Tom,
A few more comments, after returning from Canadia:
On purpose, I found an early 700 BDL .17 Remington to find out if the fouling stories were true, as I had started to suspect they were mostly due to the dirty-burning spherical powders of the day. Found a second-year rifle with a barrel that I couldn't even tell had been shot in the bore-scope, and shot it around 120 times without cleaning before groups started to open up. Then treated it with Dyna Bore Coat and it would easily go twice that without cleaning.
I like spherical powders in all the .17's because they meter so accurately and flow so nicely through the tiny neck when cranking out ammo for gopher and PDS shooting. Travis apparently has never tried anything other than 4320 in his rifle, but I found Big Game works great in the round. Ramshot hasn't published any data for it in the .17R but my loads have also worked great in Shrapnel's rifle, both for speed and accuracy.
In the .17 FB TAC shoot great and of course burns cleanly. (As you know it is very similar to a temp-resistant and clean-burning 335.) CFE223 also works well, but I've never had any problems with copper-fouling in the FB either, and mine never fouled at all after installing DBC.
As Huntsman stated, the .17 Hornet is THE gopher round of the .17 centerfires, partly because powder goes such a long way, and will also do for most PD shooting as far as most people can consistently hit 'em. Like the .17R and .17FB it's also really easy to find good powder/bullet combos, in that aspect easier than the .22 Hornet. I've found at least 8 powders that work well in the .17 Hornet, far more than really perk in the .22 Hornet. In my rifle A1680 is probably tops, but others are so close it's not a big deal.
