Well that was a loaded question. Pardon the pun. The short answer is “I asked the wrong question.” The long, or should I say long rifle, answer follows.
Way back when I remember a neighbor being all worried about a .22 having a range of up to a mile. Pffft! I thought. A MILE? The bullet would likely bounce off tissue paper at that range. Of course there are other factors of course, like gravity. Now I’ve never done the math but I’m pretty sure most shots would hit the ground long before they passed the mile marker.
Anyway, after an initial search, I found the video below on youtube. Good enough. If you don’t want to watch it right now, I’ll save you the suspense. SPOILER ALERT BELOW THE VIDEO!
How Lethal is the .22?
Ah! There you are. So it turns out this little round is plenty lethal as long as you can reasonably hit what you are aiming for. In the video they went out to 4-500 yards before giving up and they had a very accurate and well-scoped rifle. The bottom line is, if you can it it, you can kill it, so be careful and always, Always, ALWAYS follow the rules of safety – in this case, never aim at something (much less fire) you do not intend to damage.
Maybe someday I’ll get off my sorry, um, carcass, and find out exactly how much damage a .22 can do from a mile out but don’t count on it. I don’t expect to be shooting one much more than 100 yards at this point and even that would be a stretch.