.17HMR - A friend and I went out with his new .17 bolt gun, he'd just got it sighted in at the range with a nice Nikon scope that went up to something like 16X, and we were just out for some shooting / squirrel and rodent hunting. After listening to his tales of how amazingly flat shooting it was for 20 minutes, and our not seeing anything, he decided to drop a crow off the top of a telephone pole about 20 yards in front of us. I saw a poof of feathers from the center of the bird, and we watched it fly away! He quickly tried to quench my laughter with shooting at another crow in the top of a tree (bout 40 yards this time). I didnt see feathers fly, but the crow kinda fell off the limb. Before he TOOK FLIGHT! Both flew well away out of eye sight! Later in the day he''d shot three chipmunks in all. One we couldnt find (ran away?), one was still alive and struggling to crawl away with a hole in his neck, and one was a clean kill with a heart shot.
I think it was about 3 weeks before he was telling me about trading that rifle in on an Anschutze .22. He'd done more hunting with the .17HMR, and the results were much the same as our trip together.
Cant help but notice a good number of very nice looking .17 caliber rifles on the used rack everytime I visit shops.
They DO look good on a ballistics chart. Guess it just depends what your using it for.
He DID also have tales of blowing apart a ground hogs head with the .17 before getting rid of it.