222 Remington

In favor of the 223 Remington, given its popularity as a varmint cartridge, and in a broader sense its use in today’s popular AR rifles that largely have brought the 223 into the realm of the “commodity” cartridge, its predecessor 222 Remington goes largely ignored. For a time, however, it was a highly favored varmint cartridge. Like the fabled Sako L461 and Remington Model 788 rifles brought to market in the two decades following the 222 Remington’s introduction in 1950, the cartridge is considered an also-ran by shooters who look only at velocity. From a commercial perspective, plainly and simply, the 223 and 22-250 Remingtons have taken over the field and for decades have kept the 222 buried in a prairie dog’s lair, so to speak.

Almost immediately following its introduction, the 222 Remington also caught the accuracy-oriented attention of benchrest shooters, and it became a class-leading cartridge; many accuracy records were broken and held for some time by the diminutive case using bullets weighing 50 grains or more. It was touted to be “inherently accurate,” although such a term is exceedingly difficult to prove conclusively as it relates to cartridges, and it’s quite overused, even to this day.

If timing is everything, the 222 Remington had a few things on its side. It was the first rimless, factory .22-caliber centerfire cartridge, and it had plenty of neck length to accommodate long target/varmint bullets without using up powder capacity. These two features alone helped it to supplant the rimmed varmint cartridges that were popular at the time. Along with this, however, it became the basis for the 222 Remington Magnum, 223 Remington and the 221 Remington Fireball. The 223 alone slowly sealed the 222’s fate.

There is little doubt that a pile of 222 Remington rifles could be found in pickup window racks in ranching country or in the corners of gun safes and closets in the middle of suburbia. Some of these rifles likely date back to the first Model 722 Remington that was the first bolt action chambered for the cartridge. Today, it’s pretty difficult to even find a new rifle offered for the cartridge. Remington doesn’t list even one rifle option for the cartridge in its current online catalog.

This is somewhat disheartening to me, having used a Model 700 BDL 222 when first learning to shoot a scoped rifle while still in primary school. Later in life, like many young men interested in rifles, it was regrettably turned into something “better,” and something that, overtime, lost its appeal.  

With the exception of several manufacturers that will build a rifle for almost any cartridge on special order, such as Savage or custom and semicustom makers, Legacy Sports International, importer of Howa rifles, appears to be the only current volume supplier of 222s. More interesting is the fact that the company’s vice president, Andy McCormick, came up with something lighter and smaller than the typical Howa 1500/Weatherby Vanguard short action.

Legacy refers to it as the MiniAction, and it was designed to use a detachable polymer magazine, because that appears to be of great importance for many of today’s younger rifle buyers. Conceptually, at least, the MiniAction was first targeted toward shooters looking for a 6.5 Grendel or 223 Remington bolt rifle, but the same magazine for the 223 will hold 204 Ruger and 222 Remington ammunition, so chambering rifles accordingly was a natural way to extend the line, which now includes the 7.62x39 cartridge. When last I spoke with Andy at the 2017 SHOT Show, he indicated that the rifle is selling well in all available cartridges. “Who says the 222 is dead?” he said. “People say they can’t find rifles, so we’ve got them.”

The MiniAction receiver is quite compact and therefore stiff; theoretically, the stiffer the receiver, the better the accuracy potential, assuming the barrel is of good quality too. On the test rifle sent for this review, the receiver, inspected as closely as can be done with a dial caliper, measures 1.170 inches in diameter and is roughly 7.125 inches long; the ejection port is 2.92 inches wide. The length of the bolt is a curt 6 inches, and that includes the cocking shroud.

Now it gets interesting: The bolt shank diameter – again using a dial caliper – on the test rifle measures .618 inch, and the opposing locking lugs roughly measure .355 inch front to rear and .387 inch wide. They protrude just over .090 inch. All this makes a tidy, little receiver. Along with the polymer “bottom metal” and magazine, this is where most of the weight has been shed, when compared to standard Howa short actions. Topped with a Redfield 3-9x scope in Talley Lightweight scope mounts, the test rifle, with a 20-inch light varmint barrel taper, weighs just a bit less than 8 pounds.

The trigger is a two-stage design that is adjustable, though its adjustment screw and nut are covered with a bit of sealant. The sealant, I’ve been told, is put on the trigger so Legacy can immediately spot whether pull weight has been adjusted should the rifle be returned as problematic. The test rifle’s trigger pull was measured on a Lyman digital trigger pull scale, and five consecutive pulls provided an average of 3.2 pounds – good enough for basic accuracy testing and far better than the standard pull weight found on many other rifles on the market today. I saw no need for adjustment.

The safety is a three-position design: In the rearward “safe” position, the bolt handle remains locked closed. The center position keeps the safety engaged while allowing the bolt to be opened to remove a cartridge from the chamber. The forward position should be obvious.

Legacy sells Howa barreled actions, including standard and long versions, and over the years I have had a couple of them bedded to Bell and Carlson stocks, and each has shot better than I can. One in particular was a 7mm WSM that would put three Winchester Fail Safe bullets (long discontinued) into .5-inch groups, provided there was no glitch in the trigger pull. Part of the reason the Fail Safe was discontinued had to do with sporadic accuracy. The stainless short-action Howa didn’t appear to mind them at all.

Prior to shooting any factory loads or handloads from the test rifle, the opportunity arose to try a number of MiniActions on a prairie dog-laden ranch in northern Wyoming. It has often been repeated that the 222 Remington is a good varmint cartridge out to 200 to 250 yards. After two days of shooting out to 500 yards or so, and watching others shoot the rodents at longer distances, all while using Hornady factory ammunition containing V-MAX bullets, it is hard to believe that the cartridge is so limited by its range. Of course, modern fragmenting varmint bullets help. When the wind picks up, it can’t keep up with 223 or 22-250 Remingtons, but it is no slouch.

There were many rifle samples to shoot in Wyoming, from short-barrel varmint versions to lighter sporters with 22-inch barrels. In fact, Legacy has done a great service to its dealers by offering many variations on the same theme. The company has grown in recent years and now houses tanks for applying hydrographic film to its polymer stocks and barreled actions and has more recently invested in the equipment needed to apply CERAKOTE finishes to barreled actions. This allows one vender to inventory one variant while another at the other end of town has something different to offer; it’s simply smart business in today’s highly competitive rifle market.

After rough zeroing the 222 Remington test rifle, a number of factory loads were shot at 100 yards for accuracy and velocity. The loads were of different vintages, from the Federal loads of 1970’s vintage containing 50-grain softpoints used in my youth to Hunting Shack Munitions’ latest Varmint Gold offering containing Berger 50-grain flatbase bullets. Samples from Hornady and Remington were also tried. An accompanying table includes downrange results, and all loads turned out to shoot pretty well.

Given the focus of content offered in these pages, a few representative handloads were also put together. CCI BR-4 primers were used for the handloads that included current varmint bullets ranging in weight from the Hornady 35-grain NTX to the Sierra 55-grain BlitzKing. This latter was one of the four bullets tried that didn’t give sub-MOA groups – though by no fault of its own.

Howa MiniAction 222 Remingtons are only offered with a one-in-14-inch rifling twist. This twist rate is an old standard for most varmint cartridges that shoot .224-inch bullets, including the 222 Remington Magnum, 22 PPC, 225 Winchester and even the 224 Weatherby Magnum. Sierra not only suggests its 55-grain BlitzKing should be used with a faster, 1:12 twist, the manufacturer notes in its handloading manual the faster twist rate is “required.” Yet that doesn’t keep a tinkerer from tinkering, so the bullet was tried in the short-barreled Howa anyway, just to see how things would turn out. All the handload results can be seen in the table, which only includes the powder and bullet combinations that shot well from this particular rifle.

The Howa MiniAction is an interesting rifle that appears to shoot well with both factory ammunition and with handloads. Yet it is doubtful, unfortunately, that varmint shooters will ever see the 222 Remington – as my kids are often fond of saying – trending. Meanwhile, those of us who like the mild-recoiling cartridge for varmint shooting have a new rifle option.