Harwood considered the 22 Short rimfire to be “... almost useless at distances of over fifty yards.” Harwood appraised the pipsqueak
22 CB and BB caps as suitable for shooting in the parlor, but for any type of field use, they were “... utterly worthless.” Few kind words have ever been
written about the 22 Long, and Iron Ram- rod might have initiated this practice. “Don’t use the 22 Long cartridge” was all he had to say about it in May 1888. Owners of rifles chambered for the Long were advised to get them rechambered for the 22 Long Rifle. When it was new in 1887, Harwood was a fan of the Long Rifle shell. As he gained in experience, he came to recognize its shortcomings, not the least of which was its susceptibil- ity to the least bit of wind. The L.R. was cursed with a hopelessly high trajectory, troublesome outside lubrication, and in those days, uncrimped bullets which sometimes parted company with the case when an unfired round was extracted. Its gravest fault, though, was that it was not reloadable. As did most of his contem- poraries, he found the L.R. shell to be a fine 200-yard target round, but it was a “... failure in the woods.” An oddity known as the 22 Extra
Long rimfire was chambered in most of the standard makes of single-shot rifles. Essentially a somewhat lengthened ver- sion of the Long Rifle case, it was very slightly more powerful, but notoriously inaccurate. Harwood did little to increase its popularity when in 1889 he opined that there was “little use” for the 22 Extra Long rimfire in the rifle. After having been through the
rounds with the rimfires, Harwood wrote that they had a place in the small game fields, but he also broadcast the superiori- ty of the centerfire cartridges for practical use in the woods. The 22 Maynard was a fairly popular cartridge among small bore enthusiasts. Besides the Maynard rifle, it was chambered in single-shot arms such as the Ballard, Bullard, Wes- son, and the Stevens. The cartridge was variously referred to as the 22 Maynard, 22-10-45, 22-10, 10-45 Maynard and the 22 Extra Long CF. When Iron Ramrod wrote “22 c.f. 10 grs. powder, 45 grs. lead” most cranks knew which shell he was talking about. Harwood owned a Maynard ’82 single-shot that was a versatile two bar- rel setup. One barrel was chambered 22 Short, the other 22 Maynard. He used it
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for squirrels, bunnies, and ducks, up to 150 yards, and thought it was a “... good one for hunting small game.” “Far ahead of the 22 Long Rifle” were the words Iron Ramrod chose to describe the 22-10. Al- though the L.R. had a slight edge in terms of accuracy, the Maynard round “... was an excellent one.” He once set about to explain why
the Maynard 22 outshined the rimfire. It is important to remember that the aver- age rifle user of the 19th Century was, in the main, blissfully ignorant of and almost totally unconcerned with com-
parative ballistics. Rifles shot cartridges – some were stronger than
others.Bal- listic tables and muzzle velocities were very seldom printed in the sportsmen’s journals, and then only in the roundest of numbers. Harwood was forced to communicate with his readers in lowest common denominator terms that they all understood. The Maynard 22, compared to the 22 LR, he tried to explain, simply had a great deal of “get there” to it. Among the factory produced car-
tridges, Harwood thought that the 22 Winchester Center Fire was the best of the
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