Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report! In this ongoing series, we discuss anything and everything rimfire! Last week we heard from fellow TFB Writer Doug E as he discussed the futuristic-looking Beretta U22 NEOS pistol. Like a lot of other pistols of its era and style, the U22 NEOS was eventually discontinued which I think is a huge shame, especially considering that the Neos was also capable of being converted to a carbine with the purchase of a separate kit. Interestingly enough, this is something that a lot of people do with the Ruger MK III and MK IV series since the “upper” is actually the firearm and the grip/frame is an unserialized part. Thank you once again to Doug for sharing his knowledge and experience with us in last week’s edition! This week we’re checking out something completely different – a really expensive and allegedly very accurate 1911-style 22LR pistol – the Vudoo Target .22LR 1911 Pistol. Today we’ll be going over its specifications, features, use cases and of course my thoughts on the handgun so far.

More Rimfire Report @ TFB:

• The Rimfire Report: The Strange Beretta U22 NEOS Pistol
• The Rimfire Report: Single Shot “Revolver” – The Savage 101 Story
• The Rimfire Report: The SIG P322-COMP – Worth the Extra $$$?

The Rimfire Report: The Vudoo Target .22LR 1911 Pistol

The Vudoo Target 1911 pistol isn’t for your typical rimfire junkies. While I prefer my rimfire guns to be a smart blend of quality construction and cheap fun, the Vudoo Gun Works Target .22LR is built to be a high-end machine capable of maintaining a mechanical accuracy of 1″ groups at 50 yards with match rimfire pistol ammo. While my copy of the Vudoo Target features a Mobius 1911 frame, the Target .22LR pistol can also be upgraded with a Defense Picatinny Rail Frame for the addition of lights, plus a snappy satin stainless finish. By now you’ll have realized that the Vudoo Target .22LR isn’t exactly a purpose-built .22LR pistol, but rather a .22LR conversion kit which Vudoo is selling as a complete gun for those that don’t wish to shoot 9mm or .45 ACP.

The Vudoo Gun Works Target .22LR features a classic semi-auto 1911 action, ensuring reliable functionality. The firearm comes with a stainless steel match barrel, BoMar-style adjustable sights, and a custom one-piece stainless trigger. Available finishes include Stainless, Black Melonite, and Two-Tone. Grips are offered in VZ Rosewood, VZ Dirty Olive, VZ Black Slants, and VZ Hyena options, catering to individual preferences. The package includes two polymer 10-round magazines. Standard features consist of BoMar-style adjustable sights and Vudoo G10 Dirty Olive grips which is the model that you’ll see photographs of here that I have been testing out. The frame is constructed of stainless steel with an anodized aluminum slide. Additionally, the firearm comes with two proprietary glass-filled nylon magazines.

A Pricey Project

The base model of the Vudoo Target .22LR is set at $2,474.00 which might make you throw up a little in your mouth if you’re used to buying and shooting most other 10-round capacity .22LR pistols. The price alone puts the Vudoo .22LR Target pistol as one of the most expensive .22LR pistols on the market, priced almost $1,000 more than the Volquartsen Black Mamba series of competition target pistols. However, the price for the Vudoo Target doesn’t have to stop there, you can continue upgrading it beyond just the different grip selections.

The pistol also has the option to include a 1/2×28 threaded barrel, various types, and styles of triggers, different styles, and types of thumb safeties, a flared magwell (which requires the addition of magazine extensions), compensators, and more. If you really tried to deck one of these out with all the bells and whistles, and a handful of extra magazines ($26 each), you could easily push the price of a Vudoo Target .22LR to well over $3,000.

First Impressions

I’ve been shooting the pistol on and off over the previous months and learned a lot about the handgun, how it works, and some of the interesting quirks it has to give you that classic 1911 feel, but in a much more affordable cartridge. In stark contrast to your typical .22LR target pistols, the Mobius 1911 frame gives the Vudoo Target a nice heft. A couple of weeks ago we talked about how the new SIG P322 COMP has a bunch of great competition features but is lacking the weight of one. This is something that the Vudoo pistol does great by having roughly the same weight and balance as a real 1911 pistol.

Part of this weight comes from the extremely thick sleeve around the .22LR barrel that protrudes about a 1/2″ from the front of the slide and dust cover. While you can upgrade the pistol with a threaded barrel, you can still attach the Vudoo compensator to the barrel via the small drilled and tapped hole at the 6 o’clock position of the barrel. The top rail features a generous amount of space while also integrating the proprietary sights into the mix. I don’t particularly like this setup as while the rail gives me the space to add a lot of different types of optics, the height of the rear sight makes adding a high magnification optic for accuracy testing very difficult without a high-scope base or drifting the adjustable iron sight out completely.

For the initial part of my testing, I opted to use my preferred Steel Challenge optic, the Trijicon SRO. Just like with my Ruger MK IV, the height of the optic looks pretty wild but really the height over bore isn’t too much of a concern with a proper zero, lots of practice, and a clear understanding of what both this pistol and rimfire ammunition are capable of. Without putting rounds on paper at 50 yards, I can say that this pistol is supremely accurate as at just 15 yards using a red dot I was able to produce a sub 1″ group just shooting unsupported and with basic Aguila or CCI Mini-Mag high-velocity ammunition. A lot of this success can be attributed to the overall weight of the pistol, combined with the extremely light and predictable single-action trigger.

Reliability

1911-22 is meant to run off of high-velocity target ammunition – specifically, match ammunition if you want to get the best performance out of the Vudoo plinker. Since I didn’t have the budget or the resources to run thousands of rounds of match ammo through the pistol, I had to make do with what I had which was a boatload of 40-grain CCI Mini-Mag and Aguila Super Extra. With both of these types of ammunition, I had a decent amount of success, however, I felt as if the pistol had some teething issues when using both of the commonly available types of ammunition. By about 200-250 rounds in, the pistol became much more reliable and since then I’ve only run into the errant dud round from the Aguila batch. I also discovered that slightly underloaded cartridges would often lead to the subsequent round getting hung up on the feed ramp – something that also happens often when you try to use standard velocity ammunition in this particular pistol.

Overall for reliability, the pistol is fairly good, about as good as what you could expect from a .22LR conversion kit. I presume that I’m at the point at which the pistol needs a decent cleaning (about 1,000 rounds in) so some of the more recent malfunctions with Aguila’s Super Extra might have been caused by the declining cleanliness of the handgun. However, when it comes to clearing those malfunctions, the fixed top rail combined with the minimal amount of spots to grip the slide without ripping your hands to shreds on the sights or Picatinny rail is few and this makes quickly and efficiently clearing jams a nightmare – something I’m hoping I won’t have to do when I eventually take it to a steel challenge competition.

Accuracy and Competition NExt

Over the next couple of months as the weather starts to warm up we’ll be taking the Vudoo Gun Works Target 22LR pistol to some steel challenge competitions to see how well it does there, and also get it back to the range with a high magnification optic, match pistol ammo, and a shooting bag to see what kind of accuracy we can squeeze out of it and if that performance measures up to what Vudoo Gun Works advertises on their website. In the meantime, let us know here at TFB what you think of the Vudoo Target 22LR pistol and always, thanks for reading The Rimifre Report and we’ll see you again next week!