THE DIVERSIFIED PLINKER

Never have you had so many ammo options. There’s a massive amount of variety in the rimfire world, and some ammo is better at certain tasks than others. While the .22 LR is not the most powerful, the most accurate or the most reliable, it has earned its spot in the limelight as a jack of all trades that has applications for virtually every corner of the shooting world—and beyond. There’s an almost unlimited number of uses for the world’s most popular rimfire, and we will be looking at the top three loads available for the top three most common uses people have for the cartridge.

The top three uses for the .22 LR are range shooting, hunting and self-defense. While it might seem that it’s more suited for plinking, this cartridge is a serious contender in all three of these arenas for a number of reasons ... including some surprising ones.

RANGE AMMO

It’s a fair bet that 99.9 percent of all .22 ammo made gets fired at the range. A common sight at most outdoor shooting ranges is a carpet of fired .22 brass that has turned brown and gray with tarnish and age. It lays so thickly in some places that parking your