This summer I bought an Encore frame at Cabelas in Sidney, NE but wasn't sure about caliber but was looking for a something to shoot varmints with. I was leaning toward an Eabco barrel in 243Win with a 1 turn in 12" twist rate but the price and four month wait kept me looking. I was also interested in 22/250Rem but TC only makes that in a 24" standard barrel so I ruled that out. I was looking around in Sportsman's Warehouse in Loveland, CO. and saw a Pro Hunter 28" barrel in 204Ruger that piqued my interest and took it home with me along with the fixins for " rolling my own". I made up some loads with Hornady V-Max 40 grainers and H4895 powder and found an accurate load but every time I took it to the range to test repeatable accuracy I found I had to tweak the load up or down 1/10 grain of powder. I was getting frustrated but went ahead and bought a bi-pod for it as the walnut forearm is getting marked up from shooting of my tri-pod front rest. Voila! The load shoots better than ever with the bi-pod. I was getting pressure points from putting the rest in slightly different positions on the fore-stock and that was causing the variation in accuracy deviations, as I guess it messed with barrel harmonics. Shot it yesterday off the bi-pod front and sand bags rear and after final tuning of the scope/POI I put three shots through the same hole at 100 yds. And a 20 cal makes a pretty small hole. I am ready now to load up a bunch of ammo and go to the prairie dog towns and shoot some of them critters right in the eye. I just had to do a little bragging about my small bore. I like this rifle so well that evenually I will probably have to find another barrel to play with for it.
