I did purchase this rifle just to see if I could get it to shoot after hearing all of the claims of poor accuracy. I have a similar rifle in 22 Mag that is picky about its diet, but burns in small groups with Remington ammo topped off with the v-max bullet.

The first step was to replace the trigger and glass the barrel forward of the receiver for ~2"

With that done, I started loading ammo in new R-P Nickel Hornet casings with Federal 100 SP primers. The first trip to the range I tried WW296, H110, and Lil Gun with various bullets with the various 40, 45, and 50 grain bullets I had on hand. The 40 gr. V-max and Ballistic tip bullets didn't perform with the rifle downright disliking the V-max bullet. 45 grain Starke bullets shot nice sub- 1" groups with WW296, but Clint isn't making bullets any more

Another load that shot under 1 MOA was 11.5 gr. of H4227 and a 50 gr. Rem PLHP. This load chronoed 2700 fps from the 24" Ruger Barrel.

Further down the accuracy list, but still acceptable was 10.5 gr. WW296 and a Winchester 46 gr. HP.

The rifle didn't like Lil Gun with any bullet tried.

I was thinking going to have to settle with the nice shooting, but somewhat slow 50 grain load that didn't feed through the magazine when I tried the little 35 grain Hornady V-max. The next trip to the range I loaded the 35 grain pill pushed by AA#9 and 2400 and seated the bullet to 1.750" LOA. The AA#9 loads shot OK, but the accuracy delivered by 11.4 grains of 2400 and this bullet is nothing short of WONDERFUL. I've fired this load on several subsequent trips to the range and if the groups are over 1/2 MOA the problem is with me. What a dramatic change a bullet can make, not to mention that this load is short enough to feed through the magazine.

I do have a soft spot for the lines of Kimber 84 and CZ527 rifles in 223, but with 2400 and the 35 gr. v-max yhe Ruger doesn't take a back seat to either of them in the accuracy department.

J in O,
I have been shooting the K-Hornet for the past three years, and have put about 3500 through it so far. It is a Contender Carbine with an 18" heavy barrel. At first I did have trouble getting acceptable performance from it, but made a pivitol discovery early-on that led to a solution. Others too have reported the same solution, so I guess my discovery isn't really original. But what I found is that if you use too much primer in that diminutive case you can literally blow the bullet out of the case before it gets a fire started in the powder. The result is the bullet will enter the rifling and either slow down or stop until the powder gets to burning well, whereupon, the bullet takes off again. All this leading to highly variable muzzle velocities and poor accuracy.

The solution is to use as fast a powder as you can (I use 2400) AND go to a standard small pistol primer. That is what I did and the preformance for the next 3450 or so shots has been just plain super. That carbine has become my favorite prairie dog gun, well capable of 1/2 minute groups.

Don Shearer