We do love shooting our rimfres, though, so I've been trying all sorts of quiet, low noise rimfire ammo options for backyard shooting, hoping to find ammo that would keep up with the accuracy we get with our air guns at 30 and 50 yards. As for rimfire ammo, I've tried CCI Quiet, several brands of 22 LR subsonic, as well as CB 22 Shorts. So far, the only rimfire ammo that can compete with our airguns for accuracy has been the 22 LR subsonic loads, but those are just as loud as SV 22 LR ammo, so they don't pass the quiet test. The CCI Quiet and CBs are quiet enough, but accuracy-wise, only plinking grade stuff and that's at 30 yards. Waste of time shooting that stuff at 50.

This week, I did find some CCI CB 22 Long to try. The idea, here, is that with the Longs, I wouldn't get a crud ring in the chamber of my good 22 rifles, so maybe that would help with accuracy. For a rifle, I chose my 1885 Low Wall. Shot several groups of the CB Longs at 30 yards with the single shot and ... ended up holding my nose with accuracy. Pretty bleak. In fact, worst ammo, yet.

Not ready to give up, so I decided to try another rifle, our CZ 453 V in 22 LR. This is a proven sub inch shooter at 100 yards, so I had high hopes for better accuracy in this one with the CB Longs. If this rifle couldn't shoot the CB Longs with accuracy, no rifle would.

Still no go. Groups at 30 were still in inches. Out of frustration, went back to the house and grabbed one of my favorite spring piston air rifles, my HW50 in 20 cal. Figured I would use it as a control, just in case it was me having a bad shooting day and not the ammo. This one has a factory moderator, which helps to reduce noise. It's still not as quiet as shooting CBs in the rimfires, but plenty quiet enough.

One group with the HW50 air rifle was all I needed to know it was the CB Long ammo that had the accuracy problem, not me. By the way, just so you know, this is an average group at 30 yards for all my HW and FWB springers. Our PCP air rifles shoot even smaller groups at 30 yards.

Bottom line, then, is that our airguns win the backyard quiet shooting war and it's not even a contest. Our rimfire rifles deserve proper ammo, so we'll be taking them to the range to shoot with proper ammo, from now on.