Creepy crawlie safari: you need the right gun and ammo for this unique sporting adventure

Guns Magazine, Feb, 2006 by Holt Bodinson

During the closing days of summer, I get a slight tinge of bloodlust. Having done battle for the preceding four months with back-biting horse flies, stinging bees, voracious grasshoppers, and dive-bombing dragonflies, I get this itchy trigger finger to take out a bit of quid pro quo with the insect world.

Being a sporting man, I've long considered the faster moving species of six-legged world to be fair game. It just took me several years to figure out how to work in a bit of shooting as part of the game. It turned out that the solution has been around for decades. It's our littlest gauge, the .22 rimfire shotshell.

My first introduction to the .22 shotshell was not too encouraging. To shoot mice and rats inside a vacant chicken coop and sparrows and pigeons inside a barn, my little boyhood gang all chipped in to buy a box of .22 shotshells. The going price was 98 cents. We were filled with great expectations.

When used at close quarters for marauding rats and pesky mice, the little scatter shell worked most of the time. Inside a barn against flying sparrows and pigeons, it gave a nice report, a thoroughly leaded bore, and very little fatal pest control. In fact, after experimenting with a box or two on mixed barnyard fauna, we concluded that the .22 shot cartridge was a real bummer and resorted to our BB guns shooting big steel BB's for interior pest control.

The .22 shot cartridge of my youth was an extra long, .22 Long Rifle case crimped over at the mouth. It's still loaded that way by Federal, Remington and Winchester. The typical shot size is No. 12, although Remington just introduced a No. 10 loading. The crimped-brass case design is tough on patterns and barrels. Pushing a load of soft, fine shot through a hard, brass crimp is not conducive to good patterns either bouncing soft shot along a rifled bore is good for patterns and it's guaranteed to deliver a leaded bore.

The Revolution

CCI revolutionized the cartridge by loading the shot in a transparent plastic pill-looking capsule. The capsule design eases the shot out of the case while serving as a buffer between the shot and the rifled barrel. The design has been so successful it is now offered in a variety of calibers ranging from the .22 Long Rifle and .22 WMR through .45 Colt.

CCI's diminutive shotshells are indeed tiny. There are 2,374 pellets in an ounce of No. 12 shot. CCI's .22 LR shotshell holds 165 pellets (1/15 ounce) and their .22 WMR, 250 pellets (1/8 ounce).

As the pictured patterns show, the .22 shotshell is a short-range proposition. A rifle with a rifled bore will throw a reasonable pattern out to 15' while a 4"-barreled revolver is good for about 10'. A smoothbore .22, like my old Remington Model 121 or Marlin's recently discontinued "Garden Gun," is quite deadly out to 30'.

Creepy Crawlies

A six-legged safari in Arizona begins in mid-summer with the family picnic. As soon as food is on the plate, the peaceful picnic quickly degenerates into a no-holds-barred engagement between us, the flies and the yellow jackets. Pistol-packing Momma has it all figured out though. She cuts a cantaloupe in half and places it about 10' from her lounge chair. You can guess the rest.

As soon as a yellow jacket or fly alights on that melon, it's lights out with a load of No. 12 shot from her S&W Kit Gun. The neat part is the more she shoots up that melon, the more scent it puts out and the more flying, little beasties come in for a killing.

Me, I'm a sporting man. I like to take them on the fly with my smoothbore Remington 121. The season is divided between spring and late summer. Spring begins on those big, black, highly intelligent and spooky, borer bees. They just love to bore 1" holes through our wood siding, and I just love to bring them down hard with a load of No. 12's.

Late summer is real bug safari time. For a test of your wing-shooting skills try tagging dragonflies doing aerobatics over the nearest pond. Dragonflies are the ultimate quarry, but the grasshoppers really get my adrenalin pumping.

Hunting grasshoppers is akin to hunting upland game birds. You mosey along through the high grass and kick up the flushes. In one acre of grass, you can generate more shootable flushes in one hour than a whole season of bird hunting.

Take a six-legged safari sometime. It's a rimfire hoot! And, there are no licenses, tags or bag limits.