WOW

[mjbgalt]

i shot my .204 encore today and WOW. my mouth was hanging open, i know it was  

i am amazed at the accuracy, especially with the 40 grainers. my cousin and i put targets at different distances to see what we could do and at 200 yards without any trouble i could hit a basketball sized target in the center, and he whacked a 20 ounce bottle of water at 130 yards without much effort.

i also shot an animal with it and i was grossed out by the effect lol.
it put a fist-sized hole in it and i was just stunned at the power and the velocity and especially the explosive behavior of the Hornady.

funny thing is that the bottle of water had a neat little hole punched through both sides but the animal came apart like it ate a firecracker.

-Matt

[MickinColo]

Interesting report, how big was the animal? Ground Squirrel, prairie dog, woodchuck, the neighbor’s cow? Inquiring minds want to know?

[Coltdriver]

They are pretty spectacular!

I got my .204 barrel mounted up on my first Encore and took it out for break in shooting last weekend.

Got it on a 50 yard target right away (standard pistol target) by just sighting through the bore, moved it out to 100 yards.  Got that dialed in at about an inch and a half high.  Moved the target out to 200 yards and nailed that with no problem.  Then I moved it out to 300 yards and to my utter amazement I was nailing the target with no huge effort.  I was steadying the rifle on my pick up truck bed but thats all.  It was zeroed at 300 yards.  It only took me 15 rounds to get from the 50 yard target to the 300 yard target.  That is a first for me!  I found a gator aid bottle and two shot shells and mounted them on a piece of wood at 300 yards.  I hit the gator aid bottle at the base and sent everything flying!  

To have a rifle that I can shoot at that distance with no hold over is a new experience for me.

I used the factory Hornady 32 grainers.  I had also loaded some of my own but my 32 grainers were falling about 6 inches low at 300 yards.  I had purposely loaded them short of the loadings I had read of over on 204ruger.com.  There was no sign of excess pressure like a flowed primer or a cratered primer.  I had been warned that the Federal match primers might pierce but that did not happen with mine.  I have picked up some thicker CCI BR4 primers so I can run the load up a bit without worry of piercing the primer.

To shoot a rifle with a cartridge that fast and to have it be so accurate out of the box spells keeper to me.  The only thing I did between rounds was to clean the bore with a single pass of a bore snake.  The second day I shot five in a row a couple of times then made a pass with the bore snake.

Another 50 or so rounds and I will consider it properly broke in.  The second day when I was shooting five in a row I also noted that the barrel was not getting too hot to touch like my .223 does.

[mjbgalt]

animal was a rabbit...acting funny, so i took care of what may have been a sick animal. cant be sure it was sick and its not in season so i didnt wanna brag about it or anything.

impressive, the way it opened up. i believe i hit the spine and thats why it fragmented. couldnt tell if i hit the spine because it just plain wasnt THERE anymore. it opened a hole in the hide that was ridiculous, as if i had shot it from 10 yards with a full choke 12 gauge. insides spilling out, just amazing overkill.

i certainly wont be shooting small game with this in the line of getting meat, because it certainly didnt leave any, and this was a large specimen, maybe five pounds or so.

i am, however, looking forward to someone offering a hollowpoint or non-fragmenting bullet for hunting, rather than varminting.

-Matt

[iiibbb]

animal was a rabbit...acting funny, so i took care of what may have been a sick animal.

[mjbgalt]

not THAT funny, lol.
-Matt

[mjbgalt]

now picture bugs with a softball-sized hole in him

-Matt

[mjbgalt]

something else...i am sure there are guys on here who hunt much more than i do...most of the time when i hunt small game with a rifle i shoot em in the head and i will wait for such a shot. on this rabbit i just put it in the middle of the hairball and pulled the trigger.

when i walked up to it, it was flipping and flopping everywhere. it CANNOT have lived through a hit with a .204 could it? i know you get a lot of nerve activity if you hit the spine or head....but....it almost looked like it was squirming to get away and couldnt...mouth opening and closing, etc....

didnt look "dead" to me until it quivered and stopped moving.

the question i have is, is there any chance it could have been alive the whole time? it seems like when half of it is missing and its got a lot of blood loss...it should be "bang, flop" and thats it, right? i expected at 4,000 fps and a direct body hit at 35 yards would just instantly kill something.

its not something i wanna watch again, if it wasnt just nerves. whew. i have seen squirrels jerk around a little when you hit em in the head...but not like this.

-Matt

[SLAVAGE]

well mj
it seams like the barrel has a problem with it
so the only way i can think of to fix it is box it up along with your dies brass and bullets an ship it on over to me
i will gladly take my time an correct the barrel for you over the next few years
just to show how much of a nice guy i am :0)

dave

[mjbgalt]

youre a great guy, so tell you what, i will trade with you. you send me over three or four hundred of your crispest dollar bills and you can rework this barrel all you want.

otherwise, a 2 inch group at 200 yards is good with me and i suppose i can keep it.

-Matt

[SLAVAGE]

lol  :-D

[MickinColo]

I own a 204 too. A Ruger No. 1B.  So far I’m very happy with it. I’ve fired 40 shots of factory ammo out of it (I haven’t bought factory ammo for any rifle in 30 years) and it works very nicely.