>>63919545
>but I wouldn't feel comfortable trusting rimfire ignition or feeding for that.
NTA but while not ideal, my 10/22 with BX-15s is pretty reliable and often the rare stoppages are easily fixable. Mostly grab second mag, slap paddle and mag out of gun with second mag, insert yank bolt. I've done it while hunting once before. Took a shot, went to take a second just in case because I just had a weird feeling, click no bang IIRC, and while jogging up to the animal I reloaded as above. Yes, very tacticool 3l1t3 0p3r4t0r of me but I did it with no issues on instinct. Up close under 15 feet in self defense, maybe it would've gone different. But I've relied on nothing more than this rifle for self defense while hunting for a couple years now and I'm pretty trusting of it. Throw in some Volquartsen parts like an extractor, firing pin, and recoil spring and it'd be even more reliable; you just have to know when to clean it and what needs attention between full/deep cleanings. Use CCI or other high quality 22 for even better reliability, theoretically. I'd be most concerned about bullet performance and whether hollowpoints will really expand or not (highly variable) but when you have 15 or 25rds plus one at ~1200fps it's probably of lower concern than the (often) one shot you have when hunting.
Frankly if I had to choose and the 10/22 mag rifles weren't extractor hungry (those fuckers like to fling extractors into the void because it uses an extractor and spring meant for 22LR) and prone to (IIRC) some other issues that lead Ruger to discontinue them, I'd go with one of those shooting one of the CCI hunting rounds with HP bullets grooved so they mushroom and fragment. Those do nasty things in gel and from what I've been able to gatther, even real world results on game are very very similar.
