I have two 17 Hornet barrels for the old TCR-87 break-over single shots. One is a stainless Shilen epoxied inside a 10-ga barrel and the other is a light-weight 30-06 barrel lined with a Shilen stainless 17 barrel. The heavy one will shoot 5/8-inch or better groops at 100 yards and the light-weight one will shoot 3/4-inch or better groups at 100 yards. They both shoot 20-gr Hornadays at 3650 fps and 15-gr Bergers at 3950 fps. Niether barrel has ever had any copper fouling, and I have read that a .17 Hornet barrel will last for over 10,000 rounds. I burned out two barrels on a .17 Remington in less than 1000 rounds. That is, they were still accurate for a few shots, but got severly copper fouled very quickly after the throats got rough so I ended up doing more cleaning than shooting. I doubt that a .17 Hornet is nearly as good of a coyote gun as a .17 Remington. However, it is great on fox, feral cats and smaller stuff. With the 15-gr Berger hollow points it is probably the safest rifle for shooting at animals in trees as the bullets have a terrible balistic coeficient and slow down very fast. I have got two coyotes with the .17 Hornet and both died where shot, but neither was much over 100 yards away. I will always have one and consider it a much more useful cartridge than the .17 Remington. It also has a lot more thump and less wind drift than the .17 HMR. On days with some wind where my 17 HMR shoots terrible groups the .17 Hornets are still very accurate. And another surprising thing. On a windy day my 17 Reminton shot terrible groups. They would not only get larger horizontaly, but also vertically. The .17 Hornet groups get somewhat larger horizontaly when ther is wind, but not vertically. Explain that? If the 20-gr bullet is sighted in 1.0 inch high at 100 yards it is less than 1.0 inch low at 200 yards. Only critisizm is that head-shots are required for squirrels.
