After doing some reading and with the help of you good folks, I decided that Seating out to the lands wasn't worth having to single load my .204 ruger. So I fiddled with my COAL. I though others might find the info usefull so here goes.

It is a Rem 700, VLSTH, in of course .204 ruger. Due to Budget restraints(my wife was there ) It is topped with a lowley Simmons 6.5-20. Really not a bad scope but the reticle is thick enough that It would be only luck to shoot better than .4 cause thats all the magnification it gives. What I am saying is the reticle will nearly cover a dime sized target dot at 100 yards. You can't shoot any smaller than you can see.
That covered, I'll proceed, I narrowed my load search down to 27 gr H4895 and 40 gr V-max bullets, and Rem 7 1/2 primers. After shooting a .642 5 shot group, in blustery condidtions. But my COAL was a whopping 2.390 to get close to the lands. 2.250 is the LISTED OAL in hornady's book.
I took the same load and tried a couple more reasonable OAL's Namely 2.348 (which was the max length allowed in the magazine), and 2.30. The 2.348 loads opened up to an unacceptable 1.25, But the 2.30 loads shrank back to a "better than off the lands" group measuring .46

[url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=425365&c=500&z=1"] [/url]

[url="http://www.hunt101.com/?p=425369&c=500&z=1"] [/url]

I'll be satisfied with that as a good Shoting load at least until I can put some glass on the gun that will allow any better grouping, But any gun shooting groups that can be covered with a dime makes me happy.

Ricky

That is very interesting. I have been seating a 32 gr Sierra to give a COL of 2.320 in in my XP-100. It gave me a 3 shot group of 0.72 using 27.gr of Benchmark.

quote:

Originally posted by ricky_arthur:

You can't shoot any smaller than you can see.
Ricky

Good stuff, but with the above quote and by the look of your bottom target, perhaps by centreing the thick X-hairs inside the smallest orange square, you prob. don't need to see under them. You must be doing something right anyway.

Interesting that the 32gr V-max has the same listed OAL as the 40gr. Guess I'll start around the same spot for a 32 gr Load.

Ricky