The Rimfire Report: Giving Remington Golden Bullet a Second Chance

Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report! This ongoing series is all about the rimfire firearm world and all of its different guns, gear, ammo, and shooting sports! Today we’re going to be checking out a specific .22LR ammunition that I know has been the subject of a lot of debate over the years - Remington Golden Bullet .22LR. Remington’s frontline budget .22LR load has historically been the subject of mixed, if not outright negative, discussions when it comes to reliability and overall cleanliness. I’ve recently had the opportunity to pick up a couple of boxes of Remington’s revamped Golden Bullet .36 grain line, and today we’ll be going over my experiences with it so far in a few different firearms.

More Rimfire Report @ TFB:

• The Rimfire Report: Franklin’s Binary-Equipped F22 Pistol - First Look
• The Rimfire Report: Federal Champion 22WMR 40gr FMJ - Tested
• The Rimfire Report: Hornady 17 gr VMAX 17 HMR by the Numbers
• The Rimfire Report: The FRW Taquito 22 - The Silent Sizzle of 22LR

The Rimfire Report: Giving Remington Golden Bullet a Second Chance

Before we get into the range experience I had with the new formula Remington Golden Bullet, I first want to go over what Remington is saying has changed from the old to the new. Most of you remember that Remington was acquired by Vista Outdoor in 2020. We covered that here on TFB. Since that acquisition, Remington has been able to take advantage of the engineering and production expertise of the folks from CCI, which now both produce rimfire ammunition more or less under the same Vista umbrella. A reeducated Remington’s first order of business was to update their shell-making process. To keep it short, Remington basically switched from making oversized and cut-down cases to a more modern machining technique that doesn’t leave the case length inconsistent.

Finally, Remington also stated in their official press release that their priming compound has been updated and is meant to increase shot-to-shot consistency and overall reliability of ignition. If .22LR is famous for anything other than being cheap, it's being quite inconsistent when it comes to reliable ignition. This is something that is more or less an American problem in my estimation, as European 22LR manufacturers like Lapua and even Wolf use an entirely different priming process and compound than we do over here, and in my experience, it leads to the same reliability of ignition that you’d find in centerfire cases.

General Reliability

To be completely honest, I never really noticed the case length inconsistency when it came to Golden Bullet, but I am happy to say that when it came to extraction, I had zero issues with any of the firearms or any of the new Remington Golden Bullet ammo. To prove a point, I did the same test with another brand of budget-oriented 36-gr ammunition and had some pretty disastrous results when it came to extraction, at least one or two malfunctions per magazine out of the G36.

The G36, after a marathon run of two 225-round boxes of the retooled Golden Bullet, started to have feeding issues simply because the gun was so fouled that it needed a quick swipe of the breech face to keep chugging along. 550 rounds isn’t a super high round count, but I think it is within the realm of reasonability for budget ammo, especially when we had a 100% ignition rate and extraction, not CCI clean, but also not nearly as dirty as some other budget rimfire ammunitions out there.

Price & Performance

Overall, I’d say that Remington Golden Bullet is more or less living up to the claims Remington has made about their reintroduced budget rimfire line. Golden Bullet is at least now a viable, if not slightly more expensive, alternative to other budget 22LR bulk ammo. The official retail price per round from the Remington website is $0.10 per round, but it can be found on other ammo dealer sites like PSA for about $0.08 per round.

Final Thoughts

To sum it up, Remington's efforts to address its historical reputation have largely paid off in my estimation. The manufacturing enhancements, including the updated shell-making process, refined head geometry, and improved priming compound, have translated into a noticeably more reliable and less frustrating shooting experience for run-of-the-mill plinking days. While it may not be a match-grade round, the significant improvements in extraction, ignition consistency, and overall cleanliness make the new Golden Bullet a genuinely viable and dependable option for general plinking, target practice, and, I guess, even for small game hunting and pest control.