Bought a Stevens 44 1/2 - 45  in 22 short with double set triggers yesterday . Bore looks great.
I have never had a 22 short  , is there any chance that this could shoot well enough for 100 yd. events?

Rifle came with a couple of boxes of CCI match ammo and if the wind ever backs off I will give it a try.

Is there better ammo than the CCI available ?

Thanks for any imput
Dales

I've shot many, many thousands of Shorts, every type I could lay my hands on.  Shot them in a Stevens-Pope gain twist Short, in 3 Winders, and in a 52B with a Jersey City Pope barrel.  I have saved the targets, hundreds of them. 

The best Shorts you can buy are the CCI Target Shorts, marked 830 fps on the plastic box of 100.  Out of the box, in a good rifle chambered for Shorts, with a slow twist (25" +/-), from the bench, on a calm day, you might keep them inside the 20-ring on a standard ASSRA target. 

I shot several groups (10 shots or more) with the Stevens-Pope. All of them stayed inside the 18-ring.  That's with wind & mirage running.

If you tried them in a good target rifle chambered for .22 Long Rifle, with a 16" twist, you might get better results.

Shot my best Winder in two 200-yard 30-shot Schuetzen matches, 750 points max.  My best score was about 350, with 24 holes in the paper.  The other score was lower, had 22 holes in the paper.

At 200, off the bench, with a 12X Unertl scope on the Stevens -Pope, I put several (30?) shots into a standard ASSRA target.  With out-of-the-box CCI Target Shorts, they went into a rectangle about 30" high and 7" wide.  Then I shot another 11 at a second ASSRA target.  These were all weighed cartridges, all the same weight.  They went into a smaller rectangle, IIRC about 18" high and 5 1/2" wide.

Not done with my testing at 50 yards.  At 25 yards and at 50 feet, indoor gallery ranges, CCI Target Shorts are completely competitive with any Long Rifle target cartridges that you might use for winter league competition.

I've tried all the other types I could lay hands on.  The only stuff that came close ti CCI Target was some Polish milsurp Shorts that Midway sold a few years back.

Been looking for a shootable box or two of Remington Rockets or Peters Thunderbolts.  Haven't found any.  I just remember that they blew rats apart back in 1959.