This past weekend, as I mentioned, was our family reunion on my dad's side of the family, which is mostly a mixture of German and Scottish ancestry.  Most of the Scots descendants live up in the hill country of central Texas, and we used to always have our reunions in that area.  We were passing around the photo albums and found one picture of my dad from 1979, when he was a couple decades or so younger and leaner than he is now (not to mention more hair).  He was chowing down on some barbecued ribs and seemed to be enjoying them immensely.  Someone asked if he remembered what kind of ribs they were.  "Goat," he answered.  "That was one of the goats we shot for the Saturday barbecue."

This was new to me.  I had never known of any hunting that had gone on during a reunion, so I asked about it.  It involves the uncle who also owned the .218 Bee that I have mentioned before.  I guess he had a lot of old guns that are now considered to be on the obscure side.

I should mention that goats run wild in the hill country.  They are small goats, usually called "Spanish goats" because they are wild descendants of goats brought by the Spanish to provide meat for the missions and other settlements 200 years or more ago.  There is still so much wild, undeveloped land in that area that they flourish there, and have not been hunted out.  They are not considered a game animal in the legal sense of the term, and they are fair game at any time of the year.  They are also good eating.

My uncle had spotted a couple of these goats on his place so they decided to go harvest them for the reunion feast.  He, my dad, and a couple of my dad's cousins went to find them.  My old uncle took along his .22 WRF.  They spotted the goats climbing a cliff on the Pedernales River and as they crested the top, Uncle fired a shot and dropped one.  Unfortunately, it fell off the cliff and landed on some earth near the river.  The other one momentarily disappeared.  So they climbed down the cliff, gutted the goat and hauled it back up the cliff, drove back to Uncle's house and temporarily stashed it in a big refrigerator he kept on his porch just for the purpose of temporarily storing game.  They went back, by boat this time so they wouldn't have to haul the other goat up a cliff, and found it hiding just inside a small cave in the cliff.  Uncle dropped the second goat with a single shot.  Two shots, two kills.

Who knows how old the cartridges were?  Their age could have probably been measured in decades.  The .22 WRF (Winchester Rimfire) was originally introduced for the Winchester Model 1890 slide-action rifle.  Later on, Remington and Stevens both made rifles for it, and Colt even made a revolver chambered for the round.  Remington also produced the ammunition, although they gave it their own name of .22 Remington Special.  My dad said that the rifle was a ".22 Special" so I'm guessing Uncle's gun was a Remington.  I don't know for sure if this was originally a blackpowder round or not, but if it first came out in 1890, it probably was.

The .22 WRF was an attempt to produce a higher velocity, more powerful .22 that would provide better killing power on small game than the .22 Long Rifle.  It was eventually made obsolete by the introduction of the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, which we all now commonly call simply the .22 Magnum.  The .22 WRF is not interchangeable with the .22 Magnum and should not be used in guns chambered for the .22 Magnum.

After many decades of non-production, Winchester now lists it on their website as being currently in production, as does  CCI. But back in 1979 Uncle was probably just using ammo he still had stashed from years gone by.

The original loads launched either a 40-grain hollowpoint or a 45-grain solid at about 1450 fps for a ME of around 200 fpe.  Modern loads are a little less powerful (about 1300 fps and around 170 fpe), probably because the manufacturers are afraid of hot loads blowing up someone's 100-year-old gun.

And where was I when all this was going on?  I was probably down at the swimming hole, or possibly even fishing.  But I was most likely with some of my cousins playing 42.