Made another all-day range trip today, shot 8 rifles, 45 Colt Carbine, 444 Marlin, 243 Thumbhole Ultra Varmint, 204 Ruger Handi, 270 Ultracomp, 280Imp Ultra, CVA Optima Elite 7mm-08 and the 375 H&H Encore. Found a good load for all of em cept the Encore, the recoil got to me, so I quit shooting it!!
The 45 Colt Carbine surprised me with some pretty darn good accuracy and velocity, the 250gr Speer Gold Dot and a max load of Lil’gun gave me a nice 1¾” 100yd 3-shot group at 1917fps, using a 1-3x20 Weaver V3 scope. I was gonna just shoot it at 50yds, but once I got all the rifles on paper on the short range, I just moved to the 100yd range. Couldn’t use the iron sights very well with my eyes, although they’d work fine for closer work, but I wanted to test the rifle, not my eyes!!! I had a bit of a problem with the extractor, it’s too tall on the left side, it takes a fair amount of force to remove each spent case as it drags a nice scratch in the brass. Other than that, it shot very well considering the low power scope, the X-hair completely covered the red diamond target, so picking a precise aim point was tough.
EDIT: Please note that my load is ½gr over max using Hodgdon data, but my COL is longer at 1.673" which is .010" off the lands and .073" longer than recommended COL. I used the 250gr XTP data which starts at 23.5gr with a max of 25.5gr. I loaded and shot to 26.5gr with normal looking primers, but accuracy was best with 26gr.
Next up was the 444 Marlin Ultra, that I put together with checkered camo lam stock and a Bushnell Legend 2-7x32 scope, it shot even better than the 45 Colt, but to be expected with the higher power scope. With a mid level load of H4198 and the 265gr Hornady FP at 2164fps, got a nice one hole clover leaf!! I was told by H&R that it did well with factory ammo and that I’d be able to do better, they were right!!
The thumbhole 243 Ultra Varmint didn’t like any of my factory ammo except the Rem 80gr PSP, as soon as I got to the 100yd range, the first 2 rounds were right at .250” center to center, the third round opened up to 1” and was far left, off the target I was aiming at with one round on the target next to it, velocity was 3252fps. That was an out of the box 3 shot group, I did nothing to this rife cept clean it, no bore lapping, it’s bone stock!! And the thumbhole stock is sweet to shoot!! I tried Federal Fusion 95gr, 100gr Power-Shoks and 85gr Gameking BTSP, it didn’t like em, at least not yet, they all shot about 2”-2½” groups.
I worked up a fairly decent load for the 204 Ruger using Mitchell’s favorite of 40gr Vmax and BL-C2, near max got me a 5/8” group at 3583fps, I had a few more loads to shoot, but ran out of time.
I got a couple good loads for the 280 Improve Ultra, one is a bit better than the other, but the bigger group is faster!! This load was with Rl22 and the 140gr TSX, 60.5gr at 3078fps got me a ¾” group, 62.5gr opened up to and inch and an 1/8 at 3177fps. Last time I had some vertical stringing, I added a piece of refrigerator magnet to the forend which seems to have eliminated most of the stringing.
The270 Ultracomp barrel that I modified with the underlug improvement is shooting very well with the 150gr Nosler partition and IMR 4350 at 2584fps, got 2 shots touching and then flinched the 3rd out when a fella next to me shot his braked AR, I was trying to time my shots tween his, then he changed his shot tempo!!
That was another one that I didn’t get to finish all the loads for it, so that one also will be continued.
Tim
