Harold Harton is a veteran outdoorsman and photographer, and a longtime contributor to the Lampasas Dispatch Record. I read, with great interest, an article by the late Steve Mallory on the 22-6.8 cartridge in the current issue of The Varmint Hunter magazine.

I had thought about this possibility several times and after reading the article, a light came on in my makeshift brain. So I pulled out my old copy of Charles Landis' ".22 Caliber Varmint Rifles" and sure enough, there was the same thing from the 1940s. A .22 cartridge based on the .25 Remington case, which is one of a family of cases by Remington that included the .25, .30, .32 and .35 calibers on the same case as the modern 6.8 Remington.

To be sure, I ordered a drawing of the reamer dimensions of the .22- 6.8.

The .22 Lindahl Chucker measures 1.705 inches in length as compared to 1.6964 inches for the .22-6.8. The shoulder angle for the .22-6.8 is .030 degrees as compared to .028 for the Lindahl Chucker, both cases being practically the same.

Loading data for the Lindahl compares very closely to the data Mr. Mallory used with the .22-6.8 which showed slightly more velocity with slightly more powder. I am sure with the limited data and homemade chronographs of the day, Mr. Lindahl operated very carefully but still showed very near the same velocities.

Mr. Lindahl preferred the slower twist of one in 16 inches, which he felt gave slightly more velocity with less pressure for a given load. This is a reasonable assumption. The bullets of that time were not nearly of the quality of the fine bullets available today, but still he and some of his customers, using the .22 Lindahl Chucker, were getting 10-shot groups at 100 yards from 5/8 inch to one inch. That tells me they were doing something right.

Have you heard of any varmint shooters shooting 10-shot groups lately? That will change the measuring stick!

With the fine .222 Magnum case today, I would use it rather than the .25 Remington case that Lindahl used for his wildcat, or the modern 6.8 case, both of which are practically the same except for the neck size and a slight difference in the shoulder angle. This would save the cost of special dies and case preparation, and give the shooter almost 3,500 feet per second using 3031 or 4895 powder behind a 50- grain bullet, out of a .26-inch barrel, and with acceptable pressure levels.