Chopping my 17 hornet

243lee

Well-Known Member
Hi everyone, just after some real world advice,
I have a ruger 77 in 17 hornet, the thing is a tack driver (1/2” at 100m- lasered, with factory ammo), reliable and never let me down yet,
My question is, im thinking of chopping the barrel as with a wildcat on the end it feels like its about 11 foot long when pushing through a hedge or climbing in/out of the truck, how short sensibly can i go before i lose the benefits of the calibre, iv heard people tell me you only lose around 25fps per inch others have told me it will have the ballistics of a .22 sub, i overheard another in a gun shop saying he chopped his to 14” and never noticed any more drop than before- but he then asked the guy behind the counter the difference between soft point and ballistic tipped ammo so i wont be listening to him to much!.
At the moment its boringly accurate, 20mm high at 100, 1/2” low at 200, about 6.5”ish low at 300 (from memory) so a real flat accurate rabbit/vermin gun, being american its got a 24” barrel, i would like to chop this to 18” or 20” max, i appreciate il lose some fps which translates to a slightly loopier trajectory but is it negligable or quite noticable?
I can read write ups, read the side of ammo boxes, just wondering if anyone has done this to a hornet in real life and regretted it or didnt really notice much difference?.
Thanks in advance
 
I went to 18" on my CZ and ended up running at about 3200 fps with factory ammo after the change accuracy was unaffected still doing 1/2"

One of the guys on one of the facebook forums went to 20" and saw a small rise in velocity from recollection.

After chopping mine I stuck a wildcat panther on it and its now as pointable as my .17HMR
 
Thats great thanks, il book it in with the ‘smith then i reckon, iv also got a panther on it so was quite keen to get it short and pointable.
Cheers
 
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