I had a 284 shehane hunting rifle with a krieger barrel that would hold 1/3rd moa without a problem. Try the Berger 180 hybrid bullet. That gun was lucky to hold 1” if I used a cheaper hunting bullet or even the Sierra hpbt 175.
7mm accuracy at 100 yards
- Thread starter crustyrusty
- Start date
yeah I just got back from shooting my .223.. shooting 69gr hpbt and 75gr hpbt. I really concentrated on my breathing and pulled the trigger on the exhale...I finally got rid of the vertical strings!! all of my groups were round in nature. however my group size didn't really come down I did shoot a 15/16 group according to my tape measure (outside of hole to outside of hole to outside of hole) I counted my brass and I shot 45 rounds and no loss(or gain) in accuracy..nice thing about my .223 is even tho I suffer flinching I can actually control it with this gun..... That is why on this forum I was looking for advice on low velocity loads for my 280 Remington and stumbled upon the h4895 stuff...and i found data on reduced loads for imr 4320 as well so i tried them and had instant success ......now that i will have a new barrel to work with i will start slow and work my velocity up to where it becomes uncomfortable then just back it off a little bit... as for bipods and such i dont own one just yet i have been using a friends sled to fire from and his pellet bags too..for me to use a bi-pod i think i would need a new stock.. my current stock is an original Remington 700 ADL right hand stock..do you have any suggestion as to which direction i should be headed in if i were to use a bi-pod? I dont really think this gun will ever see the woods again so that part of life is out for it.. just paper and steel targets.
cool!!!
searcher
Gold $$ Contributor
I started reloading on my own when I was 14 so I could afford ammo for my .44 mag pistol. My shooting did improve a lot over the years because I cold shoot a lot more. Still - by comparison of what expert skills one needs to have to routinely load ammo that was capable of winning matches - I still loaded pretty crappy ammo for about 20 years. Then I got serious after my first match because I got spanked hard. Because there were no forums back then (or an internet for that matter), it took a lot of watching what others were doing and reading and experimenting. Nowadays - you can pick up a book such as by Tony Boyers and/or others that truly know what the heck they are doing, duplicate and practice their methods in both loading ammunition and shooting skill methods and you will jump leaps and bounds in relatively very short order. There was a lot learned over the experimentation phase of learning till a lot of these methods were arrived at - but it is not necessary to go through all of that. You ask about what should be expected out of your rifle. Frankly - just about every production bolt-action rifle made these days is expected to shoot under an inch with at least some kind of off the shelf ammo. With the barrel you are putting on yours and your ability to hand load - I'd expect your rifle to be capable to do at least twice as good as it has for you in the past. I had a .243 Winchester rifle that I thought could do no better than 3/4" for those first 20 years. After trying some of the new powders out and using far better loading techniques, that rifle shot a 5-shot group under .001" and was the best group I ever fired in my life. I own many very nice state of the art competition rifles that will consistently shoot very low scores. They were beat this one time with an off-the-shelf Ruger Varmint rifle that routinely shoots around 1/4" with Hornady varmint bullets. The point I wanted to make, I guess, is that if you have not already done it - buy and study a few of these reloading books. I'd strongly suggest Tony's book. That won't help with your shooting skills but until you have ammo that can shoot tight groups, even wind flags will help to confuse you. When a shot doesn't go where you think it should have - you have to guess whether it was an errant shot from poorly grouping ammo or you mis-called the wind. You want to be able to take that shot and if off, say, 1/8" to the left, that a mental adjustment of 1/8" to the right for a follow-up has a chance of bringing you into the spot. Confidence in what to expect from your ammo will help your shooting skills enormously. If you want to make that .223 Axis shoot under an inch - give it a Berger 52 and Accurate LT-32 powder. I'll bet you $1.00 it shoots your best group ever with a simple middle-weight charge.
Good luck on your new barrel. I think you will be pleasantly surprised!
Good luck on your new barrel. I think you will be pleasantly surprised!
A friend of mine reloads in a haphazard way, lots of ladders but he only looks at velocity.
He can make decent ammo but he's always testing something new and he is never controlling enough variables.
The result is not anywhere near match quality.
The method that seems most promising to me is the Optimum Charge Weight method. It lets you find an optimum charge and then you can test seating depth and iterate that a couple times until you have ammo that is shooting low single digit ES and SD.
I would start with a known good match bullet. It might cost you $45 for a box to do the experiment but if you get .25 MOA groups with premium bullets and then 1 MOA with cheap bullets after doing a similar OCW load development, you'll know the problem is in the bullet. If the cheap bullet will group go ahead and save some money but a cheaper bullet is probably less consistent and lower in BC which will show up more at 1,000.
I got lucky with my first serious accurate rifle (a 6.5 Creedmoor), I built it from parts and from its first range trip it has been about a 1/2 MOA shooter with Hornady box ammo. It's much worse with a different brand.
I know my rifle will shoot 1/2 MOA or better if I feed it good ammo because I've done it. If I had started with cheap ammo, I might think it's a 1.5 MOA rifle...
He can make decent ammo but he's always testing something new and he is never controlling enough variables.
The result is not anywhere near match quality.
The method that seems most promising to me is the Optimum Charge Weight method. It lets you find an optimum charge and then you can test seating depth and iterate that a couple times until you have ammo that is shooting low single digit ES and SD.
I would start with a known good match bullet. It might cost you $45 for a box to do the experiment but if you get .25 MOA groups with premium bullets and then 1 MOA with cheap bullets after doing a similar OCW load development, you'll know the problem is in the bullet. If the cheap bullet will group go ahead and save some money but a cheaper bullet is probably less consistent and lower in BC which will show up more at 1,000.
I got lucky with my first serious accurate rifle (a 6.5 Creedmoor), I built it from parts and from its first range trip it has been about a 1/2 MOA shooter with Hornady box ammo. It's much worse with a different brand.
I know my rifle will shoot 1/2 MOA or better if I feed it good ammo because I've done it. If I had started with cheap ammo, I might think it's a 1.5 MOA rifle...
Yes I went with Privi Partizan Match bullets in .223 because of money issues and i wanted to get my feet wet learning how to load match ammo,,, and making physical adjustments to my gun too.. to adjust for longer COAL etcetra.....so my first purchase is .223 match brass... I have a 1000 rounds of mixed head stamp but no match grade cases. then my next purchase is berger 55gr fb hp match pills... so that leaves primers and powder... so i did find that my Savage Axis loves bullets seated close to the lands as possible (the 69 and 75 grainers did great!) now that I have room to shallow seat the pill hopefully i can get good results with that technique I do want to try the berger 77gr OTM pill I think that will be the bomb... OK right now I only shoot 2 distances 50 yards and 100 yards.. I do that because I am still learning how to breath, squeeze the trigger and control my flinch.. as I learn those techniques I will wander out to 150 yards then 200 yards but I do have to keep my expenses down tho to maybe to 150 a month in supplies
I just bought a box of berger 55gr fbhp match pills and I am uncertain as to what powder to start with so I will load 5 round of CFE-223, 5 rounds IMR-4320 5 rounds of IMR-8208xbr 5 rounds BL-C2 and go from there.. I will seat all of the bullets just enough into the case to squarely set the bullet to the neck and get the bullet as close to the lands as possible but I am sure it will be .120 off or more.. I do need to buy that tool to help find the distance to lands I just cant think of the name of it right now
I am going to do the same thing with my 280 remington I am going to purchase the Berger 140gr VLD bullet and build loads with that round and then work my way up in weight untill I get to 180gr VLD bullets ,,, with a true 1-9 twist i should be able to stabilize up to the 184gr f-open hybrid open target bullet... also I am going to use these bullets in my 280 British rifle as well using the 140gr VLD and the 150gr classic hunter and the 168gr classic hunter and the 168gr VLD target bullet... so if my groups really come together I will continue to buy Berger and Sierra and Hornady products (match bullets) If not I will stay with Privi Partizan
i know that I have had excelent accuracy with all 4 of those powders so the powder themselves, to me are a known entity .. so I am looking a bullet seatin depth coupled with factory round specs for a 55gr bullet so for the first batch all of the rounds will be seated the same depth. the next batch will be at a new measurement. I will note which powder/bullet seat combo did what. If this is flawed thinking tell me now because this the way I was taught how to do this many moons ago... I can learn new ways of doing things... by the way what is OCW?
OK just figured it out "optimum charge weight"
If you have a front sling swivel you can run a Harris bipod. You can shoot some really good groups with a bipod and rear bag. The rear bag can be made from a sock, cut off pant leg, or sew a bag of whatever shape you want. That will help on the budget, doesnt. Need to be super fancy
Get rid of the sled they are not good for accuracy or for the rifle.
Get rid of the sled they are not good for accuracy or for the rifle.
I want to re-stock my .223 with a Boyds AT-ONE stock and that comes pre-fitted for a front bi-pod.. all I have now is the factory Tupperware synthetic stock. maybe some time in January or February I can upgrade to my new stock for my 280 Remington I am staying with the factory ADL stock for now but I am thinking of upgrading to the AT-ONE as well for it... as for my 280 British this one will stay with the Boyds Heritage wood stock..
The Marksmanship training center offers 600/1000 yard matches quite often. It's located in Lake City, Mi. It's in Missaukee county. Public welcome. You'll be using match bullets and simply do some research here in some older threads on reloading the 280. It will literally set you up with several options in powder and bullets.
Now thats really cool!!!
What's your recipe ?
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