Not in an H&R but I grew up with .22 short in my Winchester single shot. My dad always insisted shorts were the best for squirrel hunting because they made so little noise they didn't disturb the woods and he claimed a short would knock a squirrel off the limb while a long rifle bullet would just zip through and sometimes leave the dead squirrel still stuck on the tree limb. They certainly are quiet, especially the standard velocity or target types. When I was a kid, shorts also were cheaper than longrifles but modern marketing has changed all of that and now shorts, if you can find them, are more costly than longrifles, I assume because of the volumes produced, shipped and marketed. The short round from a longrifle chamber is seldom very accurate but most rifles will group them well enough for head shots on small game out to 20 yards or so. Generally the standard velocity or target ammo will group a bit better than the high velocity type. You may have to try several brands to fine one your rifle likes. There is wide spread belief that firing shorts in a longrifle chamber will "ruin it" for future use with the longer cartridge. I believe that may have been true in the days of corrosive priming but with modern ammo the worst that will happen is that you'll get some build up of powder fouling and bullet lube which will need to be removed before chambering a longer case, but even that is minimal with modern ammo and if you just fire a few shorts you can return to longrifles without even a chamber cleaning.
I think the .22 short is a very underrated round, most gun writers will tell you it is worthless for hunting but if you have a rifle which will group shorts accurately they are a fine small game round out to as far as you can keep them on the critter's brain. Canadian and Alaskan natives have used the .22 short even for deer, moose and caribou, but of course, they don't expect bang-flop, and are willing to track the animal until it goes down. A .22 short in the heart or brain will quickly kill anything in North America, it's just a matter of putting it there.
