Ted;
When I was doing most of my Squirrel hunting I was shooting a Mossberg, 144MC as I recall, with a 7 shot detachable magazine. (Most incorrectly call these Clips). It had a spacer rod you could screw in the bottom of the magazine to block it off for shorts. I bought one brick of short hollowpoints & tried them. It was a Tack Driver with the Standard Vel LR but shot about a 40% pattern in the 30" circle with shorts. Was a lot more economical to stay with the LRs than acquire another gun which might not shoot right either. If I had been serious into groundhogs & such larger critters I likely would have gone with high-speed hollow points, but for the squirrel, I just stayed with regular standard velocity solids. Neither killing power nor meat destruction was ever a problem with them. When I started a had an economical source for CIL (Canuck) brand which I used for quite a while. As this rifle did not have a dovetailed receiver I machined a dovetail rail out of aluminum & anodized it black, using a car battery & Rit Dye. Mounted a Bushnell 3x7 .22 scope with a 7/8" tube. After I used it a bit I set it to 5 power & never moved it again. The 5 power setting gave it a large enough exit pupil it was bright right up to dark. I went to work early in the mornings so did a lot of my hunting in the afternoons.

At that point the "Target" loads were about 3*times as expensive, "Perhaps" they would have shrunk my group size by Ľ" but it just wasn't worth the expense. I got the CILs from a gentleman I worked with who coached a junior rifle league & he would let me have all I wanted at cost. I would probably have to have driven at least 50-75 miles to have even found a dealer who stocked the standards at that time, much less the higher quality stuff.

Later I did find a dealer who ran a Country Gunshop who kept a good supply of both types, but I had done so well with the regular stuff I just stayed with it, shot mostly Win T22s after that.

Those 552s were nice rifles incidentally, in fact, I don't think I ever shot an older Remington .22 from their lowly Single shots on up that didn't shoot way above what their price would reflect.

I had taken that old Mossberg in on a trade for something in my younger & less intelligent days & soon found the only way to recoup my investment was to shoot it out of it, which I did. I could not in any way badmouth its shoot-ability as long as I stuck with the LRs.

Miller/TN
I Didn't Say Everything I Said, Yogi Berra