I know right! Thats one of my next purchases I don't have one yet. Definitely will go to fine fire arms again they are awesome. John is the one who said I should share my kills here!
Dude... seriously... you will SOOOOO love the accuracy of the .17 HMR!! It's a freakin' laserbeam! With some shooting sticks, you can hit ridiculously small targets. For "Spits" & Giggles I setup an old expended 12 Gauge shotshell I found out there onto a branch of some deadfall... walked back 82yards... (rangefinder verified) then shot it down no problem!
It's so cool not having to worry about drop when shooting rabbits and squeeks out past 80+yds. And since recoil is like nothing you get to see it hit in the scope too when you take the shot!
And they are not expensive! I got a brand new Savage 93R17 FV, that has a full-contour barrel, on sale for $249. Then just put a Crossfire II 3-9x40mm on it. And that cost like $139 new from OpticsPlanet if I remember right. And I totally love their AccuTrigger setup that a few other manufacturers have now started copying
The rifle likes the Hornady NTX lead-free 15.5 gr with Polymer tip. And also shoots the CCI TNT GREEN 16gr hollow-points just as accurately. I think the TNT GREEN's would work better on something a little larger like a Bobcat or Yote, looking at the wounds, they didn't seem to open-up very much when passing thru Ground-Squirrels. (Same as I noticed when shooting Ground Squirrels with .223 in 50gr Hornady FullBoar GMX's, which obviously aren't a small-game or varmint round, so it makes sense those wouldn't expand rapidly on a Ground Squirrel) The NTX's notably opened-up much more aggressively on both the Rabbit and Ground Squirrel.
I never get tired of watching Rabbits do backflips with that thing! And because of the accuracy, you can sit a substantial distance away from them so they don't spook as long as you're wearing some concealment, backed up against something to breakup your outline, and keep your movements slow and to a minimum. And with that light-weight projectile, you have almost no risk of it being able to hit or penetrate a target behind any kind of brush that might happen to be behind what you're shooting at. It's the same weight as a pellet coming out of a .22 cal air rifle. Just moving a lot faster is all.