Light Bullets in the .223 Remington

Conundrum. I like that word. Since learning what it means, I’m going to use it a lot. My desk dictionary says it’s “anything that’s a puzzle.” And in my .223 Remington shooting experiences in the last year, there have been several conundrums.

Here’s a for instance: My re-entry into varmint shooting has been with a Savage Model 11F, and indeed it’s a nice shooting little rifle (as reported in Rifle No. 227). Unlike the one-in-12- or one-in-14-inch rifling twists usual in .22 centerfires when I quit varmint shooting 25 years ago, the little Savage has a one-in-9-inch twist rate. Therefore, I expected it to shine with heavier bullets and be less precise with lightweights. Not so. In fact on my varmint shooting trip to southern Oregon, I took Black Hills Ammunition’s factory loads with a range of bullet weights from 40 to 73 grains. By the end of the week, the loads with 40-grain Hornady V-MAX bullets were my preferred and were giving hits on those tiny Belding’s ground squirrels sometimes as distant as 300 yards by my laser rangefinder. What a conundrum!

After that trip my enthusiasm for the little Savage was high, so it was only natural that I wanted to find out how it would perform with handloads. That meant a loading project coupling a variety of powders and bullets to determine the .223’s preferences. That way, when I return to Oregon, all the brass saved from the last trip can be taken along reloaded. With the vast array of suitable bullets and powders now available, trying to test fire all of them would be a daunting project. Heck, you could shoot out a rifle’s barrel just trying to give them all a turn! For that reason this .223 Remington reloading project was limited to light bullets, specifically an assortment from 50 grains down, with special attention paid to the 40-grain offerings.

Before the group shooting got started, another opportunity arose to learn something. That was how these lighter .223 bullets would perform in a rifle with a one-in-8-inch twist and perhaps more importantly how well a varmint style autoloader would do. When I quit varmint shooting about 1981, combining the words varmint and autoloader in the same sentence would have been a contradiction. Everybody then knew there was no way a “black rifle” could be accurate enough to hit tiny little ground squirrels at distances of 200 to 300 yards. With what was available then it probably would have been difficult to even mount a suitable varmint scope on a “black rifle.”  I honestly don’t remember, because I didn’t pay much attention to auto-loaders then – and still don’t for the most part. Maybe that will change some.

Anyway, on hand now is a Rock River A4 Varmint, which is that company’s adaptation of the basic AR type of autoloading rifle known the world over as either AR-15, or in its selective fire military version as the M16. However, the A4 Varmint is a long way from a military-style rifle. First, instead of the distinctive carrying handle of an
AR-15, it comes with a rail atop the receiver that can be fitted with Weaver-type scope mounts. The A4 Var-mint can be had with barrels 16, 18, 20 and 24 inches long with rifles weighing from 7.9 to 9.7 pounds at each end of that spectrum. These barrels taper from 1.05 inches under the aluminum tube handguard to .920 inch ahead of the gas block. They are stainless steel, air gauged and made by Wilson, all with one-in-8-inch twist rates, except that an option can be a one-in-12-inch twist in the 24-inch barrel only. The trigger is a standard military two-stage type, but when the actual pull begins, this one released at 3 pounds.

The A4 Varmint sent to me by Rock River came with a 20-inch barrel, atop which was soon mounted a Leu-pold 10x scope. The catalog states that Rock River guarantees accuracy of .75 minute of angle at 100 yards. My thought was, An autoloading .223 outshooting most bolt-action .223s? We’ll see about that. The facts turned out to be that this A4 Varmint often will group under .75 inch for five shots at 100 yards. See what I mean about conundrums?

The pertinent details of the Savage Model 11F are that it has a 22-inch barrel and is mounted with a Leupold 4.5-14x scope, which was used at 10x. Its fine Accu-Trigger came from the factory set to a 21⁄2-pound pull, so I’ve never messed with it. Whereas the Rock River A4 Varmint has a 10-round detachable magazine and will accept more capacious ones, the Savage’s magazine capacity is four rounds.

In doing a project like this to determine some good handloads for each rifle, I like to follow this system: After consulting several reloading manuals, a variety of suitable bullets and powders are chosen, with the powder charge weights being near but not at maximum. Also a single primer is used throughout and cartridges loaded to the manuals’ recommended overall cartridge lengths. Then each powder is combined with each bullet, and the combinations fired through both rifles on the same day in five-shot groups at 100 yards. By averaging the results some idea as to the rifles’ preferences can be ascertained. Then if one really desires to fine-tune things, various primers, powder charges and seating depths can be tried. On the other hand, most probably a fine load will be seen in the shooting and no further load development will be needed. That was my conclusion at the end of this shooting project.

To begin, a search of my bullet and powder shed turned up eight .22-caliber bullets weighing between 40 and 50 grains and six propellants I thought suitable for use in both rifles. As it turned out, not all the powders or bullets were suitable.

Back toward the end of my first era of varmint shooting, I had come to favor 45-grain bullets  for loading the .222 Remington and .222 Remington Magnum. Therefore the shed contained Speer and Sierra versions in that weight. Another varmint bullet remembered fondly from the old days was the 50-grain Sierra Blitz. Those Blitz bullets were just like dynamite on our Montana “gophers,” even when fired at the moderate velocities of .222s. Then there were five of the relatively new type of .22 varmint bullets having those pretty little synthetic tips: red for Hornady, green for Sierra and orange for Nosler. Each brand was included in 40-grain weight, but only Hornady and Nosler with 50-grain designs.

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the three powders used most in my .22 centerfire reloading were IMR-4198, Reloder 7 and H-322. Naturally there were cans of those on hand. The flip side was that in my shed were three other suitable propellants that previously I had never fired a grain of in any .22 centerfire. Those were Western Powders’ X-Terminator, Vihtavuori’s N130 and Hodgdon’s Varget. With the six powders the gamut was covered in burning rates for the .223 Remington from fairly fast to fairly slow for the case size.

With eight bullets and six propellants used in each rifle, the results would have amounted to 48, five-shot groups from each rifle; or divided up more specifically, each bullet would have been fired six times and each powder eight times per rifle. Right away I dis-covered that wasn’t going to happen. Another conundrum! Everything went well until the 50-grain Sierra Blitz was tried the first time. They left no bullet holes in the paper when fired from either rifle. I even tried putting up a big paper target – still no bul-let holes. From experiences with var-mint rifles back in the “old days,” I knew that trying to shoot some bullets too fast caused them to shred in flight. Specifically I can remember a project with a 6mm-284, reported on long ago, where ad-d-ing just one more grain of powder caused 60-grain Sierra hollowpoints to disintegrate in flight.

But the 50-grain Sierra Blitz bullets were going as slow as 3,075 fps and 3,069 fps from the AR4 and Model 11F, respectively. So when confronted with a puzzle, I did what any good gun writer should do in that situation. I  contacted someone who would know what was going on. That someone was Carroll Pilant of Sierra Bullets, and he set me straight in short order. I was judging things from my 30-year past experiences in which .22 centerfires had one-in-12- and one-in-14-inch rifling twists. Sierra Blitz bullets work just fine in them, but the tight one-in-8- and one-in-9-inch twists of these new rifles are just too fast for  the thin-jacketed Blitz bullets. That’s why Sierra developed the Blitz-King bullets, which happened to be the 40-grainers I was using with fine results. They have stouter jackets.

Conundrum solved! The Blitz bullets were dropped from the project. Now I was down to averaging 42, five-shot groups with seven bullets and six powders per rifle.

Before getting into the results and averages and some more conundrums, I should give some other details about the handloads. All loads were put into once-fired .223 Remington cases that started out as Black Hills Ammunition factory loads. The headstamp reads BHA, but I don’t know who actually made the brass, since Black Hills Ammunition doesn’t manufacture cartridge cases. As for primers, I found a carton of Remington No. 71⁄2 Benchrest Small Rifle types stored in the closet.

Then everything was assembled with Redding dies using one of its Competition grade seating dies. The plastic-tipped bullets of 40 and 50 grains were seated to a maximum overall loaded cartridge length of 2.25 inches, which is what the Sierra manual lists for maximum length for use in AR-type rifles, and standard bolt actions too. That meant the 45-grain bullets resulted in slightly shorter overall lengths of 2.22 inches for the Sierra and 2.17 inches for the Speer.

Also it should be mentioned that when firing the groups, all seven bullets with a single propellant were fired at one time. That allowed rifle cleaning after 35 rounds were fired. At each range session, a couple of fouling shots were put downrange from each rifle before the group shooting resumed.

As this project proceeded, there arose another conundrum. (See, I told you I was going to use that word a lot.) Although the A4’s barrel was 2 inches shorter than the Savage’s, in every instance, velocities with it were higher. Sometimes the difference was of no consequence, such as the 3,075 fps and 3,069 fps mentioned before. At other times it was significant. For instance, with 23.5 grains of Reloder 7 under the 40-grain Nosler, the A4 gave 3,526 fps and the Model 11F only 3,337 fps. That’s nearly 200 fps difference, and remember these loads were fired on the same day. Conundrum! The Rock River catalog states that the barrels on some rifles are cut with a “.223 Wylde Chamber” in contrast to a 5.56 NATO chamber on its standard rifles. Since the standard rifles are rated at one MOA accuracy and the Wylde chambered barrels at .75 MOA, that  indicates the latter are “tighter.” Perhaps that accounts for the  difference.

A disappointment was the lack of precision produced with both Sierra and Speer 45-grain bullets. All in all they shot poorly. The  little Savage averaged 1.67 and 1.65 inches with them in the same order, and the A4 gave 1.46- and 1.11-inch averages. In fact those two bullets are the only ones of the seven that averaged over one inch for six, five-shot groups in the A4.

The A4 liked all the other five bullets fairly equally: averaging from .84 inch with the 50-grain Nosler to .94 inch with the Hornady V-MAX. The Savage was more finicky and averaged less than one inch for six groups only with the 50-grain Nosler. It is probably no conundrum that the 45-grain bullets didn’t compare with the more modern “plastic” nosed designs from these tight-twist rifles. That synthetic nose actually allows a 40-grain bullet to be longer than a 45-grain lead tipped bullet. An example: The Sierra 45-grain spitzer is .617 inch in length compared to .676 inch for its 40-grain BlitzKing.

The A4 showed a preference for Reloder 7 with an average of .80 inch for seven, five-shot groups. The only other powder to average less than one inch for its seven groups was Western Powders’ X-Terminator. It likewise performed best in the Savage with a seven group average of 1.05 inches. The only powder that could have been said to have “failed” in this project was IMR-4198. As good a propellant as it is for cartridges of this size, it just did not work in the A4. Not one round loaded with IMR-4198 with 40- to
50-grain bullets functioned the A4’s action. With IMR-4198 it was a single-shot rifle. That said, the groups it delivered were just fine with a seven group average of 1.02 inches. While on this subject, it is worthy of mentioning that the A4 functioned flawlessly with all other propellants. There was nary a stoppage of any sort.

Varget powder could perhaps be considered “too slow” for light bullet loads in the .223 Remington. For instance, with the 40-grain bullets, velocities didn’t even reach 3,200 fps, whereas other powders had them going past 3,500 fps. Those speeds were from the A4. As said, the Savage was often over 100 fps slower. Still Varget turned in some very tight groups here and there. Also the charge of 26.5 grains of Varget pretty much filled the cases and was slightly compressed with all bullet weights. It might be an option, however, for those reloaders not stuck on high velocity and wishing to load large quantities of .223s on progressive type presses. By my experience in this project, you can’t get enough Varget in a .223 case with 40- to 50-grain bullets to cause dangerous pressures. That said, however, you are on your own.

As stated before, this project was my first with Western Powders’ X-Terminator, and all in all it was impressive. I consider it a fine .223 propellant. And as always, H-322 and Reloder 7 have much to offer in .223 Remington reloading regardless whether the loads will be fired in an auto-loader or a bolt action.

When this project was finished, the total average for 42 groups fired from the Rock River A4 was exactly 1.00 inch, and for the Savage Model 11F it was 1.28 inches. However, those averages include the disappointing results achieved with the 45-grain bullets. Take those 12 groups out of each rifle’s totals (30 groups now averaged), and the averages come down to .90 inch for the A4 and 1.12 inches for the Savage.

In the process of firing these hundreds of rounds through both rifles, I’ve come to accept some new things in my varmint rifle thinking. First off, those new bullets with the pretty plastic noses are great. They were tremendously destructive on small varmints on my varmint hunting trip to Oregon, and now from this paper target shooting, it is obvious they shine in the accuracy department too.

Also gained from this project is some deep respect for the ac-curacy potential of a modern- day autoloading rifle. Twenty-five years back when I gave up varmint shooting, I honestly never thought they could be viable long-range varminters. They are, although I still don’t like the   way they spread my empty brass hither and yon. The first time in Oregon there were often opportunities for quick repeat shots, since the ground squirrels often clustered together. Upon my return with the Rock River A4 Varmint rifle, I’ll find out if indeed a fast second shot is an asset.