Rimfire Practice for Tactical Shooters
Our friend “DesertFrog” enjoys shooting “tactical/practical” rifle matches in Southern California. To maintain his skills, he tries to get quality “trigger time” every week. This helps him work on his body position, rifle handling, and breath control.
Recently DesertFrog acquired a Savage Mark II-BTVS in 22 LR. These retail for about $330.00. The ergonomics of the Savage BTVS rifle were similar to his thumbhole-stock .308 tactical rifle. He decided that having a .22LR practice gun would allow him to maintain his monthly round count at a significantly reduced cost.
He reports: “I used to shoot an average of 200 rounds of .308 Match ammo a month for training (50 per weekend). In the last two months, I’ve shot maybe an average of 50 rounds of .308 per month and probably around 600 rounds of 22 LR. In the last two local tactical precision matches in Saugus, I still finished in the top three. That’s pretty good considering the quality of shooters in SoCal those days. So using mainly the 22LR for practice did NOT hurt my standings in actual competitions. I shot my .308 just as well in matches, but saved the cost of hundreds of rounds of 308. If I didn’t reload and was still buying boxes of Federal Gold Match .308, this would be a savings of more than $380 (minus $120 for the rimfire ammo) in two months. In three months, one can save enough to essentially pay for the price of the Savage Mark II. Even compared to the cost of reloading .308, I probably saved $140.00 in two months. Not bad!”
