp