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Interesting outing this morning with my son and his 20" barrel Howa 22-250. Heading to Oregon tomorrow to do battle with (hopefully) hordes of ground squirrels, and thought we should take it along. (Why he bought a 20" 22-250 with a thin sporter barrel, I will never know, he did get a good deal on it, I guess 
). Anyway, in previous loading efforts, we were disappointed in the velocity out of the short barrel, and accuracy wasn't that impressive either. It seemed my 26" .223 could pretty much match the velocity and had much tighter groups.
So, last night I loaded 5 rounds each TAC, IMR-3031 and IMR-4064 with 50 gr Hornady Z-Max bullets. The TAC loads failed to impress for either velocity or accuracy, but the IMR-4064 produced the smallest group of the batch and averaged 3583 FPS with an Sd of 6. Even more surprising to me was that the book max load with IMR-3031 clocked 3672 FPS out of the short barrel and was acceptably accurate. Since my son likes horsepower, I plan to load that IMR-3031 load for the squirrels. If he can connect, it should produce some pretty good acrobatics!
Of course, the smallest groups were with the good old Hornady 50 gr SX at just under 3000 fps out of both my tired 26" Remington SPS Varmint as well as my Weatherby Vanguard Varmint Special that my son stole from me 7 years ago and has yet to return. It had a mild load of Accurate 2015 that was loaded back in 2013. It also is quite capable of launching pests at reasonable ranges. Fingers crossed for a target rich environment
). Anyway, in previous loading efforts, we were disappointed in the velocity out of the short barrel, and accuracy wasn't that impressive either. It seemed my 26" .223 could pretty much match the velocity and had much tighter groups.So, last night I loaded 5 rounds each TAC, IMR-3031 and IMR-4064 with 50 gr Hornady Z-Max bullets. The TAC loads failed to impress for either velocity or accuracy, but the IMR-4064 produced the smallest group of the batch and averaged 3583 FPS with an Sd of 6. Even more surprising to me was that the book max load with IMR-3031 clocked 3672 FPS out of the short barrel and was acceptably accurate. Since my son likes horsepower, I plan to load that IMR-3031 load for the squirrels. If he can connect, it should produce some pretty good acrobatics!
Of course, the smallest groups were with the good old Hornady 50 gr SX at just under 3000 fps out of both my tired 26" Remington SPS Varmint as well as my Weatherby Vanguard Varmint Special that my son stole from me 7 years ago and has yet to return. It had a mild load of Accurate 2015 that was loaded back in 2013. It also is quite capable of launching pests at reasonable ranges. Fingers crossed for a target rich environment
)
