Favored Varmint Loads

Wildcats and Factory Fodder

- Stan Trzoniec

With all the availability I’ve had over the years with guns, cartridges and shooting opportunities, small-game and varmint hunters seem to have the best of both worlds. For one, we can pursue our sport almost year-round and the assortment of new and vintage cartridges seems to have no bounds. The majority of us started as adolescents with perhaps a well-used rimfire rifle way back in the county, away from livestock or rural homes.

That’s exactly how I started, and over the years my collection has grown to the point where I can delve into a wide variety of rifles and cartridges that date back to almost a century ago, when shooting was starting to grow. Experimenters like Landis, Whelen, Donaldson and Ness were knee-deep into new cartridges or improving them. Working with custom gunsmiths and with the advent of the Ruger No. 1, I can now say I have rifles chambered for the .218 Mashburn Bee, .219 Donaldson or the .225 Winchester. The Hornet came to me in the form of Browning’s Low Wall rifle – now also available in Ruger’s M77/22. With some history behind it from the hands of Whelen and Wotkyns, the classic loading of 10.0 grains of Alliant 2400 will send a 45-grain bullet on its way in grand style. From there, a handloader can branch out to the .22 K-Hornet, and with the usual 10 percent increase in velocities you get from a wildcat, it can be formed by simply firing factory Hornet cases in a rifle chambered for the .22 K-Hornet.