2025 Ammunition Product Of The Year: Winchester .21 Sharp

More than two decades ago, your NRA Publications (now NRA Media) announced its inaugural Golden Bullseye Awards issued by each of its editorial brands, coveted honors that allow this magazine's editors, American Rifleman, to recognize and commemorate exceptional innovations and standout performers in their respective categories—guns, optics, ammunition and accessories. The award-selection process is often difficult, with great new products to sift through each year. But we eventually achieved consensus with the below Ammunition Product Of The Year Award for 2025.

“The Golden Bullseye Awards are our way of honoring those companies that introduced products of remarkable utility, innovation and simple excellence to shooters and hunters during the past year,“ said Mike Sanford, deputy executive director of NRA Media. “We congratulate the winners, and we are confident that shooters and hunters will receive this year‘s winning products with enthusiasm.”

2025 Ammunition Product Of The Year: Winchester .21 Sharp
New centerfire cartridges happen on the regular, but a new rimfire chambering doesn’t come around very often, so when one does, it’s pretty big news at American Rifleman. So, when Winchester Ammunition announced the .21 Sharp, a new cartridge designed to offer higher velocities and far superior bullet selection than the ubiquitous .22 Long Rifle, while utilizing the same case, operating at an identical maximum average pressure and not costing much more, we were intrigued.

In “Hedging For The Future,” contributor Jeff Johnston explained that, by designing it around smaller .21-cal. bullets, Winchester was able to develop a variety of non-heeled projectiles that take advantage of modern bullet-making techniques—like lead-free construction—which may make it available in areas where lead ammunition has been banned.

“I love rimfires, rimfire shooting, plinking with my son and hunting small game—and I’m not ready to give it up just because some jet-setting, know-nothing politician banned lead bullets,” he said. "Because the .21 Sharp’s non-heeled bullet is smaller than the case, it can be more easily made utilizing modern bullet designs, such as boattails, spitzer points, jacketed hollow points, lead-free monolithics and others that are ballistically and terminally superior to the .22’s heeled design."

"While the 25-grain load is touted to leave the muzzle at 1,750 f.p.s. to produce 170 ft.-lbs. of energy at the muzzle, I recorded an average of 1,871 f.p.s., which translates to 194 ft.-lbs.," Johnston noted. "This, from a 16" barrel!" The .21 Sharp is truly an impressive performer thanks to Winchester's proclivity and 'thinking outside the box' by providing new rimfire offerings with better case design and projectiles that produce higher ballistic coefficients than previously offered by the seminal .22-cal. rimfire of yesteryear.

For continuing to innovate, particularly in a corner of the ammo world that has seen very little recently, we named the Winchester .21 Sharp as our Ammunition Product Of The Year. For more information, visit winchester.com.