John;
Fully agree on the use of shorts. For many of those years when I was doing a lot of squirrel hunting I was using a lowly Mossberg bolt action 44MC if I remember correctly. It used a detachable magazine which had a screw-in spacer so it could be used with shorts. Problem was, while it was a tack driver with the standard velocity LR you didn't measure its results with shorts by group size but by % in the 30" circle. I have no idea why as I have known of many other rifles having the LR twist which would shoot shorts fine, but this one you simply could not hit the side of a barn with from inside.
I got onto this when a Co-Worker who managed a youth group for target shooting told me he could supply me with the cartridges they used at a very attractive price. These were Cannuck brand made by the Canadian firm CIL & were simply standard velocity, not listed per se as subsonic nor of target grade. I bought a carton of them & tried them & immediately noticed the difference in the squirrel's reaction, or lack thereof, to firing one of these vs the hi-velocity stuff & never looked back. When these became unavailable to me I mostly thereafter used Win T22 cartridges & found them satisfactory for my purpose. As long as so to speak they shot "Minute of Squirrel Head" groups I was not concerned about small differences in absolute accuracy. Using these shells if you missed a squirrels' head at any reasonable range you just had to take the blame yourself.
