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The perfect rifle for hunting small game and varmints in settled and semi-settled agricultural and grazing districts should be quiet, safe to shoot there and inexpensive; and, owing to the small size of the vital areas of most of such game, should be superlatively accurate. Its bullet should, whenever possible, either expand and remain in the game, or destroy itself completely upon impact with earth, sod, stones or rock. It should kill well, yet not cause needless mangling or suffering. The .22 caliber rifle, both in the rim fire and in the flatter-shooting center fire, gives the least report, throws the lightest and smallest projectile, is among the most accurate of all calibers, and is the least expensive to shoot. In the .22 long rifle caliber, it is also the easiest to supply with factory ammunition, which can be purchased at nearly any village hardware store. In center fire, it is cheap to reload, has very light recoil, and causes but little annoyance to farmers and stock raisers. In Eastern farming or estate country, the .22 caliber, both rim and center fire, is the quietest and yet the most effective of all our rifle calibers for either field or woods hunting of small game. In short, from the thoroughly practical standpoint of being usable where any sort of rifled firearm may be shot, it has more advantages and fewer disadvantages than any other caliber. Further, the use of a .22 caliber rifle in the field or in the forests is much like the use of a 20 gauge shotgun on quail or a fine fly rod to dangle dry flies before trout or small mouth black bass. It is the equipment of the man of appreciation and discernment who wishes to develop and depend upon skill rather than upon force and smashing power. After all, most of us go hunting for sport. We wish to enjoy ourselves to the full while gunning, consequently we do not wish to be stopped, neither do most of us wish to annoy landowners. Nevertheless, we need a weapon of precision, great mechanical refinement, X-ring accuracy, and yet which is of a type which appeals to those who have substituted skill and ability in hunting and shooting for the 30" killing pattern of the 12 gauge shotgun. The real story of what has been done, can be done, and what you can do if properly equipped and instructed and shooting a splendidly accurate, properly sighted, precision-built .22 caliber rifle in field and forest has never been adequately told in a book exclusively devoted to hunting and shooting small game and varmints with .22 caliber rifles. The author went into this as much as space permitted in 1931 in “.22 Caliber Rifle Shooting,” but that work is now out of print, the issue having become exhausted. This book, by text and illustration, covers the subject. It is in no part a work of fiction. The shooting related in this book actually occurred. It tells you exactly how to hunt successfully, and to shoot each common variety of North American small game and varmints, where to find them, how to locate and hunt them, and gives numerous examples of rifles and cartridges which produced unusual results. For the youth or the man with his first .22 caliber rifle, for the small bore target shot who has enjoyed only one-half of an experience with a .22 rifle (the remaining half to be found afield), and for the crank rifleman, reloader, small bore ballistics shark and experimenter, this book is a must. Read this work in the spirit in which it was written, that of sportsmen writing one to another; of old timers in the game of field shooting giving their experiences, their hunting lore, their ammunition developments, their misses and their long range hits. This is the book for any small game and varmint hunter who has a rifle and wants to use it more successfully. If you can read this work without learning anything about hunting with the small caliber rifle, you certainly know game shooting with the .22 rifle. May it bring you many happy days in the field.
