.17 Remington

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The .17 Remington was introduced in 1971 by Remington Arms Company for their model 700 rifles. It is based on the .223 Remington, necked down to .172in (4.37mm), with the shoulder moved back. It was designed exclusively as a varmint round, though it is suitable for smaller predators. Extremely high initial velocity (over 4000fps {1219m/s}), flat trajectory and very low recoil are the .17 Rem's primary attributes. It has a maximum effective range of about 500 yards (457m) on prairie dog-sized animals, but the small bullets' poor ballistic coefficients and sectional densities mean they are highly susceptible to crosswinds at such distances.

Being smaller in size than the .224in bullet which is used in almost all .22 centrefire calibres, the .172in bullet loses velocity slightly sooner and is more sensitive to wind; but by no means does this render the cartridge useless. The advantages of this cartridge are low recoil and minimal entrance wounds. A significant disadvantage is the rapid rate at which such a small-calibre rifle barrel accumulates gilding metal fouling, which is very detrimental to accuracy and may also eventually result in exponentially increasing, dangerous bore pressures caused by the fouling's constriction of the bore. Many .17 users report optimum accuracy when the bore is thoroughly cleaned after every 10 shots.