Overview
Most .22 Short bullets are made of lead (usually coated with grease or wax, or copper-plated) in round nose or hollow point styles. Bullets for use at shooting galleries were often made of compressed powdered metal that disintegrated on impact to avoid ricochets and over-penetration of backstops. The standard velocity .22 Short launches a 29-grain (1.9 g) bullet at 1,045 feet per second (319 m/s) with 70 ft·lbf (95 J) of energy from a 22 in (559 mm) rifle barrel and can penetrate 2 inches (51 mm) of soft pine.
As a hunting round, the high velocity hollow point Short is useful only for small game such as tree squirrels and rabbits. For small game hunting in general, the greater energy and wider ammunition selection of the .22 Long Rifle make it a more popular choice. In the American South, the .22 Short hollow point is still very popular for use on raccoons, which are treed at night using dogs and shooting is at close range. In some states, the .22 Short is the only legal round to use for such hunting.
Although the .22 Long Rifle has surpassed the .22 Short in the market place, many ammunition companies still produce .22 Shorts, and in a fairly wide variety. Most makers utilize the standard 29-grain (1.9 g) solid round nose bullet and 27-grain (1.7 g) hollow point bullet weights for the .22 short. CCI makes several types: a CB Short at 727 ft/s (222 m/s), Target Shorts at 830 ft/s (250 m/s), their standard Short round with plated round nose bullet at 1,080 ft/s (330 m/s), and a high speed hunting load with plated hollow point bullet at 1,105 ft/s (337 m/s). The .22 Short high-velocity exceeds the performance of the .22 Long and the .22 Short has displaced the .22 Long as an alternate to the .22 Long Rifle for many .22 shooters. Fiocchi makes their Exacta Compensated Super Match SM200 with lead round nose at 650 ft/s (200 m/s). Remington produces a high velocity plated round nose at 1,095 ft/s (334 m/s). Aguila makes both a match lead round nose at 1,095 ft/s (334 m/s), and a "high speed" round with plated bullet also listed at 1,095 ft/s (334 m/s). Also available is the fine RWS R25 match ammunition at 560 ft/s (170 m/s). Eley also makes their Rapid Fire Match cartridge at 750 ft/s (230 m/s).
Most of the target oriented and CB shorts are very quiet, due to being subsonic. When fired from a full-length rifle barrel, most .22 Short loadings are as quiet, if not quieter, than the average air rifle.
The Aguila SSS (SubSonic Sniper) round uses a .22 Short case with a 60-grain (3.9 g) bullet (twice the weight of the .22 Short bullet and half again as heavy as the .22 Long Rifle bullet) giving an overall length of a .22 Long Rifle round, making categorizing the SSS problematic: while the SSS case size is .22 short, the firing chamber of the barrel must be .22 LR dimensions to accept the SSS cartridge.
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