I went through stages.
At first, in the US Army, all I shot was an M14 (mostly, did some M60/1911 work, too). I got out of the Army, went home, started college and up there I could easily shoot out to 600 yds. I did some groundhog and crow hunting with my Rem. M700 VS and did lots of load development and shooting with the M1A (.308) and 03A4 (.30-06) and shot them at 300 to 600 yds. pretty regular.
But during the same time period, if I was at school/work I lived in an area where shooting a rifle past 25 yds. was pretty tough, so we did more pistol shooting.
Then I got into Appleseed and became an instructor (years later) and it was back to rifles again. The M1A, an M1 Garand, a 10/22 made up to feel like an M1A/Garand. I eventually walked away from being an Appleseed instructor.
After that it was pistols again. I can shoot 100 yds. at the range I belong to but there's usually a few guys at the 100 yd. range that spend about as much time talking and cleaning their rifles between shot, or groups, as they do shooting. That makes it hard to put some targets down range, shoot some groups and then get a cold range to go check/change targets. Sometimes, when the light is right, you can see the bullet holes with a scope, but not always.
.22 ammo (at least around here) is still hard to find and not as cheap as .22 ammo should be. They sell 320 round boxes for more than they used to sell 500 round boxes for and there's a group of guys that roam the Walmarts and buy up every box of .22 ammo that goes on the shelves. I haven't shot a .22 in a good long while. I'm just saving what I have in case it never really comes back around here. I used to think those guys would eventually run out of room to store all the ammo but I was wrong. The local walmart is still breaking u the "bricks" into individual 50 round boxes and selling them that way due to the guys walking in and wanting to buy 3 bricks as the "three box per customer limit" sign on the ammo cabinet states. I've stood there and watched the same guy make multiple trips back and forth between his car and the counter and even call his buddies on his cell phone to come get some while it's in stock.
Anyway, getting a .22 set up to mimic a center fire rifle can be fun and help you with practice if you can get the ammo for a reasonable price.
