Struggling with 22 Hornet

After giving up on my Ruger 77/17 in 17 Hornet, I decided to try the old 22 Hornet. I was looking for a round that fits between the 17 HMR and centerfire rounds like 17 Rem., 204 Ruger, and 223. I bought a used Savage Model 25 Walking Varminter that I found at Huntington's in Oroville on consignment. I also bought 500 rounds of Serbian made semi-cheap PPU RifleLine factory ammo with 45 gr soft point bullets.

My plan was to shoot this stuff up and have casings for reloading cheaper than buying new casings. My first outing was this March in Northern CA on a squirrel shooting trip. I was pleased with the Savage trigger and action. I had a bit of trouble with the magazines. They would not go up far enough into the well to lock in. I put a couple of thin star washers under the front stock mounting screw and that seemed to fix the problem. I got the gun sighted in, but I found that from a rest, the best pattern I was getting was about 2" with the 45 gr. soft point Serbian ammo. I shot a few squirrels and was very pleased with the terminal performance of the round. However, the pattern was not good enough when you are shooting a target about the same size as the end of a 2x10 board at up to 200 yards away. I put it away to try again later.

After thinking about the 22 Hornet some more, I realized that I had not done any of the work I usually do to work up an accurate load in any gun. I have since loaded up several different loads with several different bullets. My plan is to take some time and see what combination of load and bullet might tighten up the accuracy of this Savage model 25 rifle.