Sweet Seventeens

No matter your age, you can have a love affair with Sweet Seventeen - if it's a seventeen caliber rifle cartridge!

For a hundred years the small-rifle option was pretty much limited to .22 caliber. American shooters could choose from the .22 BB Cap rimfire pushing a 17-grain slug 750 fps through the .220 Swift driving a 40-grain bullet 4,000 fps.

Remington tried interesting rimfire shooters in a .20-caliber they called the 5mm Remington in 1969, but few were interested. Their .17 Remington Centerfire, made by necking down a .223 Rem. Case and pushing the shoulder back, did better in 1971. It's still around, but that was our only successful sub-.22 until 2002 when Hornady released its revolutionary .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire. The hot little round, which pushed a 17-grain V-Max bullet an impressive 2,250 fps, proved accurate and flat enough for taking small rodents out at 150-yards, sometimes 180 yards.

The success of the .17 HMR inspired Hornady to press ahead with its necked-down .22 Long Rifle called the .17 Mach II because it pushed that same 17-grain V-Max 2,000 fps. This made for an impressively accurate small-game round that shot so flat you could hit a 2-inch circle from the muzzle to 125 yards with a dead-center hold. The .17 Mach II is still around, but few shooters know it. Seems it performs too much like its big brother to sell well.

So, in 2003, after a century in which we only had one 17-caliber cartridge, we suddenly had three. Well, guess what? Now we have six! In 2007, Remington necked down its .221 Fireball and released it as the .17 Fireball. It throws a 20-grain V-Max 4,000 fps. Many shooters prefer it over the 4,400 fps .17 Remington because there's reportedly less barrel fouling. Both make great fur-getters because they shoot wonderfully flat with enough energy to put down critters to the size of coyotes without mangling the pelts. The bullet goes in, generally explodes, and stays in. Trajectories are fine to 300 yards, but energy falls to 250 foot pounds.

Hornady grabbed the next .17 headlines in 2012 by legitimizing the old .17 Hornet wildcat. This is the .22 Hornet centerfire blown out with the shoulder pushed well forward and, of course, necked down to .17. This might be the most reasonable reservoir of powder for the tiny .17 bore. About 10 grains of Hodgdon Lil'Gun powder should push a 20-grain V-Max 3,600 fps, plenty fast enough for rodents and small predators to perhaps 300 yards.

The newest cartridge to join the sub-caliber party is the .17 Winchester Super Magnum, a rimfire that is not based on any current or former .22 rimfire case, but a .27-caliber rimfire blank used to drive construction fasteners. Winchester engineers necked it down, tried it out and shouted Eureka! They'd just created the fastest rimfire in history. It spits a 20-grain poly-tipped bullet 3,000 fps, doubling the performance of the .17 HMR. It shoots twice as flat, drifts half as much in the breeze and carries three times more energy downrange, all for about 33 cents a shot!

So we now get to choose among rimfire and centerfire .17s with speeds running from 2,000 to 4,200 fps using bullets as light as 17-grains and as heavy as 25-grains in factory loads. Rimfires sell for as little as 30 cents a shot; centerfires run about $1 a shot.

What are .17s good for? How about fun, targets, varmints, and small predators to the size of coyotes with minimum expense and virtually no recoil? The .22 rimfire remains the ultimate low-cost plinker, but when you want to aim dead-on to 100 yards or even 180 yards, one of the .17 rimfires should be your go-to round. When you want to smack targets well beyond 200 yards with so little recoil that you can watch the hit, go with any of the centerfire 17s.

There may not be a Sweet 17 in your past, but there sure should be one in your future!