I have had this particular 10-22 for over 30 years. I was the first rifle I purchased back in my early 20's. A few years back I came across some sites showing people's customized guns and web sites to get parts from. I bought the improved bolt release, bolt handle and a Hogue plastic and rubber stock. This was during the great American .22 ammo shortage caused ,in part, by word of a shortage causing all the preppers and other gun enthusiasts to buy up every round they could find and to continue to do so for years. The only ammo I could find at the time was some Aguila 40 grain solid high velocity stuff so I bought a brick of it. Subsequent trips to the range showed pretty indifferent accuracy from my 10-22. 25 yard groups of 1.5 inches or more. I figured it was just crap ammo but in the interest of fooling around with the gun I bought a 20" Green Mountain barrel for it. It wasn't super expensive so I thought it was worth a try. The barrel and action in the Hogue stock rocked back and forth because the stock just isn't very stiff. I put a bed for the back end of the barrel in front of the action screw and a little ledge at the rear of the receiver. Back to the range. Same mediocre groups. Later on, almost all the main brands of ammo were available and I tried a few including some Eley HV match ammo. Not much better. I moved onto other things like CZ 527 tack drivers and fun Henry lever guns.
Recently, as many of you have read here, I bought a S&W .22 target pistol. It was throwing some pretty tight groups with that Aguila ammo. Good enough that I looked into it and found others with similar experiences. It even burns cleaner than some other major brand ammo I have. I ordered 3 more bricks of it. As you also might have read here, I now live in a state with either more reasonable or more reckless gun laws, depending on your perspective. A thumbhole stock on a semi-auto 22 is allowed so I bought one. Another plug for this Altamont made Barracuda. The workmanship is impeccable. I didn't do any real bedding. I just cleaned up the edge of the inletting a tiny bit and re-centered the Ruger barrel block so the action and barrel would sit in the middle of the stock channel. I took it into the backyard for some quick scope adjustment. The gun was now shooting 16 to 20 MOA low. My tensioned bedding job on the Hogue was producing upward pressure on the barrel and apparently moved the POI quite a bit. I roughed it in and left the fine tuning for another day. Today. This picture is the second to last sight-in group. I made one more tweak to the scope after this to center it. I forget how many shots. It looks like 4, might have been 3. I am quite sure my sight picture wasn't perfectly the same for each shot because I had the front on a solid rest and the back on my shoulder. I am pretty sure at 25 yards this combo will put the bullets into pretty close to the same hole. This group is pretty close to 1 MOA. I can't get further away from my backstop than this without crossing a creek and mowing some more so this will do for now. I think I am done with it. I have the accurate shooting 10-22 I wanted and it has the gotta have convenience options. This mag release is the only one I know of that you pull toward you to drop the mag and I really like it. $10 well spent. I included a pic of the rifle in case people read this subforum but not the other guns.
