I talked to a gun dealer on Saturday and he indicated they had some lots of Hornady .204 Ruger ammo that were defective in that they wouldn't rev up to the 4,000+ fps muzzle velocity. He said these were the very early lots of ammo put out by Hornady. Have any of you experienced the extreme lack of muzzle velocity in your .204 Ruger factory ammo, especially the 32 gr. stuff?

I purchased 15 boxes of 32 gr. factory ammo. I checked the lot numbers and they are Lot #3040148 and #3040216. I don't know when these lots were manufactured, but I am thinking they are NOT the early stuff. Mine are averaging around 4,075 fps for the 32 gr. stuff. Here's a photo of where the lot number is located on my ammo boxes. It is underlined in red.

I have a CZ Varminter on order in .204 so I'm quite interested in the velocities guy's are getting out of their reloads. I also have a Tactical .20 with a 26 inch Pac-Nor barrel built on a 700 Remington. I had expected to see higher velocities out of the .204 than my Tact.20 but actually that's not the case (at least so far). I have 2 working loads for the Tact.20: 24.2 grains of H4198 and a 33 grain V-Max in an IMI case for 4,250ish, and the 40 grain V-Max with 25.6 grains of Benchmark also in an IMI case for 3,890ish.
I would expect the larger capacity of the .204 to have the potential for more speed but then I guess barrel variations etc. figure into it and it's tough to figure. Also working with a tighter chamber than factory helps as well.
All the variables aside it's starting to look like these two rounds are close enough to be a coin toss.
.20's are fun Huh??

Reverified my 204 Ruger load this Sunday. 32 v-max, 29.5 gr WIn 748, Win caps. Yielded almost 4200 fps nad basically 1 hole from my Ruger #1 LSS.
Good enough for me!