The Rimfire Report: CCI’s Maxi-Mag 40 gr JHP .22 WMR
Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report! This ongoing series is all about the rimfire firearm world and all of its different types of guns, gear, shooting sports, history, and ammunition. Over the last few months, we’ve been slowly digging and rigorously testing various types of rimfire ammo. My primary mission with this entire series is to provide readers and shooters with a good set of starting data for the types of ammunition they’d likely be buying for their various guns. While everything thus far has been chambered for a .22 Long Rifle, today, we’ll be getting into our first of many .22 WMR tests. First, we’ll be starting with a favorite of mine for years, CCI’s Maxi-Mag 40 gr JHP .22 WMR load.
More Rimfire Report @ TFB:
The Rimfire Report: The “Gill Gun” – Springfield Model 87A .22 Rifle The Rimfire Report: A Quick Look at CCI CB 22 Short The Rimfire Report: Plain Ole CCI Standard Velocity 40 Grain
The Rimfire Report: CCI’s Maxi-Mag 40 gr JHP .22 WMR
22 WMR or 22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire has been in existence for about 65 years. Originally introduced by Winchester for the Winchester Model 61 slide rifle, the cartridge was very quickly picked up by other major companies like Marlin, Ruger, and Smith & Wesson, who all took advantage of the considerably faster velocities found in the tiny magnum rimfire cartridge and advertised it for use against larger varmints like foxes, raccoons, and coyotes.
CCI’s modern loading is similar to the original Winchester loading of 40 grains and has an advertised velocity of 1,875 feet per second. This outclasses the most common 22LR cartridges in terms of speed by over 500 FPS in most cases which should theoretically ensure better penetration, expansion, and terminal effect when compared to the much slower 22LR cartridge. You’ll find that most of the rifles chambered for 22WMR are often just slightly larger versions of 22LR rifles, and this is sort of the case with our test rifle for today.
Obviously, the main goal with 22WMR is to serve as a varmint hunting cartridge. In situations where 22LR isn’t powerful enough, but .223 or 5.56 might be a bit overkill, 22WMR serves as a middle ground that has a much greater range and terminal effect for taking out tougher small game animals.
“Maxi-Mag 22 WMR 40 Grain
Product Link: https://www.cci-ammunition.com/rimfire/cci/maxi-mag/6-24.html
Product Overview
Harness the power of one of the fastest 22 WMR cartridges on the market. These loads’ jacketed hollow-point bullet design transfers tremendous energy to the target on impact, and clean-burning propellants and CCI® priming ensure the most consistent ballistics.
Clean-burning propellantsCCI primingHigh velocitiesMaximum energy transfer on impact
SPECS
Caliber: 22 WMRGrain Weight: 40Bullet Style: Jacketed Hollow PointMuzzle Velocity: 1,875Ballistic Coefficient: .114Package Quantity: 50Usage: HuntingPrice: $19.99 per box of 50”
Velocity Data
For this series of velocity tests, I’m using what I consider to be a likely option for a varmint hunter out there – an AR. This particular AR is a mashup of a SIG Sauer M400 SDI lower, combined with a Bear Creek Arsenal 22 WMR upper. The upper itself has proven to be quite reliable, and as you’ll see today, pretty accurate and reliable as well.
CCI Maxi-Mag out of our BCA 16” rifle is giving us a touch over the advertised 1,875 fps on the box and on the CCI website. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing especially out of a 16” auto-loader. Both the extreme spread and standard deviation are higher than what I expected. I typically consider an extreme spread to be a rather unhelpful metric to measure in most cases, all it tells you is what’s technically possible during your entire string of fire. If you imagine that our group size was to continue to grow, you’d also likely see the extreme spread grow. The real data is within the standard deviation which should give you a more accurate representation of what the round will likely do when fired out of that gun.
In this instance, the standard deviation is at 29, which isn’t bad, but also isn’t good. I typically consider “accurate” ammo to have a standard deviation of 20 fps or lower, 10 or lower for PRS or match-grade ammo. A standard deviation of 30 isn’t bad when you factor in the price of the load. It does, however, mean that we are going to run into some accuracy inconsistencies down range.
Accuracy Data
Like in previous tests, we are shooting these 22WMR loads at a distance of 50 yards, a pretty common distance for small game and varmint hunting purposes. We’ll shoot an entire 50-round box by shooting 5 groups of 10-shots each to give us a nice well-rounded sample of what we can expect accuracy-wise (3-round groups are statistically irrelevant). Since this is primarily a slightly larger game hunting load, we’re looking for groups about the size of a fist or smaller. CCI Maxi-Mags are capable of it, especially considering our shooting table wasn’t exactly the most stable platform.
Our worst group had a bunch of horizontal stringing, likely from the wobbly shooting table we had set up at our ad hoc 50-yard range. The rounds did consistently exhibit about 1 inch of vertical stringing as well, which I would more likely attribute to the slightly higher-than-normal standard deviation. Even so, we managed to crank out two roughly 1” groups, one 2” group, and then one other group that was the worst of the bunch with a horizontal spread of about 4 inches. Even with the slightly higher numbers, I think it’s safe to say that CCI’s Maxi-Mag 40-grain JHP is acceptably accurate for varmint hunting duty out of this particular BCA 16” carbine upper.
Suppressing 22WMR for Hunting
Unlike subsonic 22LR varmint hunting loads, 22 WMR is always going to be supersonic (it’s kind of in the name). These tiny magnum cartridges can be quite loud out of even auto-loaders like the BCA upper. If I could make one change to this current rig for varmint hunting, I’d ditch one major component for a more optimized one, the gigantic TiOn Inc Dragoon 450B suppressor. I’d instead replace the whole setup with a QD 5.56 can like the Dead Air Sierra 5 – specifically the one with the Keymo adapter since that is what all my other 5.56 muzzle devices are.
While I’d normally consider using a rimfire suppressor for a rimfire gun, to be frank, 22 WMR doesn’t suppress well simply because it’s an extremely hot and fast load. Most rimfire cans have very little interior space for the gasses to expand into, and thus you still get a pretty nasty ear-ringing “pop” out of smaller suppressors.
My last reason for picking the Sierra 5 for this particular gun is because it is more likely to live on a 5.56 rifle most of the time, meaning the QD attachment and the shared diameter can keep both rifles suppressed for different situations. Both of these suppressors can be bought from Silencer Shop. The Switchback 22 would obviously be a more budget-friendly option at around $460, while the Sierra 5 with the KEYMO adapter would be slightly more adaptable, but more expensive at almost $800. All that being said, both are less expensive than the $1,250 Dragoon 450B that is currently on this rig and both would be better optimized for the caliber we’re talking about today.
Dead Air Sierra 5 Suppressor with KEYMO Adapter
Thoughts Going Forward
22 WMR is sort of new territory for me. I’ve been toying with the cartridge for years but never really attempted to record data like this for any magnum rimfire cartridges. My assumption after today’s results gives me the impression that CCI’s Maxi-Mags land somewhere in the middle of the performance spread when compared to other 22WMR ammunition. I ran into zero malfunctions with this ammo to date and I often consider 22 WMR to be better made on average when compared to their 22LR counterparts. I’d also expect them to perform much better ballistically just by looking at the numbers, but we’ll see where that tiny 40-grain jacketed hollow pout lands us when we get into Clear Ballistics gelatin testing!
Until then, let me know your thoughts on CCI’s Maxi-Mag 40-grain 22WMR ammunition. What has your experience been with it so far? Do you have another 22WMR preferred cartridge as your go-to varmint hunting round? Thanks as always for stopping by to read The Rimfire Report and we’ll see you all again next week!
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