One of my shooting buddies stopped by today and told me about Ruger's new .204 cartridge. 4225 fps!! MAN! That's STROLLIN'!! And the bullet only weighs 32 grains.

I bought a Ruger Mk.II 77 in .204 Ruger,back in July. Its the new "target", heavy barrel, brushed SS in a laminate stock. They have a Great trigger in that gun, and it really shoots. It has a 26" barrel and does 4100 FPS thru my Ohler Chronograph, shooting the Hornady 32 grs. The 40 gr. V-Maxs shoot 3850. Both hit the same point at 100 yds. I have taken 3 groundhogs with it. All were between 185 and 150 yds. You can buy dies and bullets, but Hornady is not selling any brass for it. Have to shoot their ammo and then use that brass.
I did get a deal from a gentleman on another BB on ammo, bullets and dies.
I have not shot anything else, but plan on coyotes in the near future.

Puncher-- There are two other ways to obtain brass for the .204 Ruger besides buying the factory loaded ammo. The easiest way is to go to e-bay.com and look for auctions for once-fired .204 Ruger brass. The other way to obtain brass is to fire form your own out of Remington .222 Magnum brass.

You need a full length or neck sizing die for the .204 Ruger casings to start with. Take the .222 Mag casing and place it in your press. Run the casing up into the die and size just a tiny bit of the .224" neck. What you are trying to accomplish here is to size down only a small portion of the neck so it will hold the .204" diameter bullet and at the same time when you chamber the round the part of the neck that IS NOT sized to hole the .204 bullet will crush fit into your chamber and hold the casing firmly against your bolt, thus preventing a dangerous headspace problem. Here's a photo of a virgin .222 Mag casing, then the casing neck sized for a crush fit into your .204 Ruger caliber rifle chamber, the fire formed .222 Mag casing, and a once-fire Hornady .204 Ruger casing.



You can plainly see that the neck on the .222 Mag casings is a bit longer than that found on the .204 Ruger casing. The shoulder angle on the .222 Mag casing is also less than that of the 30� angle present on the .204 Ruger brass. The case capacity of the .204 Ruger brass is a wee bit larger than that of the .222 Mag casing.

I have fire formed maybe 100 of the .222 Mag casings. I was using 40 gr. V-Max bullets, Remington 7 1/2 primers, and 27.0 gr. of H4895 on my first batch. That worked great, but the accuracy and speed was lacking. I upped the load to 28.0 gr. of H4895 and I got more speed, but I also had pressure signs.

Then tried the 32 gr. V-Max bullet with 28.0 gr. of H4895 and I have a fire forming load that I can use for prairie dog hunting and other varmints as well. My 5-shot groups with this load ran from .770" down to .480" and velocities for 25 shots with this load averaged around 4,030 fps.