.22 Savage Hi-Power
American rifle cartridge
The .22 Savage Hi-Power cartridge, also known as 5.6×52mmR, was created by Charles Newton and introduced by Savage Arms in 1912. It was designed to be used in the Savage Model 99 hammerless lever action rifle. It is based upon the .25-35 Winchester cartridge necked down to accept a .227 in/.228 in diameter bullet. Its original loading was a 70 grain soft point bullet with a velocity of about 2790 feet per second.
History and description
The .22 Savage Hi-Power's relatively high velocity for the time and "shocking" power led to an initial surge of popularity, and was attributed with almost magical killing powers even on large and dangerous soft-skinned game such as tigers. Missionary H. R. Caldwell used his .22 Savage Hi-Power on a 400 pound tiger in China with success, something the Savage rifle company exploited in its advertising for the cartridge in the early days. The famous elephant-hunter W. D. M. Bell used a .22 Savage Hi-Power to kill forest buffalo in West Africa in the 1920s, and reported in his magazine articles that the cartridge was popular at that time for red deer stalking in Scotland. Michigan author and hunter James Oliver Curwood used a Savage 1899 chambered in 22 Hi-Power to hunt mountain goats in Alberta with Canadian hunting guide, Jack Otto. While it was used in the UK on deer as large as Red Stags, it fell out of favour as a big game cartridge after being superseded by other cartridge developments such as the .250-3000. As time went on, other .22 centerfire cartridges outstripped it in performance such as the .220 Swift, and with the advent of the .223 Remington in the 1960s, the cartridge was considered obsolete.
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This entry incorporates text from “.22 Savage Hi-Power” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.