Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Predators and Varmints 222 Remington

I am looking at a Remington 700 chambered in 222 Remington. I want the rifle for paper killing and the odd gopher hunt.

Not having any experience with anything smaller then my 257 Roberts (other then my 22lr) can anyone give me some advice on the 222 Remington.

Thank you
Simplyme

I load a 12 twist with 50 grainers and kill stuff.

A relatively mild load at 3K with a cup and core bullet.

The 222 is very forgiving on loading, so pending your barrel twist, almost anything will work.

Buy it.




Travis

Buy it for yourself!

Or buy it and ship it to me!

Quite the sig line.



I'm not sure we can talk sense into this one.

Simplyme: Don't dilly-dally - go buy that Rifle!
Over the decades I have owned at least 12 Rifles in caliber 222 Remington - all have been quite accurate.
I currently shoot 6 Rifles in this caliber and they are all impressively accurate and so much fun to shoot.
It simply dumbfounds me WHY the folks at Remington have foresaken this wonderful, efficient and superbly accurate caliber?
If they keep making dumb choices like that one they will indeed come to ruination sooner, if not later.
I say BUY it and THINK about it later.
Long live the "deuce".
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I believe it to have the 1 to 14 twist. Being a factory rifle. What bullet weight should I be looking at for loading.

Thank you for all the information and helping to spend my money LOL

40's or 50's.




Travis

I'm using cheap Sierra's Blitz's

https://www.sierrabullets.com/store/product.cfm/sn/1340/224-dia-50-gr-Blitz

and they are "head shoot a Bobcat" accurate, so don't be afraid to slum it before you buy more expensive bullets.

Hey,,, he's thinking about buying a classic deuce,,, can't be all that bad.

I shoot Benchmark behind 52gr SMK's in mine.

Figure I can't go wrong $400

I would buy 3 at that price!

Yeah, I'd buy it. There are a lot of really good 50-52 grain and lighter, lightly constructed .224 bullets. One should shoot well and if none do you've got a great donor action.

Tom

I pretty much just sling 40gr Vmax out of mine.

Still love FieldGrades rifle.

So does FieldGrade.

simplyme,

I bedded and floated my BDL .222 out of habit. Other than that it's bone stock and will print very respectable groups with 50 or 55 gr Hornady sp and spx's and 50 gr Winchester sp's. It shot best with Xterminator, but IMR4198 wasn't far behind in that department.

fieldgrade's rifle is pretty uber.

The very best of the 22 centerfires. I've had 4 plus a 222 Rimmed that I currently have. I have one more Charles Daly mini Mauser action in the safe just begging to be a 222.

As others said - get it. One of the most forgiving cartridges to load for. As poob said I would get three at that price.

Thanks guys,,, Even though it's basically the cheapest SPS available I couldn't be happier with the finished product.
The fact that the project didn't cost much more than the average Remchester makes it even sweeter.

I'll never part with it.

"I'll never part with it"............ Not trying to be a smartazz, but how many times have I and others said that about a gun? I hope you can stick to it.

I think he's serious. He doesn't seem to be near the gun slut some of us are....

Yea,,, he obviously doesn't know me.

Perhaps, but you don't seem to be the type that will buy a $500 Remington, invest $850 in a new barrel and stock ad another $300for a scope, in order to turn it into a $400 rifle....

So I did buy the rifle. Now I need to get some loading suggestions. What are your suggestion for powder and bullets.

Your choice of any 50 grain bullet and IMR4198 powder....19.0 grains

40gr Vmax and 25gr of X-Terminator.

I shoot 20 grains of H4198 behind any 50 grain bullet

40gr Varmageddon with 22.5gr LT30 gives 3470fps from my old 721Remington.

222 one of my fav rds for p dogs

The 222 really shines with the 40 grain V-Max bullet and H-335 powder. It is also a nice light rifle that will always shoot well. Then you need the magnum...

I can not under stand a company like Remington not chambering for a cartridge that one of their big name guys was responsible for one of the greatest small cartridges ever. I like the 223 Remington but there is just some thing special about a 222. There is two in my safe now and I had many over the years and from the 340 Savage to the very fine Sako's they were almost a cartridge you had to try to make shoot bad. Just about any powder in the powder measure with in the burn rate for a 222 you could load it with a good bullet and go varmint shooting and never worry about accuracy being bad. If there is a 222 at a gun show people will knock you down to get to it and the rifle company's just sit back and let it pass. I have two in the safe that shoot great and one is nice to carry in the fall seasons and the Remington 788 is a fine ground hog rifle sitting in a fence row and watching for varmints. The Sako was my Dad's and the 788 is a first year rifle with the walnut wood and a Timney trigger added. They both love powder from 4198 up to 4895 and most everything in between. SX and Blitz bulllets are great.

I shot both 222 and 223 all weekend on a really good dog town and both loaded with 40 gr v max..the 222 is much more pleasurable to shoot and gives up nothing really to the 223.. I can make hits just as far with the 222
I need 50 or 55 gr bullets in the 223 to notice a difference..mostly to buck the wind...but neither will hold a candle to the 20 tac...when this barrel is toast it wil become a 20 Vt turbo

I haven't been with out a .222 since the early 70's.. Aside from my old .22-250, it has killed more varmints for me than anything else.. Cheap to shoot, deadly accurate, just a super fun gun.. As Field said, I can 't see why Remington doesn't see the light on this caliber.. It is one of the greatest.. Have an old 700 and a Sako with a custom stock.. Both are deadly accurate. As for twist, the 1-14 has probably killed more varmints than the 1-8 will ever see.. For pure varmint shooting, I don't want anything much heavier than a 55 gr. and 50 grain is even better...

Our old load was 19.5 of 4198 and a 50 grain bullet.. Up or down a half grain could make it shoot a bit better.. Congrats. on the new rifle..

I'm another proponent of the 40 gr. V-max. I use I4198. My .222 is a Tikka heavy barrel.

Recently I bought a Browning White Gold Medallion SS with a 1-8" twist in .223 just to try some heavier bullets. In spite of the fast twist it also shoots those 40 grainers very well.

Jim

A good many years ago, I shot 5 rounds out of my heavy barreled .222 Sako (24" barrel) using 21.8 grains of Vitavhori N-130 behind a 50 grain Sierra "Blitz" bullet sparked by a CCI small rifle primer in Winchester cases into a group measuring .0911 inches (center-to-center).

The overall group measured .3151 inches, measured edge-to-edge with my micrometers, minus .224 inches (the bullet diameter) = .0911 inches. The first 4 bullets when through EXACTLY the same .224" hole in the paper target, but I got so excited that I forgot to shoot between heart beats on the 5th. round and fired just as my heart beat pushing the groups size up to .3151 inches instead of the bullet diameter sized group of .224 inches.

It was a "no wind" day and I had a 24x scope mounted on the Sako. Chronographed muzzle velocity (measured 15 feet from the muzzle) averaged 3199 fps with a standard deviation of +/- 8 fps.

That was the best 5-shot group I ever shot using ANY kind of powder/bullet/primer/cartridge case combination... and I tried about every possible combination there was over the many years of shooting the .222 off the bench.

Max. load back then was 22.1 grains of V.V. N-130... don't know what it is now... but that 21.8 grains of N-130 was one sweet load and the M.V. was very good as well.

I still have that target stapled onto the cardboard target board. It is sitting next to my loading bench... a treasured memento I'll always keep.


Strength & Honor...

Ron T.

Quite awhile back I had the chance to buy a NIB M700ADL in
222 REM but I hesitated... Have a friend who has a late 1960s Winchester M70 in 222 REM and he refuses to sell it.

My first prairie dog hunt was with a 700ADL in 222. Dad bought 55gr Hornady SPs by the bushel for the 22-250s so that is what we shot-now I would probably go lighter. IMR4198 was the powder. Lots of fond memories of that cartridge as it taught me a lot about shooting in the wind. I need to get another one.

Ditto, with a nudge towards the Sierra Blitz, Speer TNT and Horny SX.

Ingwe, have you ever compared H4198? I can never find it on the local shelves, but it's part of the Extreme series so it's got the potential to be a win-win.

40 grain Vmax or 40 grain blitzking. TAC or Benchmark powder- Benchmark being the better of the two.

I have not. Its fairly readily available here, but I started with IMR and it worked so well, I saw no need to experiment. Im even starting to use it in a few .223 loads...its giving me the same performance with almost five grains less that my usual IMR4895.

Five grains doesn't seem like much but on a good day on the killing fields thats $30 bucks saved on that one day. ( well, not really saved...it goes in the gas tank, or buys steak and beer.. )

I have shot both IMR and H4198 and have had equal accuracy from both and equal velocity within half a grain of wiggle.

The H meters better

Ingwe, I'm all about economy, which is why I'm still burning through my supply of 2200 and 2230C from days gone by. Steak and beer is timeless however.

Dude, thanks for the report. I've never handled the H version but knowing it meters better is a definite bonus.