.22 Winchester Auto and .22 Colibri Ammo - Brief Article

Guns Magazine, Nov, 1999 by Roy Huntington

If you've got a weird, obsolete, quasi-broken, bolt-action, slam-fire, three-barreled German-Austro-Tutonic 9.734x102 Blackpowder rifle/shotgun combo gun, Dangerous Dave at Old Western Scrounger probably has ammo for it. As a matter of fact, if you called, he'd probably ask if you wanted 192 grain or 266 grain bullets.

Old Western Scrounger has recently come up with some good ideas. If you're like me, you've got a Winchester 1903 and until now, you were sad, just like me. The 1903 is the pre-cursor to the Model 63 and looks exactly like it, except for one very important thing ... it's chambered for the .22 Winchester Auto, which meant it was a wall-hanger -- until now.

Enter the Old Western Scrounger and his latest brain storm. He had a custom loader tool up and make a run of .22 Winchester Auto (not to be confused with .22 Winchester Rim Fire) and has suddenly turned all those fine old guns into shooters again. Due to the limited run, the price does not compete with inexpensive rimfire shooting, but it's well worth the money to stock up on some to keep the old girl shooting.

The Old Western Scrounger also has a new .22 Colibri loading. The original was made for "parlor" guns, little .22 pistols manufactured around the turn of the century which could be shot indoors. The load is a tiny, pointed .22 bullet powered by just the primer in the rimfire case.

I happened to have a reproduction of a Parlor Pistol on hand so I put it right to work with the Colibri ammo. In the garage, the report sounded like a [CO.sub.2] pistol and 25-foot groups were one ragged hole.