2.1 The .17 HMR in This Rifle — A Summary, and the Ammunition Test

The .17 HMR now has its own dive in this hub, .17 Rimfires, which covers it beside the .17 HM2 and .17 WSM from the makers’ own pages: origins, the SAAMI drawings, every factory load, trajectory and wind from the makers’ printed tables, and terminal performance. This volume used to carry a shorter version of the same material. It now summarises it in a paragraph a section, points to where each subject is done properly, and keeps only what is specific to the 93R17: the barrel, the load Savage itself tests with, and the ammunition test that this rifle owes.

2.1.1 What the cartridge is

Hornady Magnum Rimfire, introduced in 2002: the .22 WMR case necked down to a .17-calibre bullet. It is a rimfire, primed in the fold of the rim, and cannot be reloaded. Savage’s service desk is blunt about the other small .17: “17HMR and 17HM2 are not the same caliber … You should never use a 17HMR round in a 17HM2 firearm or vise versa.”¹ The history, the SAAMI dimensions and how to tell the three .17 rimfires apart on sight are in .17 Rimfires, Volume 2 and Volume 3.

The parentage matters to this rifle for one reason: the .17 HMR shares the .22 WMR’s case head and body, which is why Savage builds a single Model 93 action for both and names the rifles “93/93R17” on one model page (Volume 1).

2.1.2 The loads, and this rifle’s barrel

Every current .17 HMR load from CCI, Federal, Hornady, Remington and Winchester, with the makers’ own velocity, energy and ballistic-coefficient figures and the places where they disagree, is tabulated in .17 Rimfires, Volume 5. The range is narrow: 15.5 to 20 grains, about 2,375 to 2,650 fps from a 24-inch test barrel.

The test barrel is not this rifle’s barrel, and for the .17 HMR that matters less than it might. Every laminate thumbhole 93R17 Savage has catalogued has a 21-inch barrel, and so does my rifle; my inventory sheet’s 20 inches was wrong (Volume 1 §1.5). The .17 dive reproduces a barrel maker’s cut-down test in which one .17 HMR barrel shot within a few tens of feet per second of the same velocity at every length from 22 inches down to 18, and lost only about 1% at 16 (.17 Rimfires, Volume 4 §4.3, with its small-sample caveat). On that evidence a 21-inch 93R17 sits on the plateau, and the box velocity is a fair first estimate. It is still an estimate; only a chronograph string from the rifle is a measurement.

CCI’s A17 load is a semi-automatic load. CCI built it “around the A17 rifle from Savage Arms”, “optimized for feeding and function in the semi-automatic rifle”.² It fires perfectly well in a bolt action, as a fast 17-grain cartridge. Why it exists is the subject of Volume 3.

2.1.3 Trajectory

From Hornady’s own tables, with a 100-yard zero and a 1.5-inch sight height, the 17-grain V-MAX falls 8.5 inches below the line of sight at 200 yards and the 20-grain XTP 9.9 inches; the 30-grain .22 WMR V-MAX falls 15.7.³ The .17 HMR is the flatter cartridge, not the stronger one: at 100 and 200 yards the 17-grain V-MAX and the 30-grain WMR V-MAX carry about the same energy (137 against 141 ft·lbf, and 72 against 70). Drop tables for every load, and what they mean for holding and dialling, are in .17 Rimfires, Volume 6. Volume 6 of this dive turns the 200-yard figure into minutes of angle for this rifle’s scope.

2.1.4 Wind

This volume used to compute wind drift itself, by the lag-time rule, from Hornady’s and CCI’s velocity tables. That work is superseded: the .17 dive’s Volume 6 uses the drift figures the makers print, with a validated calculation only where none is printed. The headline survives the change of method. In a 10 mph crosswind Federal prints 3.3 inches at 100 yards for its 17-grain .17 HMR against 5.1 for its 40-grain .22 LR and 6.0 for its 30-grain .22 WMR (the .17 dive’s Volume 6 tabulates them with their sources), so the .17 HMR drifts a little over half as far as either, and the fast WMR load drifts slightly more than a .22 LR, not less, because it sheds velocity fastest. This dive’s calculation found that from Hornady’s and CCI’s tables; Federal’s printed drift figures now confirm it from a third maker. The figure and the tables that went with the old computation have been withdrawn from this dive.

2.1.5 What it does when it arrives

The polymer-tipped varmint bullets fragment on small animals; the full-metal-jacket and other non-expanding loads exist for meat and pelts; and the cartridge is in the .22 WMR’s energy class, far below any deer cartridge. .17 Rimfires, Volume 7 works through it by quarry. This dive does not treat the .17 HMR as a deer cartridge, and Volume 6 gives the Michigan position only for the game it is actually used on.

2.1.6 Choosing ammunition for this rifle

This is the part of the cartridge question that belongs to the rifle.

• Start with the load Savage tests with. Savage’s manual for the Mark II and Model 93 names the ammunition it uses “for targeting evaluation” in its .17 HMR rifles: the Hornady 20 grain XTP.⁴ Hornady prints it at 2,375 fps and 250 ft·lbf at the muzzle from a 24-inch barrel, 1,755 fps and 137 ft·lbf at 100 yards.³ It is the load against which Savage formed its own accuracy expectation, and it says Savage regards its 1-in-9 twist as adequate for the heaviest common .17 HMR bullet. If the rifle groups well with it, it is performing as the factory expects.
• Test the 17-grain V-MAX and at least one other maker. Rimfire accuracy is ammunition-specific, and lot-to-lot variation is larger than centrefire shooters expect; the hub’s .22 Rimfire dive explains why.
• Keep a non-expanding load for pelts and the pot. The trade-off is set out in .17 Rimfires, Volume 7.
• There is no subsonic option. Every .17 HMR load leaves the muzzle at more than twice the speed of sound. That bears directly on suppressing the rifle; see Volume 6.

2.1.7 What could not be verified

• This rifle’s muzzle velocity with any load; every published figure is from a 24-inch or unstated test barrel, and the cut-down test the .17 dive reproduces is one barrel and five shots a length.
• How this rifle groups, with any load. No groups are recorded.
• Whether and how the rifle has been shot or hunted. Not recorded.

2.1.8 Bibliography

Footnotes

1. Savage Arms service FAQ, “What is the difference between the 17HMR and the 17HM2?” (214238783), dated 11 April 2013, service.savagearms.com, as archived 2020–2024. ↩

2. CCI, “A17 Tipped Varmint, 17 HMR, 17 Grain”, cci-ammunition.com/rimfire/cci/a17/6-949CC.html, accessed 2026-09-19. ↩

3. Hornady product pages, all with a 24-in test barrel, 100-yd zero and −1.5 in at the muzzle: “17 HMR 20 gr XTP”, hornady.com/ammunition/rimfire/17-hmr-20-gr-xtp, read 2026-10-19 (2,375 / 1,755 / 1,274 fps; 250 / 137 / 72 ft·lbf; −9.9 in at 200 yd); “17 HMR 17 gr V-MAX”, item 83170, and “22 WMR 30 gr V-MAX”, item 83202, accessed 2026-09-19. ↩ ↩²

4. Savage Arms rimfire bolt-action instruction manual (Mark I, Rascal, Mark II, Model 93, B.MAG), §12 “Ammunition bullet weights / magazine capacities” — .17 HMR targeting load “Hornady 20 grain XTP”. Current copy linked from savagearms.com/content/manuals: saweb.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/manuals/manual_rimfire_boltaction.pdf (PDF created 2016, modified 2019), read 2026-10-19. ↩