.17 Hornet

The .17 Hornet / 4.4x34mmR is a .17 caliber centerfire rifle cartridge originally offered as a "wildcat cartridge" developed by P.O. Ackley in the early 1950s. He created this non-factory (wildcat) offering by simply necking-down the .22 Hornet to .17 caliber and fire forming the resized cases in his new chamber design. The result was a small, quiet cartridge capable of high velocity. Ackley mentions it as one of the most balanced of the .17 cartridges of his time; likely, this is still true. Sixty years later, the Hornady Manufacturing Company (Grand Island, Nebraska, US) turned Ackley's idea into a commercial product with a similar cartridge; the .17 Hornady Hornet uses a 20 gr (1.3 g) "Superformance" V-max projectile with a published velocity of 3,650 ft/s (1,110 m/s). However, the new standardized ammunition and brass is not built to exactly the same dimensional specifications as the original wildcat or the dimensions listed on this page. Hornady's standard has a shorter body with less taper and shorter overall case length while the overall loaded length remains that of the original .22 Hornet (in order to fit the standard Hornet magazines). Shooters using the .17 Hornady Hornet in a .17 Ackley Hornet chamber will experience the bullet jumping to the rifling and losing some of the inherent accuracy for which the cartridge has been known. It has been reported the .17 Hornady Hornet uses a thicker rim than the original Hornet case. However, the ninth edition of the Hornady Handbook of Cartridge Reloading shows them to be the same .065 in (1.7 mm); measuring the rims of actual factory cases shows the Hornady handbook to be correct. Moreover, Ackley's Pocket Manual for Shooters and Reloaders shows the rim thickness for his wildcat to range between .063 and .069 in (1.6 and 1.8...