17 Win Super Mag

Hello all, I hope this finds you all healthy and well. I like tiny bore rifles, well I like all rifles, but in regards to the tiny ones I am intrigued by this rimfire. And yes, I have a couple .17 HMRs and love them. Fun, fun, fun. Anyways, Who makes a rifle chambered for the .17 Win Super Mag. I know Savage came out with one, that seemed to be wrought with problems. So no interest in the B-mag or whatever they called it. I also heard that Winchester was going to come out with a .20cal rimfire. Anyone heard anything about this? Any suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Thanks!!

— Robby

Ruger made the 77 in the 17 WSM chambering for a couple of years. I think they found it difficult to sell a roughly $900+ rifle in such a new and unproven cartridge.

I very much thought I wanted a 17 WSM when they first came out. Let me explain that I’m a varminter, so the idea of a quieter (I assumed, compared to centerfire) fast, flat rimfire with extended velocity and range compared to the 17 HMR had some appeal.

Now here’s the rub with the 17 WSM and I think this is why it hasn’t gained traction. When you look at it, first the 17 WSM isn’t that quiet. Only marginally quieter than the .223 and certainly much louder than a 17 HMR.

Next there’s the cost. I haven’t checked lately, but at the time I was looking, 17 HMR was running almost $20 a box of 50, so with tax it would have been just over $20 a box, or $.40 per bang.

That made the 17 WSM just slightly less than double the cost per round that it costs me to reload premium .223 varmint rounds with a 52 grain V-Max. You can certainly buy bulk milsurp .223 even cheaper.

The real deal killer for me was reading report after report that basically were all a twist on the same thing. Accuracy is good…wait for it…unless there’s a wind. Ah, there you have it. That old bugaboo of .177 bores since time began–the wind.

The final nail in the coffin was the just gawdawful rushed bungling of the launch of the Savage B-Mag. I literally held a Gen 1 B-Mag in my hands and I was really going to buy it, but the first one they brought out just HAD to be a mistake. The finish was so rough, the stock was horribly warped so it touched the barrel along one side, but left a .5 gap along the other. The trigger had a razor sharp burr on it, the coating looked like it had been dragged down a mile of bad gravel road. I didn’t walk away, I ran.

So to recap, the 17 WSM costs more, goes bang almost as loudly, and is far more limited in terms of wind-bucking real-world performance compared to the .223, and the rifles it was available in ranged from useless junk to a near $1k Ruger with nothing in between.

That made the 17 WSM a tough sell when you get a very accurate .223 from any of 10 different makers for less than $500 out the door and it would shoot vastly better groups at much longer ranges and in higher winds. Game, set, match.

If you’re really a 17 fan, a 17 Hornet is all that and a bag of chips IMO. It’s everything the 17 WSM wanted to be, plus it’s a better wind-bucker AND it’s reloadable, which makes it cheaper.

Grouse

Grouse- Any love for the .17rem? It’s another obscure screamer.

All we used to shoot was the .17 rem but then the .204 came out and thats a much flatter shooting and you can shoot bigger bullets. You would hit a coyote with the .17 rem and they would run off. The .204 puts them down.

Thanks. Still have the itch. For record my main calling rifle is a .22-250. I also use .223 sometimes.

I bought one of the B-Mags that were supposed to be fixed from the factory. It has a beautiful stock but still has a miss fire every 7 shots or so. Doesn’t get taken out much.
DT

I bought one of the first BMags and shipped it back to Savage as it would group at about 2 inches at 100 yards with some split necks on the brass after firing, they sent me a Gen 2 and that was still at over 1 inch at 100 yards. I cut my losses and bought a 17 Hornady Hornet, 3/8″ at 100 yards with factory ammo or my reloads, 10 grains of powder with a 20 grain bullet= 3500 fps. My 17 HMR would do 3/4″ at 100 and that was the heavy barrel Marlin

Timmy wrote:

Grouse- Any love for the .17rem? It’s another obscure screamer.

Absolutely a classic cartridge and as you say, she’s a screamer.

Overall, I think the .17 Hornet is a bit better balanced. The lower charge of powder means less fouling, lower cost, less noise, and while it has a lower velocity than the 17 Rem, it’s also easier on barrels because of it. A consideration if you’re a varminter.

There are also more factory rifles available in 17 Hornet.

As far as the 17 WSM goes, I think it’s rather telling that the parent company of the cartridge has never made a rifle chambered in it. It seems like the WSM is left in no man’s land and to be honest I can see it beginning to fade into obsolesce pretty quickly unless it gets a lot of love from Winchester and Savage.

Of course, when a rimfire teeters on the edge, the problem becomes ammo availability. Ammo isn’t a concern with a centerfire chambering, if you roll your own you can load almost anything these days. Different story with rimfires.

Personally, I settled on a 17 HMR. Great pest rifle, but my main use is in varminting situations where noise must be held to a minimum due to livestock or proximity to people. We had a situation a few years back out west where the p-dogs figured out the best place to create a predator-free dog town was to occupy the farmyard and calving areas / paddocks of a ranch. Basically, the whole farmstead was a dog town. We cleaned them up pretty good and the low noise meant the horses and people didn’t get disturbed with centerfire rifle reports all afternoon.

Overall, I can’t say I’m a fan, I’d rather shoot other rifles, but in a situation where you have to keep things quiet, the 17 HMR gets it done so long as the wind cooperates and shots are short.

Grouse

Winchester did make the 1885 in 17 WSM with a MSRP of close to $1500

Jeremy wrote:

Winchester did make the 1885 in 17 WSM with a MSRP of close to $1500

By gosh you’re right. They actually still List it as current production. have to admit I didn’t even look at the lever actions or single shots when I scanned to see if they were making one at all.

Not exactly a recipe for success IMO.