The first rifle I ever really shot was a plain old Ruger 10/22, and the ammo feeding it came out of a brown box that looked like it belonged in my grandfather's tackle shed. Peters. Forty grains of lead, high velocity, round nose, and in my memory it never once let me or my 10/22 down at the range. Every round went bang, every can went flying, my groups were as good as they could be for a new shooter, and I never thought twice about it as a child, just happy to be at the range with his dad. Years and a lot of ammunition later, a friend randomly handed me a near-full brick of the stuff. Same brown box, same old-timey lettering, stored so carefully it could have rolled off the line last week or thirty years ago. Between the sands of time and my slowly deteriorating memory, there's no honest way to tell just by looking at this stuff to tell if it's any good anymore, so today we’ll group and chronograph a box of it to see if its performance lines up with my memories of it. I’m intimately familiar with this ammo since it was what I used my scant chore money on at the local Bi-Mart (a chain store in the PNW). So first, a little history is in order. Before Peters was a name Remington stamped on cheap plinking ammo, it was one of the largest cartridge makers in the country. Peters 22LR was sold for $6 per 1,000 rounds (six-tenths of a cent), according to this 1896 catalog (Source: Peters Cartridge Co. Catalog April 20,1896 D.D.Teoli Jr. A.C.) A Baptist minister named Gershom Moore Peters founded the Peters Cartridge Company in Kings Mills, Ohio, in 1887, and within two years the plant was turning out four thousand rounds an hour along the Little Miami River. Peters earned a reputation for quality, and that reputation is a big part of why the name still moves product today, even though no one alive today was around for when the company was in its founding era, much less its Remington era. Remington bought Peters in 1934. This merger is why Remington centerfire brass features an "R-P" headstamp. Purists will tell you the only true Peters ammunition is the pre-1934 stuff, made while the company still ran itself. Everything after was Remington, though the Peters name refused to die and is still alive today via some special Remington-produced lines of paper cartridge shotgun ammo. Peters as a brand hung on for decades as a heritage label, most famously on the brown box with the flying duck that plenty of us pulled out of a Christmas stocking sometime in the 1970s, or (like me) at the local sporting goods store on the way to the range. Which brings me to the brick I now have on my bench. Sometime in the 2000s, Remington dusted off the Peters name again as a promo run, brown box and old-timey lettering included, sold cheap at big-box sporting counters. The worst-kept secret in rimfire is that it's almost certainly Thunderbolt in a classic Peters ammunition skinsuit, the same 40-grain lead round nose Remington has loaded forever. Not as memory-invoking as the box would indicate. Rimfire RemnantsThere's no official Peters Cartridge .22 LR page, and Remington's current catalog on remington.com lists Thunderbolt, Standard V, Golden Bullet, Yellow Jacket, Viper, Target, Golden Hunter, Performance Wheelgun, and Ranch Hand, and Peters is not among them in 22LR. Long before the late 2000s promo revival, Peters is the same 40gr high-velocity load as Thunderbolt and carries no spec sheet of its own and even comes in similar packaging, just with a different art style and name; the numbers below are both Remington's published both Remington’s Thunderbolt figures and the ones that come on the side of the Peters box. Specifications:Caliber: .22 Long RifleBullet weight: 40 grainsBullet style: Lead round nose (LRN)Muzzle velocity: 1,255 fps (high velocity, supersonic)Muzzle energy: 140 ft-lbsCase: Brass As best I can tell, this brick of Peters-branded Remington-produced 40gr ammunition was made sometime in May of 1997. You’ll also notice that the box has bilingual markings for French-speaking shooters, meaning this was also likely intentionally branded for partial Canadian distribution. Either way, this ammo is almost 30 years old and in practically new condition. Velocity and ReliabilityThe ammo thankfully runs beautifully in virtually any gun you stuff it in. Last time we talked about Remington rimfire ammo, I noticed that their now-discontinued standard velocity ammunition had a somewhat polished, unlubed lead bullet. It seems that the Remington-produced Peters 40gr ammunition shares this same bullet, and as a result, it has an easy time feeding through all of my semi-auto .22 LR guns, and the bolt guns as well. When it comes to velocity, the ammo also has enough power behind it to run my Beretta 21A Bobcat, which can have a difficult time reliably cycling even with 40-grain Mini-Mags. I’ve also been toying around with FarrowTech’s F17 chassis for the Kel-Tec P17, and it's been one of the few ammunitions that doesn’t get gummed up in the pint-sized chassis gun. The chronograph gave us an average velocity of 1,124 fps, a standard deviation of 21.3 fps, and an extreme spread of 96.5 fps. All in all, this isn’t half bad for a 50-round box of ammo. The graph tells the story a little bit better, as I did hear quite a few rounds both well above and well below the supersonic threshold, which is a telltale sign that the ammo will be rather inconsistent downrange at greater ranges. However, again, similar to the Remington Standard Velocity, the Peters-branded .22 LR, though discontinued, doesn’t live by its raw chronograph numbers alone. Out of some pistol-length barrels, this ammo is just slightly subsonic and very reliable, which makes it pair well with modern .22 LR pistol suppressor hosts. Accuracy DataTurns out my memory was better than I gave it credit for. This ammo is about as accurate as I remember it being when I was a kid. Out of five 10-shot groups at 50 yards, the best ran close to the size of a dime, maybe a hair oblong side to side. I went in expecting a wider spread, especially since I could hear a real difference in report between some rounds. I got a little of that, but the odd-sounding shots didn't reliably move the point of impact the way I figured they would. Out of the right rifle, this stuff is capable of great accuracy and would handle just about anything you'd ask a .22 to do. I've got about 300 rounds left. I'll probably keep a 50-round box for nostalgia, but most rimfire ammo needs to be shot within a decade or so to be worth much, unless it's stored the way this brick clearly was for the last 30 years. Final ThoughtsEven though this ammo turned out to be pretty good, as most pre-2012-panic-era rimfire tends to be, you can't find it anywhere now. After a brief revival in what I think was the late 2000s, Peters .22 LR vanished from store shelves and online catalogs alike, and it now lives on either in someone's rimfire stash or as a memory with a duck on a brown box. We're not really missing much, though. Its spiritual successor is still on shelves as Remington Thunderbolt 40gr, the same load in a plainer wrapper. The new-formula Thunderbolt claims "tighter tolerances, revamped primer mixes and industry-leading technology" for better consistency and lower chamber pressures at the same velocity, which is something we'll have to put on the chronograph down the road. For now, I'd love to hear your take. Do you have any of this stashed in an ammo can in the back of a closet? What were your impressions of Peters when it was still around? Drop a comment below, and as always, thanks for stopping by to read The Rimfire Report, and thank you for once again indulging me in a trip down memory lane. See you next week! If this post has you ready to hit the range, head over to gunranges.com - a free directory to help you find shooting ranges near you, wherever you are in the United States.