While it may be a bit of a stretch to proclaim this as the "triumphant return" of this venerable old varmint number, I was rather surprised to see both Winchester and Ruger are currently chambering rifles in this caliber. Winchester offers their 1885 High Wall and Ruger their Number 1, both falling block single shots. I can't imagine this is going last for long, so if you feel a need for a rifle in this classic cartridge, here are a couple of opportunities.
I picked up a #1 about 35 years ago, the last time I'm aware that Ruger offered one so chambered. I shot out the original barrel after about ten years, and wound up having it rebarreled by Rick Freudenberg, using a 28" 12" twist Lilja barrel. This thing is a virtual "ray gun"; I leave it zeroed at 300 yards, and it's only about 1.5" high at 100 and just a bit higher at 200. It only drops about 4 to 5 inches at 400 yards. This is with the 60 grain Hornady V-Max at darn near 3,800 fps. It will easily approach 4,100 fps with 50 grain V-Maxes.
Many modern loading manuals show maximum loads for this cartridge producing lower velocities than .22-250 loads. Much of our modern factory ammunition is loaded to lower velocities than modern .22-250 loads. Don't be fooled - the old Swift easily out-paces the .22-250 with any bullet weight, and by a couple hundred feet per second. It is, however, a handloader's proposition to extract that performance, and an experienced handloader at that.
If you are up for it, though, the old Swift provides pretty darn remarkable performance in the field. It's not prairie dog cartridge, as you will soon burn the throat out of the barrel shooting at that pace, but it excels on long range coyotes, rock chucks, wood chucks, and the like. Essentially, if you can see them, you can hit them, with no concerns over silly things like trajectories.
Here's mine:
