I'm going to stir up a lot of .17 lovers but here's my opinion. When the 17hmr came out,we tested it extensively on groundhogs,squirrels,rabbits, and coyotes from close range all the way to 200 yards. What we discovered was that larger animals like coyotes didn't go down but 50% of the time,and nowhere near that at longer ranges (over 100 yards). Also on longer ranges not only did wind knock the tiny bullet off target more,it also shed it's velocity quite rapidly. On smaller game animals intended for the table,the bullets expanded violently thus ruining a lot of meat with anything other than head shots. For this reason I still prefer the good ol .22mag. It does a good job on varmits out to 150 yards just fine,while the solid(fmj) bullets provide same exact wound channel as .22 lr hv hp.