As Kind Of A Follow Up On An Earlier 17HMR Post....

[Yote Hunter]

I tried CCI, Winchester and Federal 17 gr VMAXES shooting 5 (5shot) groups at 100 yards and all the averages were unbelievably close that there wasn’t a clear winner but the Federals were 100 fps faster than all other brands. So my favorite especially “magnum“ ammo is Federal.

 

[varmit_hunter]

Around my house the crows and armadillos. Dont like the 20 gr xtp ammo. But i shoot my 22 mag and 204 ruger more.

 

[Rick in Oregon]

What scopes you guys using?

Do the HMR ones with the drops worth looking into?

I'm a die-hard Leupold user since 1968. They've never let me down, and I've hunted with them in rain, snow, fog, and desert heat. From above timberline to the black timber for elk, coastal rainforest/jungle, to the open high desert here for mulies, and for our local varmints, which I do a lot of. Great customer service, custom shop to do reticle changes, add target or M1 turrets, even changing scope finishes. And an American company, employing American workers, right here in Orygun. (And 'yes', I'm aware that all optic makers source their raw lens offshore.)

The scope on my Annie pictured above is just a Leupold VX2, 4-12X w/40mm objective (AO) and equipped with their LR reticle; Duplex with two dots on the lower vertical crosswire. It works great for holdover with the 17HMR, and is a standard Leupold product...no custom shop work involved. It is not advertised as being a "HMR" scope. I may upgrade it eventually, but it seems to be working well so far for what I use the rig for.

One particularly hot half hour with my 17HMR. My bench was 165~ yards away from the two-track. The rats would emerge out of the alfalfa and sit or stand up on the bare ground, giving the classic pose. You get the picture......



So grass rats in the alfalfa or chucks in the noggin on the lava rock, the HMR with a decent scope and (for me), Hornady 17gr V-Max gives the best results in the field, although my testing with other ammo options was limited to five. YMMV and probably will. Let us know how it shakes out in the end.

 

[B23]

The Hornady 17gr Vmax 17HMR ammo has shot the best for me as well but in all fairness I've also predominately shot that particular ammo considerably more than all the others combined. Pretty much everything that isn't in a Winchester/Browning label is made by CCI. I've had much better luck with the CCI made 17 HMR ammo than I have with the Winchester/Browning.

This stuff is mass produced and I think the biggest part of their QC focus is with regard to production. I'm sure producing safe ammo is important as well but this stuff isn't particularly consistent from round to round especially with regard to velocity. Those big spreads in velocity doesn't have a terrible affect on POI at 100yds so I suppose that's why they don't seem to be very concerned about it but the further out you shoot these things those 100-200fps ES can really kick your butt when you're shooting small targets like sage rats.

There can sometimes be a pretty big variance in POI going from one Lot# to another so years ago I learned it's best to check POI on paper every time I opened a new case of ammo with a different Lot# even if the label was the same because I've had some Lots that shot inches different than others. They always seem to group similar but POI was sometimes 3-4 inches different. Surprisingly, my Winchester made 17 WSM ammo, which nobody will argue is far from great, has been much more consistent with regard to velocity then the 17 HMR stuff I've shot but I've also shot a heck of a lot more HMR ammo than I have WSM too.