Oh boy, grouse hunting season is soon starting here in Finland! And after moving into the middle of forrest, I have finally had a possibility to seriously tune my Winchester 9422m 22WMR rifle. I think my 9422m had some manufacturing problems or the previous owner broke it, since it gave awful groups even with the original iron sights or scope attached to it. However, I have used it in tight thickets to hunt hazel grouses in small distances, so I have dealt with it somehow. Anyhow, some time ago, I first lowered the iron sights so that I don’t need to consider the aiming height during the quick hunting scenarios. Furthermore, the front sight do not cover close targets anymore. The graph in the previously mentioned post is exaggerated a lot btw, at least the CCI Maxi-Mag .22 magnums do not drop that much even in 60 meters as you will see soon. Then I added the metallic ears to protect the DIY front sight. Recently, I also added a cover for the rear sight also tuned further a few days ago. Even a little scratch can wipe soot or paint away from the sights, and a small glare from the exposed metal can change the aiming figure too much in longer distances. Now the rear sight is also protected from most of the direct light and physical impacts, while the view is still enough open to read the field quickly. Then I took a round brass screw, coarse and fine grinding pastes, drill, and made a new crown for the bore. After ensuring that the bullets leave the barrel smoothly, I blued the grinding. Finally, I ground the front wood and the barrel bands so that they do not touch and bend the expanding barrel after shot hot. The floating of the barrel might also help the whole gun to vibrate naturally, but I cannot confirm that effect. Oh yeah, and of course I ensured that all the screws are tight. Now, instead of watermelon sized groups at 60 meters, my 9422m Winchester shoots all the bullets, from different distances without changing the aiming spot at all, in an area coverable by fist! Now, if I manage to spot a black grouse or capercaillie in an open field, I can shoot them also with more certainty! And I don’t hopefully need to soot the sights so often anymore, like shown in this video 🙂 Oh, and I needed to get my Winchester 9422m to function well specially with the CCI Maxi-Mag .22 WMR, because Finnish hunting law requires that a 2,5g bullet or heavier needs to exceed the energy of 200 Joules @ 100m, if one wants to hunt black grouses or capercaillies.

Here are some related photos.

Distance Vs. Energy  graph for CCI Maxi-Mag 22WMR. The thick line represents the converted values I got from the CCI website, and the thinner one is an estimate drawn in Open Office. These cartridges exceed the 200 Joules @ 100m requirement of Finnish hunting law, and are usable for black and wood grouse hunting.

Here is the impact and light cover I made for the tuned rear sight. It goes around the barrel and stays still by metal glue.

The aiming view looks like this now. I also fine tuned the front sight btw, and cut the rear sight which was actually the base metal of the original rear sight (see an earlier pic here). The tip of the front sight is only 12mm apart from the bore, making possible to aim always by the same way at least within a range of 0-60 meters (if 1,2cm deviation is not counted :).

Here is the new crown of the bore. Those small particles are burnt powder, not imperfections in the metal. Now the crown is black after the chemical bluing I made.

Here is a group of holes shot from different spots between 10 and 60 meters. The ambient luminosity also changed a little, as the 60m shots were shot from inside of my dark workshop, other ones from outside. Still, the general ambient luminosity was so low during the evening that I shot the whole group  a little too up. Under a clear day light that group would be exactly in the middle (I need to memorize this effect of badly visible front sight in low light). But look at that group of CCI Maxi-Mags, this group includes three shots from the 60m. And the escaped distant left one is shot from a much shorter distance without a support. Good to have a real workshop and place where to shoot and experiment freely 🙂 It is not as tight group as with my Tikka M07 @ 100m, but still, happy hunting season to me! The square piece of the red tape is approximately 5x5cm.

Here is my target btw, without a paper currently. I made these frames from pine, and under the roof installed the AR500 steel target I welded and cold galvanized recently. The metal has a profile of tilted L. The bullets are safely shattered downwards and trapped inside the open box for later collection 🙂 The whole thing is elevated from the ground by the rocks to avoid the rotting of woods. The sides are made of outdoor tarp to protect the expensive metal also from diagonal rain and snow.