Seafire,

Did you get a chance to check group sizes. In the past, when I push light grain bullets in a 223, I get lousy groups.

Reagrds,
Kory

Winter Time and Hunting Season over, so time to play at load bench and experiment.

Very pleasant surprise found!

I don't know how many have ever tried Calhoon bullets ( www.jamescalhoon.com) out of Montana. He makes some sweet bullets for varmint shooters that can be very reasonably priced for what you get.

I picked up some of his 37 grain and 30 grain Hollow Points locally, and played with them at the reload bench and at the range.

I found some outstanding accuracy in 223 with both bullets and Benchmark Powder! Twist was 1 in 12, standard Ruger VT and Remington VLS.

My eyes popped when I got out the chronograph after passing the accuracy tests.

28.5 grains of Benchmark with the 37 grain HP gave me velocity readings of 3934 fps on the low end and 3996 fps on the high end. I do report one odd low reading at 3869 fps.

29.5 grains of Benchmark with the 30 grain HP gave me velocity readings in the 4150 fps range for 5 shots chronographed.

ONCE again, this is out of a 223 not a 22/250.!

I have also tried some of these bullets last season on Oregon ground squirrels and they performed excellent.

Check out Calhoons web site and if you try these loads of course work up. But I think you will enjoy the results. These HPs are a lot better performing on varmints than the plastic tip bullets are in my opinion.

Cheers and good shooting
seafire

Ouch! thats fast. This weekend I was scanning for ideas for a .223... never owned one. More interested in 55gr projectiles though.

Bought some 30gr Bergers to play with in my 221 Fireball; BC sucks, but sometimes mighty fast is plain ole fun.
Using 18.0gr of LilGun, the 30's averaged right on 4000fps out of a 24" tube, with accuracy (5 shots) typical at 0.7".
These are the Berger MEF's, and using a probe, found the lead was down around the bottom 1/3 of the jacket!

Fellas, We ordered some Sierra 30 gr. HP's, Item # SRA9370B, out of Graff & Sons. I went to the Sierra web page and couldn't find this bullet in their bullet section. Not sure what the deal is, maybe a special run or something. They are .224". Anyway, I loaded them in my TC Contender Rifle (22 Hornet with a 21 inch barrel) ) and used 12.2 grs of Accurate Data #9-C with a CCI 500 Pistol primer. I ran them over my Chronograph and got a 3165 fps Ave. There was no Pressure and they grouped 5 shots 3/4" @ 150 yds. Went out and shot up about 300 of them on Jackrabbits yesterday and at close range there's just a pile of Bunny berger with hair in it. Rabbits that were hit at 250 to 300 yds just got dead. The little bullet really starts dropping off the second it leaves the barrel but I think it will really shine on Squirrels out to 150 to 200 yds next spring. Godsdog.

I got some of those Sierra 30 grain hollowpoints two years ago for the hornet and bee. They were made for the .22 WMR and the tech people surmised they would be ok up to 3500 fps. They are.