This .223 Remington load is very good in our Encore. I made it up for my son to shoot prairie dogs with. The source is Nosler #5. I picked it because the Nosler 40 grain is lighter for lower recoil, and has the same BC as the Speer 50 grain TNT. The load has lower velocity than many, but that's what I want. I want something easy to shoot all day for a 12 year old. Ballistics out to 250 yards seem to be perfectly adequate.
Remington cases
26 grains Varget (27 is max)
Rem 7 1/2 BR primers
Nosler 40 grain Ballistic Tip
Average velocity: 3240fps, measured, fired in 26" Encore barrel.
The recoil is light enough so that targets beyond 100 yards stay in the scope, and in the right light, I think the bullet will be visible in flight. This is what I wanted.
I tried 50 grain bullets at about the same velocity and found that the recoil was visibly greater. I'll give the Noslers a try. I'm sure they'll be OK. You should see what they do to a full soda can at 100 yards. Little pieces of aluminum just come fluttering down like confetti. The big pieces have holes made by bullet fragments. Very impressive.
My son is comfortable with this load and the Encore rifle with 26" heavy barrel and "Bantam" youth stock. I wanted him comfortable at the target range with it, and he is. He's shooting well. Scope is a 3-9x Leupold cranked to 9x. I originally bought a Tasco 6-24x varmint scope for this gun, but found it to be too unforgivinig for a kid. The Leupold is much easier for him to acquire a good sight picture with.
Other notes:
1) The Nosler book has a load for the same bullet in .223 at a velocity of over 3800fps! It uses VV N120 powder.
2) The Tasco mil-dot varmint scope, at $80 it's quite a bargain if you get a good one. I put the Tasco on my .270 and it seems fine. The coating isn't all that great, and the light transmission at highest magnification makes me hope for sunny days, but it's a decent scope for the money. I've been shooting it at 18x in the dim light of severly overcast days. It's still usable at those dim lights. 18x gives me a comfortable view. 24x is a bit dim and requires more care for eye-to-scope alignment. Still usable, but 18x is just a sweet spot for me. I don't know about repeatablility for clicks, but ours is not for formal target shooting, so it doesn't matter much. It does seem to hold a zero, but I haven't used it long enough to speak about its reliability.
3) I tried a Caldwell "The Rock" rifle rest. I don't like it. I get horizontal stringing with both our rifles. I don't know why. The shots seem to break correctly and everything looks good, but it really opens up the groups as compared to groups fired with sandbags. This is a surprise because the rest is not cheap and appears to be of good quality, and is steady. I chalk it up to some unfortunate combination of rifle+shooter+rest.
4) The brass is nickle plated. This has an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that it makes it easier for us to keep our ammo separate, as I'm using a 221 fireball and he's using a 223. The colors are different. The disadvantage is that there are often ridges of plating at the case mouth that is difficult to remove with the chamfer tool. It's not a big problem, but it's something to be aware of when chamfering the case mouths. The ridges typically occur outside the case mouth, but occur inside as well.
