.17 Win Super Mag

G

GMAN_R

New member
Hello all! I hope this finds you all happy and well. I am intrigued by the .17 Win Super Mag rimfire. Question is who chambers a production rifle in this caliber? I remember hearing about the Savage B-mag being wrought with problems. So I am not interested in that particular make/model. Any recommendations are appreciated. Also I had heard Winchester was going to come out with a .20 cal Super Mag. Anyone heard anything about this? Thanks again!! For the record, this is not meant to be my coyote gun. Just another fun gun.
 
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Most I've seen don't shoot anywhere near how .17 cal varmint rifle should shoot. 1.3 to 2 inch groups just don't cut it for a small varmint rifle. The common denominator was people trying to justify their unacceptable accuracy. I was thinking hard about getting one but the more reviews and videos I watched the more I was put off by their accuracy troubles. I went with a 17 Hornet to go along with my 17 HMR and I could not be happier. The cartridge is reloadable and will shoot 1/3 inch groups with loads right out of the book. I agree with you that it is a cool idea and a neat rimfire, if it is just for plinking and blasting water bottles......go for it.
 
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As most folks here know I have a thing for guns that shoot .172" bullets and started buying them 40 years ago. When the .17 Win Super Mag came out it intrested me for a while, but the more I read about it the less I wanted one. Be OK but not really all that great. I'm OK with the the three other .17 calibers I have. But, hey- you never know.
 
A guy on YouTube named Cavedweller has some video's on the B-mag and how to get them to shoot. Seems, to me, the stainless HB version shoot the best. Also get rid of the tupperware stock to. Mine shot decent but I just couldn't warm up to it so it went down the road. If I were looking again, I'd probably go with the HMR.
 
I have one. Not fond of the way it cocks. That being said, after a couple of hundred rounds it is accurate enough to hit a 3" plate at 200 yards. I haven't killed anything with it yet but I wouldn't feel comfortable with anything bigger than a jack rabbit.

The Hornady ammo is way more accurate than the Winchester ammo.
 
The Franklin Armory AR15 is kind of neat, I got to mess around with a buddy's which was jamming on him. With the ammo he had, Federal, it wasn't all that accurate but it wasn't a shotgun either. Maybe not quite as accurate as my A17 but again that was with only one type of ammo.

Gas operated locking bolt, it was over gassed and I ended up adding buffer weight to get it to work right suppressed. Nice rifle, but out of my price range for a rimfire. I think he hammered a bunch of sage rats with it out in Oregon after that.

The Bmag, no thanks just on looks alone. But I've gotten to where I can't stand a bolt gun in a varmint colony. I've always thought a 17 Hornet type round in an AR would be pretty awesome.
 
I have a Bmag. Tinkered with it quiet a bit. It now runs roughly 1”@100 average.
A number of people have played with all of the factory platforms. None of them were enough better than the other accuracy wise to argue about. The consensus from the half dozen or so articles I have read, it all falls on the ammo. Some will say this brand shoots better than that one, Winchester loads all of it.
With that being said, it is as most rimfires, there are variations from lot to lot.
I shoot mine a fair bit and for the most part I am happy with it. Some doat on the 17HMR, I don’t and find it lacking much past 100 yards for my use. The WSM is still trucking.

As with many projects, if I had cut my losses and went down a different road I may have been better off. But, about everything I did to the B mag was an improvement. Trigger, then the stock, then a bedding job. To top that I was getting ammo a couple
of years ago cheaper than I could HMR. I kept it as it was just handy not to have to load for and whacked prairie dogs out to 200. When the wind picks up I grab a center fire 17 or 20 something.
 
Originally Posted By: jshI have a Bmag. Tinkered with it quiet a bit. It now runs roughly 1”@100 average.
A number of people have played with all of the factory platforms. None of them were enough better than the other accuracy wise to argue about. The consensus from the half dozen or so articles I have read, it all falls on the ammo. Some will say this brand shoots better than that one, Winchester loads all of it.
With that being said, it is as most rimfires, there are variations from lot to lot.
I shoot mine a fair bit and for the most part I am happy with it. Some doat on the 17HMR, I don’t and find it lacking much past 100 yards for my use. The WSM is still trucking.

As with many projects, if I had cut my losses and went down a different road I may have been better off. But, about everything I did to the B mag was an improvement. Trigger, then the stock, then a bedding job. To top that I was getting ammo a couple
of years ago cheaper than I could HMR. I kept it as it was just handy not to have to load for and whacked prairie dogs out to 200. When the wind picks up I grab a center fire 17 or 20 something.

That's a sad but true statement about the current crop of throw-away guns that the market is flooded with today. I hope that some day that the gun makers get back to making quality items again.

That said, I have a friend who bought a Ruger 77/17 in 17 WSM (SS 18" light varmint weight barrel/laminate stock) who apparently hit the Lotto. His consistently shoots between 0.5"-.0.75" at 100 yards. I have the same gun and mine shoots well within 1" at 100 yards which is perfectly adequate for my needs with the rifle.

Based on the performance of those two rifles, I also bought a Ruger 77/17 in 17 Hornet a couple of months ago. It shoots extremely well also, and I have since traded away a slightly older CZ 527 17 Hornet rifle.

As jjhs stated, all of the available 17 WSM ammo is loaded at the same place. The only difference in any of it is the color of the box that it comes in and probably the price. And of course the normal lot to lot variances that is characteristic of any rim fire cartridge.
 
Love the cartridge, hate the Bmag. I'd love to buy a reasonably priced "better-than-the-Bmag" rifle chambered thus. If Ruger would chamber the American in .17 WSM, I'd buy a couple. Or maybe not, what with all the difficulties getting anything resembling ammunition...
 
The Bmag, where do you even start. In the Bmag's defense they probably wouldn't get bashed on quite so bad if they weren't so friggen fugly and that's coming from someone that has owned one for years and actually likes theirs. I mean Savage did these things no favors and it's almost as if they designed them to fail. Let's face it the Bmag aesthetically is certainly no beauty queen. I had to pretty mine up before I could ever take her to the first dance.

The Bmag gets bashed on probably the most and I think it's for two reasons, one there are more of them out there than probably all others combined and two it's easy to beat up on something that is fugly, functions weird and maybe you didn't really care for from the beginning. I'm sure, had my journey with my own Bmag gone different I'd be a lot less likely to defend it but in the defense of just about all rifles chambered in 17 WSM same of the blame has to fall on the ammo.

As has already been mentioned regardless of what the label on the box says ALL 17 WSM ammo is made by Winchester and their quality control is mediocre at best. Unfortunately, quality control seems to be a chronic problem in the rimfire ammo industry because CCI and 17 HMR ammo is minimally at best better but maybe we as the consumers are to blame because we continue to buy rimfire ammo, no matter how good or bad, about as fast as it hits the shelves.

Short of Target/Match grade 22LR ammo, which is crazy good and consistent, pretty much all other rimfire ammo is just ehh ok and it seems like the bottle neck stuff like the 17 WSM and 17 HMR is the most inconsistent. I've spent a good amount of time disassembling quite a few of each and weighing out the components separately and much to my surprise the powder charge was usually and nearly exactly the same from one to the next. Bullet weights same. Overall case weight very close too. Sometimes there would be a pretty big variance in the amount of actual priming compound used but I don't know how or what that does or changes with regard to pressure and velocity so I don't really know the significance of it I just know some had a fair bit more priming compound down in the case than did others. Bullet seating depth and base to ogive length now that is where there is a significant variance. For any of you that reload if you had OAL variance in your ammo of up to 30 thou in seating depth would you blame the gun or your reloads?

I won't try and make anyone believe the Bmag is a fine piece of American craftsmanship because it's far from it and they definitely have some oddities about them but the HB SS model particularly one of the models that comes with a laminated stock tend to shoot decent depending on your expectations. Because the ammo just won't support such none sense don't believe any internet BS stories of how someone's Bmag will shoot dime size groups at 100 yards all day long all the time with any and all ammo because that is just a flat out lie and believe or not that story is actually out there. Again, the ammo just won't support that kind of BS but if you can live with 1 inch groups, sometimes better sometimes worse, at 100 yards then you'll likely get along just fine with a 17 WSM.

The 17 WSM has a lot of potential but I often have to remind myself it's a hunting rimfire cartridge not a target rimfire cartridge.
 
I really wanted to try a 17wsm but didn't like the rifle offerings out there so got myself a Contender carbine barrel (20" MGM bull barrel.) I've been pleasantly surprised with how accurate it shoots - maybe just a hair worse than my 17hmr and 17 Hornet, but far better than any 22lr or 22magnum I've ever tried. Anyway, plenty accurate for blasting sage rats all day and it hits them with significantly more punch than the 17hmr for about the same cost per round.
 
Originally Posted By: WeaselCircusI really wanted to try a 17wsm but didn't like the rifle offerings out there so got myself a Contender carbine barrel (20" MGM bull barrel.) I've been pleasantly surprised with how accurate it shoots - maybe just a hair worse than my 17hmr and 17 Hornet, but far better than any 22lr or 22magnum I've ever tried. Anyway, plenty accurate for blasting sage rats all day and it hits them with significantly more punch than the 17hmr for about the same cost per round.
And that is exactly where I've come to really like my 17 WSM Bmag over my two 17 HMR's is shooting sage rats. It extends the distance and does so with more authority than the HMR and lets face it who doesn't enjoy "RatoBatics". I love my little 17 Hornets as well and they are definitely a pretty healthy step up from the 17 WSM but when you can go through a few thousand rounds per spring shooting sage rats my 17 WSM saves me hours and hours of time spent in the loading room.

My poor 17 HMR's have been relegated to backup, loaners, or plinker guns now. lol
 
The accuracy in my Bmag was OK. I can't say it was a "Tack Driver" but anything within 100yds wouldn't be a problem, and the looks didn't bother me either. IDK, just never got attached to it. But they have a nice little Winchester single shot at the LGS in WSM I sure wouldn't mind owning. Its just the wrong time of the year to spend that much money on a rimfire
 
Originally Posted By: B23The Bmag, where do you even start. In the Bmag's defense they probably wouldn't get bashed on quite so bad if they weren't so friggen fugly and that's coming from someone that has owned one for years and actually likes theirs. I mean Savage did these things no favors and it's almost as if they designed them to fail. Let's face it the Bmag aesthetically is certainly no beauty queen. I had to pretty mine up before I could ever take her to the first dance.

The Bmag gets bashed on probably the most and I think it's for two reasons, one there are more of them out there than probably all others combined and two it's easy to beat up on something that is fugly, functions weird and maybe you didn't really care for from the beginning. I'm sure, had my journey with my own Bmag gone different I'd be a lot less likely to defend it but in the defense of just about all rifles chambered in 17 WSM same of the blame has to fall on the ammo.

As has already been mentioned regardless of what the label on the box says ALL 17 WSM ammo is made by Winchester and their quality control is mediocre at best. Unfortunately, quality control seems to be a chronic problem in the rimfire ammo industry because CCI and 17 HMR ammo is minimally at best better but maybe we as the consumers are to blame because we continue to buy rimfire ammo, no matter how good or bad, about as fast as it hits the shelves.

Short of Target/Match grade 22LR ammo, which is crazy good and consistent, pretty much all other rimfire ammo is just ehh ok and it seems like the bottle neck stuff like the 17 WSM and 17 HMR is the most inconsistent. I've spent a good amount of time disassembling quite a few of each and weighing out the components separately and much to my surprise the powder charge was usually and nearly exactly the same from one to the next. Bullet weights same. Overall case weight very close too. Sometimes there would be a pretty big variance in the amount of actual priming compound used but I don't know how or what that does or changes with regard to pressure and velocity so I don't really know the significance of it I just know some had a fair bit more priming compound down in the case than did others. Bullet seating depth and base to ogive length now that is where there is a significant variance. For any of you that reload if you had OAL variance in your ammo of up to 30 thou in seating depth would you blame the gun or your reloads?

I won't try and make anyone believe the Bmag is a fine piece of American craftsmanship because it's far from it and they definitely have some oddities about them but the HB SS model particularly one of the models that comes with a laminated stock tend to shoot decent depending on your expectations. Because the ammo just won't support such none sense don't believe any internet BS stories of how someone's Bmag will shoot dime size groups at 100 yards all day long all the time with any and all ammo because that is just a flat out lie and believe or not that story is actually out there. Again, the ammo just won't support that kind of BS but if you can live with 1 inch groups, sometimes better sometimes worse, at 100 yards then you'll likely get along just fine with a 17 WSM.

The 17 WSM has a lot of potential but I often have to remind myself it's a hunting rimfire cartridge not a target rimfire cartridge.

Funny! the info about the bullet variance, priming compound, seating depth & all I posted on RFC a few months ago..
Didn't see much interest in it there at the time! Now I see someone's repeating it.. Another overnight expert is born!
 
When I got my B-Mag I shot four or five kinds of ammo. Velocities from "brand" to "brand" varied a bit as did accuracy. One version would fail to extract about 25% of the time yet the others fed/extracted flawlessly. Doesn't make a lot of sense does i? Accuracy of course could well be attributed to different bullets but the extraction is problematic.

Greg
 
Originally Posted By: Coyote#1Originally Posted By: B23The Bmag, where do you even start. In the Bmag's defense they probably wouldn't get bashed on quite so bad if they weren't so friggen fugly and that's coming from someone that has owned one for years and actually likes theirs. I mean Savage did these things no favors and it's almost as if they designed them to fail. Let's face it the Bmag aesthetically is certainly no beauty queen. I had to pretty mine up before I could ever take her to the first dance.

The Bmag gets bashed on probably the most and I think it's for two reasons, one there are more of them out there than probably all others combined and two it's easy to beat up on something that is fugly, functions weird and maybe you didn't really care for from the beginning. I'm sure, had my journey with my own Bmag gone different I'd be a lot less likely to defend it but in the defense of just about all rifles chambered in 17 WSM same of the blame has to fall on the ammo.

As has already been mentioned regardless of what the label on the box says ALL 17 WSM ammo is made by Winchester and their quality control is mediocre at best. Unfortunately, quality control seems to be a chronic problem in the rimfire ammo industry because CCI and 17 HMR ammo is minimally at best better but maybe we as the consumers are to blame because we continue to buy rimfire ammo, no matter how good or bad, about as fast as it hits the shelves.

Short of Target/Match grade 22LR ammo, which is crazy good and consistent, pretty much all other rimfire ammo is just ehh ok and it seems like the bottle neck stuff like the 17 WSM and 17 HMR is the most inconsistent. I've spent a good amount of time disassembling quite a few of each and weighing out the components separately and much to my surprise the powder charge was usually and nearly exactly the same from one to the next. Bullet weights same. Overall case weight very close too. Sometimes there would be a pretty big variance in the amount of actual priming compound used but I don't know how or what that does or changes with regard to pressure and velocity so I don't really know the significance of it I just know some had a fair bit more priming compound down in the case than did others. Bullet seating depth and base to ogive length now that is where there is a significant variance. For any of you that reload if you had OAL variance in your ammo of up to 30 thou in seating depth would you blame the gun or your reloads?

I won't try and make anyone believe the Bmag is a fine piece of American craftsmanship because it's far from it and they definitely have some oddities about them but the HB SS model particularly one of the models that comes with a laminated stock tend to shoot decent depending on your expectations. Because the ammo just won't support such none sense don't believe any internet BS stories of how someone's Bmag will shoot dime size groups at 100 yards all day long all the time with any and all ammo because that is just a flat out lie and believe or not that story is actually out there. Again, the ammo just won't support that kind of BS but if you can live with 1 inch groups, sometimes better sometimes worse, at 100 yards then you'll likely get along just fine with a 17 WSM.

The 17 WSM has a lot of potential but I often have to remind myself it's a hunting rimfire cartridge not a target rimfire cartridge.

Funny! the info about the bullet variance, priming compound, seating depth & all I posted on RFC a few months ago..
Didn't see much interest in it there at the time! Now I see someone's repeating it.. Another overnight expert is born!
I post under the same name on RFC and years ago I posted this same information along with pictures of the weighed out powder and priming compound. I read RFC on a pretty regular basis and I'm not sure that I've ever read where someone has gone to the extent that I did to disassemble and weigh all the components separately to the degree that I have. It's certainly possible that I missed it but I don't think anyone did it before I did. Like I said, I did my test years ago.
 
Originally Posted By: GLShooterWhen I got my B-Mag I shot four or five kinds of ammo. Velocities from "brand" to "brand" varied a bit as did accuracy. One version would fail to extract about 25% of the time yet the others fed/extracted flawlessly. Doesn't make a lot of sense does i? Accuracy of course could well be attributed to different bullets but the extraction is problematic.

Greg

Greg, I had issues with mine extracting fired cases as well. Called up Savage Tech support and they gave me the option of sending my rifle back to be fixed, on their dime, or they'd send me out a new extractor, spring, and I could fix it myself. Being that it's about a two minute job I opted to have the new parts sent to me which they did right away in fact I had them later that week. Installed the new extractor and spring it 100% cured my extraction issues and I've never had a problem since.

I can't say that I'm really much of a Savage fan but I certainly can't complain about their technical support line because every time I've needed to call them they've been excellent about helping me get whatever little problem I had solved.
 
Originally Posted By: B23Originally Posted By: GLShooterWhen I got my B-Mag I shot four or five kinds of ammo. Velocities from "brand" to "brand" varied a bit as did accuracy. One version would fail to extract about 25% of the time yet the others fed/extracted flawlessly. Doesn't make a lot of sense does i? Accuracy of course could well be attributed to different bullets but the extraction is problematic.

Greg

Greg, I had issues with mine extracting fired cases as well. Called up Savage Tech support and they gave me the option of sending my rifle back to be fixed, on their dime, or they'd send me out a new extractor, spring, and I could fix it myself. Being that it's about a two minute job I opted to have the new parts sent to me which they did right away in fact I had them later that week. Installed the new extractor and spring it 100% cured my extraction issues and I've never had a problem since.

I can't say that I'm really much of a Savage fan but I certainly can't complain about their technical support line because every time I've needed to call them they've been excellent about helping me get whatever little problem I had solved.

Thanks for that info. I had not considered that route but come Thursday the phone will be ringing at Savage.

Greg
 
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