In my son's Howa Lightning 1500, the best shooting load has been the Nosler 120 gr Ballistic Tip with 34.0 gr of H-4895. It is a very mild recoil load, yet packs sufficient punch for deer out to 200 yards or so. I am hoping to get it to shoot the hotter loaded 140 gr bullets better after I glass bed the action. The Howa comes with a 1 in 9" twist and 22" barrel.

I got my CZ mannlicher in 6.5x55 yesterday, and got excited and ordered 140 grain partitions. Looking up the twist rate, I found an odd 1:8.6" twist on the CZ 6.5x55. Running Greenhill, it appears this is an almost exact match. Anybody shooting a CZ 6.5 with good results with 140grain partitions? Any pet loads?



Thanks,



Steve

skl1,

Looks like we're the newest pledges of the 6.5x55 CZ FS fraternity! We both got them within a day of each other!

I'm going to use 140gr Hornady SPs in mine to start with. After much research on this board it seems like RL22 and H4831sc are the powders most often matched to 140gr bullets.

Did you get the CZ rings? I did, now I'm getting some medium Warne Maximas. The CZ rings are just too high.

My swede's didn't like the Hornady's very well at all. Nosle Partitions and Sierra GameKings have the same point of impact at 100 yards though, and both will group in less than one inch. The Nosler managed .3 for me once.

In my guns the H4831sc was good, but the R-22 really shined. I think the swedes are pretty load resilient, for whatever reason.

Blackhawk,

I got out to do the barrel break-in on mine. Very accurate just with iron sights and factory Winchester 140gr loads.

I have a set of Burris rings that I'll use for load development, but I'm thinking about leaving the 6.5 with the Mannlicher as an iron sighted hunting rifle. We'll see. I usually cave in and scope them for the extra range and accuracy. Plus one of those 1.5x5 Leupolds with no objective bell on the front would look just about perfect on the front of this rifle.

Steve