I've been doing lots of shooting with my .223 this year, and I have some very good loads with Sierra 69g Match Kings and Hornady 52 g BTHP match. Will these bullets kill Groundhogs quilckly? Obviously I don't expect explosions or flying marmots, just dead in the field, not a blood trail to a hole.

Match Kings and Varget are shooting .4-.5", and The Hornady 52 and BL-C2 just gave me my best groups ever, .30-.43".

You might want to consider where and how far the bullet will travel after it takes down the Ground hog. roger

THE point as far as I'm concerned to purpose made "varmint bullets" is reducing the risk of ricochet.

Match bullets are made to be accurate, Varmint bullets are made to be accurate AND to break up so that they don't punch a hole in the neighbors car, cat, cow or child.

The fact that a good varmint bullet can cause spectacular terminal effects on woodchucks is a side effect of the more important goal

AllanD

bja, In general the match bullets are going to be the most accurrate bullets from your rifle! HOWEVER they are not the bullets for groundhog shooting!!! I've been down this road!! I've mailed thousands of "airmail invitations home" to varmints!! And in my first couple years of reloading and having decent rifles, I like you tried the match bullets and was extremely pleased at their paper punching abilities!! So I tried them on critters!!! It didn't take long to figure that one out!! .224 hole in,.224 hole out, wounded critter!!!! The only .224 MATCH BULLET I've ever seen that was OK for the varmint field was the old SPEER 52 grain GOLD MATCH bullet-----discontinued in 1977 or so!! The construction of that bullet was such that if you did post-mortems on the groundhogs, you found very small flecks of bullet metal, much like the small shiny flecks of shale that you see in "eisen glass" dirt! Those bullets got enough penetration, then fragmented and very,very,very ever had an exit wound!!! Wish I had 10,000 of them in the bullet bins now!!! Just give your .223 a diet of some of the VMAXS or SIERRA BK and do the varmints a favor also.....very few crawl offs!!! GHD

I'd go with any of the 55gr Sierra hunting bullets, Blitz, SMP, SPT, SBT, or HPBT. They are just about as accurate as the match bullets anyway, even out to 400+ yards. Dead woodchuck! (Up close and personal, a 125gr FNHP out of a .30-30 sends them cartwheeling through the air, too!) My brother took one out with a garden hoe - if they're in your vegetable garden having lunch you use whatever comes to hand. But the 55gr bullets will do what you need and do it without wounding, and that's the whole point of using them.

Can't argue on the effacy of the old Speer gold or silver match bullets. I also had great luck with the Hornady 52 or 53 grain Match bullets which I do believe were made like the SX softpoints. A thinner jacket which more easily conformed to subtle bore variations giving superior accuracy. IMHO only! Not science, just guessing that above BS, but they did work for me. The 69 Sierra was way to hard for Pdogs, and Berger 52's did a great job.

I guess I need to work up some hunting bullet loads, too. I'm trying to reduce the number of loads per gun. I have enough guns now that they can each have a certain role. I used to have a .270 that was my groundhog, crow, and deer gun. 130g Ballistic Tips worked for everything.

Now, I have a .22lr, 222, 223, 25-06 for varmints, I can tailor a load for each at various ranges. 40g V-max in 222. The 223 shoots everything well. The 25-06 is new, but so far 100g core lokt sucks, and 75g v-max is ok.

As we all know, all bullets are not made the same.
With that said I think that some match grade bullets can be used on varmints, with good success.
I don't know this as fact, but when my 22-250 gets back from Hart, I have a new box of 52 gr Sierra Match Kings, that I am going to load up with some IMR 4320.
And I will be using them on woodchucks this year.
I will let yo'all know how they perform this summer.