Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles What does 223AI mean?

I recently had my Remington 700 .300 Win Mag rebarreled with a Douglas Premium stainless tube, same caliber. Been working on barrel break in and load development and frankly, I'm no bench shooter. A day at the range working on load development is just one notch above root canal.....but a necessary evil.

Rifle is stainless 700 DBM in a B&C Alaskan II Medalist stock, Douglas Premium barrel at 25" in factory Magnum contour. Seekins 20MOA base and 30mm rings cradling a Nightforce 3.5-15x50 NXS with High Speed turrets and Zero Stop in the new 1,000 Velocity reticle.




So, in my quest to develop a rifle capable of long range use for my upcoming Elk hunt in Wyoming, I've been loading some Berger Hunting VLD bullets. Never used them before, so working with the seating depth has been fun.

Went to the range today with another batch to run...both 185 VLD's and 210 VLD's.

Just starting load workup on the 210's but this one load showed promise at 1.057" with I believe a flyer caused by me ...



I believe I'm going to increase the charge of H-1000 a little more and see where this goes...

I've mainly been using some 185 VLD's I had on hand....figure they would make a decent all around Deer/Elk bullet.

Seating right to the lands and 73 gr of RE-22 showed excellent promise at .682"




However, the load that stole the show is it's big brother with 74 gr of RE-22 seated to the lands(which still fit in the DBM) and put a smile on my face!



I had to measure it twice to make sure I was reading the calipers correctly....the group is .212" center to center....I think that'll work for my purposes.

Now if I can get the 210's to do the same, great, if not, I've got to find some more of those Hunting VLD's in 185 grains...


Think I'm going to go find a Killian's Irish Stout to celebrate!

See ya tomorrow wankers!