8 http://www.riflemagazine.com Rifle 305I
n Rifle No. 303 (March 2019),
it was explained that the.
Winchester Super Mag cartridge –
shortly after its introduction about
seven years ago – appeared to be
quickly falling by the wayside in
spite of being the highest-velocity
rimfire cartridge ever introduced
to the shooting public. There were
several factors in play, including
severely limited rifle options. In
fact, upon the cartridge’s introduc-
tion, there were just two.
One of those was the Winchester
Model 1885 Low Wall Hunter Rim-
fire single shot that, at the time,
sold for more than $1,000. On
top of that, Winchester Ammu-
nition, for some strange reason,
appeared to put little effort into
marketing the new cartridge. Only
today’s marketing and manage-
ment teams could know why this
was the case.
This odd product launch might
seem to have been unusual, but it’s
a growing trend. In fact, several
firearms and ammunition com-
panies now refer to this approach
as a “soft introduction,” or “soft
launch.” A more recent example is
Nosler’s unveiling of its .24 and.
Nosler cartridges. Why a company
that sells rifles, ammunition and
handloading components would
use this tactic – which is quite con-trary to the more modern “smack
the shooting public in the face”
promotion – remains a mystery.
Nonetheless, the .17 Winchester
Super Mag (WSM), close on a de-
cade later, is now gaining ground
in popularity. There are additional
bolt-action and autoloader rifles
available, and according to my
count there are at least six differ-
ent loads currently offered. Before
discussing them, however, and
perhaps a bit redundantly, it might
be worth explaining where the.WSM came from, on the premise
that some newsstand buyers may
have missed this information in
the previous issue, or in reviews
that have been published in the
past in other Wolfe titles.
Briefly then: The .17 WSM car-
tridge case was used for .27-
caliber industrial impact tools.
As such, it’s quite a bit larger,
and its brass is thicker than “tra-
ditional” rimfire cartridges, so it
takes a stout blow to its rim to ig-
nite the priming compound andLOCK, STOCK & BARREL by Lee J. Hoots
.17 WinCHesTer super Mag
parT ii
The .17 Winchester Super Mag’s popularity is steadily growing, as are ammunition
and rifle options.The newest .17 WSM bolt-action
rifle is a Ruger 77/17 with an
18.5-inch heavy barrel.