The .22/250 cartridge is the hottest thing in the varmint cartridge field right now. Since Remington took the gamble and introduced it as a factory cartridge in 1965 as well as chambering it for the Model 700 and 40XB Match rifles, the cartridge has really progressed.
Remington was at first down to the wire with factory ammunition, but Browning, a firm known for keeping its ear to the ground and doing its best to interpret the consumer’s unexplained snores, rumbles and rumbles, brought out the .22/250 rifle in 1963 when the hot cartridge was still an untamed wildcat load.
Currently both Winchester-Western and Remington-Peters load .22/250 ammunition. In addition to rifles made by Remington, the .22/250 is produced by Sturm, Ruger in No. 1 Single Shot and M/77 bolt actions, by Winchester in the Model 70, Model 770 and Model 670, and in the Model 70 Varmint model with a factory-equipped scope block. Remington has now added a Model 778 in .22/250. Much like the .22/250.
Like the girl next door who was skinny at 11, freckle-faced, with greasy hair, but beautiful at 19, the little .22/250 is a late bloomer. Savage introduced the .250/3000 cartridge in 1915 and it gained a reputation for good accuracy even in lightweight Model 99 Savage lever-action rifles and plenty of firepower for deer, black bear, sheep and similar game. Who was the first courageous man who shortened the .250 case to .22, I do not know. As far as I know, it was only in the 1920s that someone noticed this. But whoever he may have been, his name is probably lost to history.
I first heard of cartridges in 1935. A retired Army officer and rifle-nut named Captain Grosvenor Watkins had chambered the .250/3000 Savage case for .22, loaded it with the then available .22 caliber jacketed bullets, and obtained very remarkable velocity and accuracy. He named this new cartridge .22 Swift. He got Winchester interested in the cartridge and eventually the Big Red outfit brought out the .220 Swift. But as it was later revealed that he had only used the idea and the name.
The ultrahigh-velocity cartridge for which Winchester chambered the Model 54 rifle was based not on the .250 Savage case but on the significantly modified 6mm Lee-Navy case. The case is semi-rimmed (meaning the diameter of the rim is greater than the diameter of the body ahead of the extraction groove) but is headspaced at the shoulder.
It was believed that the considerable taper of the body facilitated extraction and the fairly mild shoulder slope helped keep the pressure within reasonable limits. The Swift case reduces by .0419 inches in diameter from a point just forward of the extractor groove to the beginning of the 20° shoulder. Comparatively 7 mm. The Remington case, an example of a more modern design, is only .17 inches thin and has a 25° shoulder.
The shortcomings of this design were compounded by the fact that Winchester, for promotional purposes, wanted to achieve very high velocities with the Swift and actually fueled it with coal. Pre-war Winchester catalogs show a velocity of 3,720 fps with the 55-gr. bullet and 4,140 with 48-gr. Gun Shot. This is the highest velocity ever achieved with a regularly loaded commercial cartridge.
In those innocent depression years of 1935, 1936 and 1937 the .220 Swift was the ringtail wonder of the world of varmint-shooting and experimentation. Enthusiastic Swift users wrote about how they killed elk, moose and grizzlies with those small, sharp bullets so suddenly that the poor creatures never knew what hit them. Enthusiastic long-range shooters wrote 400, 500, and 600-yard distances. Woodchuck kills.
The early history of the .220 Swift cartridge reminded me of the early years of a famous automobile that was significantly faster than competing brands when it came out. The advertising placed too much emphasis on speed, and as a result those who bought it felt that their best friends would not talk to them if they drove slower than 70 mph (on 40 mph roads in those days). The result was that they were always hitting cows, hitting dogs, or wrapping those automobiles around trees, with no benefit to the trees, themselves, or the reputation of the automobile. Because of this carnage there was a lot of talk about banning those crazy cars from the road.
220 Swift vs. 22 Creed Shootout: Who is the King of the .22 Centerfire?
More or less the same thing happened with Swift. Most of the people who bought it reloaded for it and almost all of them felt that if they used a load that would drive the bullet at less than 4,000 fps they would be penalized for half the distance off target. Presently he discovered that these were the nice new 26-in. Swift barrels were showing considerable neck wear and in some cases were losing accuracy. They also found that the pressure created by the fuel they were putting into the Swift cases was causing the necks to grow longer and thicker. In fact the whole matter was flowing forward.
This is a disease that is common in cases of mild subluxation of the shoulder when used under high pressure. I have seen .300 H.&H. Magnum cases with long sloping shoulders that stretch so much that they eventually pull themselves in two. As the brass flowed, the necks became thicker. This means that the bullets are held with more tension and the pressure is increased. The occasional surprised Swift owner discovers that his primers are leaking and primers are flying in greater quantities than he thought all was well. The Swift was always a hot cartridge loaded to about 54,000 psi, the case neck became thicker and longer and the pressure rose much higher!
So Swift started getting bad press – and it was bad press that ultimately killed it. The cartridge originated as the 9-Day Wonder. It ended when everyone threw stones at him. Some of the things written about Swift were true. Most of it wasn’t. Gun writers have a way of rewriting each other (which is a nice way of saying they often steal each other’s stuff) and untruths about Swift were repeated just as often as truths.
To correct the short-barrel-life problem, Winchester used chrome-moly barrels, and later stainless steel barrels, which were so corrosion-resistant that they could not be blued, instead they had to be iron plated. The iron layer was then turned blue. Barrel life was better with chrome-moly, even better with a rust-free barrel. I believe Winchester reduced those higher pressures a bit as well.
One of the rumors repeated by author after author was that the Swift was not accurate if it was running at less than full throttle. Then when used at 55,000 psi the necks became longer and thicker. Customers grew tired of trimming and reaming the necks of boxes about every third shot. Overall, Swift had been in the market for about three years at that time and it had started getting bad press and finally it came in the market.
Read Next: Modern bullets can turn the old .220 Swift into an even better hunting cartridge
Most guys weren’t smart enough to figure out that all they needed to fix the Swift was to stop trying to blast all those bullets at over 4,000 fps. I used a Swift with great satisfaction for many years, with long barrel life and little trouble. All I did was go back a bit, running the bullets at 3,650-3,700 instead of 4,000 – something like going 60 mph instead of 80.
At the same time that gun writers were turning up their collective noses at the Swift, they were gushing over beer at the original Swift – now known as the .22 Varminter. Who invented that name for the .250/3000 case chambered down to take the .224 bullet, I don’t know because it had been in use for two or three years when a Midwestern gunsmith named J.E. Gabby copyrighted it. He and J.K. were instrumental in popularizing the cartridge. A custom handloader named Bushnell Smith was a major contributor.
This story was originally published in the July 1969 issue of Outdoor Life.
