Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Hornady 55 SP

I bought 1000 of these a while back. Haven’t gotten the accuracy I was hoping for yet.

Been working on loads for 2 different ARs and a Tikka Lite. All 3 rifles have been easy to find a < MOA group with a variety of bullets and weights.

Best 5 shot groups from each rifle with the 55 SP Horndays (w/cannelure) have been between 1.5 and 2 MOA.

Anyone having these shoot as well as Sierras, Vmaxs, NBTs, etc?

I like the price and hear they do well on game, but I’d like to get a little better accuracy out of them.

I get about 3/4 MOA with them and the 55 gr. Speer sp's over H4895 out of my 1/9 Savage .

I guess they are capable then!

My best from them have been with IMR 4895 in the Tikka.

55 SGKs, Vmaxes and NBTs will go .5” from that rifle with several powders.

My Savage will do .5" with 53 gr. V-Max's but I don't use them much anymore because the 55 speer and hornady sp's are good enough to meet my needs and do it cheaper.

I used to buy them in bulk from Midsouth for about $42/500, but it appears those days are over. They were mostly used in plinking ammo in my son's ARs. They were accurate with a variety of powders. Have used them in our .22-250s as well. No issues and plenty accurate.

Try TAC if you can find it.

I've shot well over 40,000 of these if not a lot more... all in bolt action rifles...But I've really never experienced grouping as poor as 1.5 to 2 inch groups.

your problems are either the rifles, their bedding, or the powders you've chosen...

its not the bullet....its plenty of good for sage rats out to 200 to 300 yds....

I've shot over 500 to 600 of them in an afternoon, many a time....

I still use them in several rifles. Always a good bullet for me.

Either the Hornady or Sierra 55 grain softpoints shoot very well for me over 27 grains of Varget.

Can’t remember the exact charge, but Hogdon’s max of h-335 under those bullets will run just over/under an inch for 5 out of my AR.
Might shoot even better if I tried “load development”.
Pretty rough on coyotes punched through the shoulders too.

26 grain Varget did 1.8” (10 rounds) through a 14.7” Colt barrel. Best group through it the 55 SPs.

Worked up to max with Tac with the Tikka and it was right at 1.6” for ten rounds.

Not terrible for me by any means, if the TAC loads do decent in the ARs I’ll load the lot and be done with it.

Reason for these bullets, was to find a cheaper bullet than these I’ve been shooting, across multiple rifles.
(Midsouth 77s)

May just need to find the right load or you may have picked up a bad, lot of bullets. Perhaps someone else can make them shoot in their rifle. Perhaps you want to send them down the road. Some of AR shooters seem satisfied with 4 MOA.

for a good shooting and effective 55 grain bullet that is cheaper.. take a look at the Speer Line Up in 22 cal.

They offer the 50 and 55 SP in bulk packaging of 1000 bullets, along with their 52 grain HP bullet and their 50 grain TNT varmint bullet. I go thru 3 to 4 of these each varmint season out here. They all shoot real well..... the 50 and 55 grain SPs are effective on deer from a 223, 222 ( even) and a 22.250.

Since the late 70s, one of my cousins has used the 22.250 exclusively on deer since his wife shot a deer at 250 yds with one out the kitchen window, where he was taking her family's brothers out hunting, and they didn't have any luck seeing any.
He has an orchard permit each year, so he takes 20 to 25 deer a year and has since the 70s when he bought the property he lives on over on the West Virginia side of the state line. Beef tastes funny to his sons, as they grew up on venison and pork.
Which have been taken with that 22.250 since the mid to late 70s. He quit handloading and just has used Remington 55 grain Corelokt ammo since back then... and a few boxes of Federal here or there if they were sold for cheaper.

No, they have been a MOA bullet or slightly more in my experience. They are better than ball (55gr fmj) but there is no mystery or magic in their accuracy.

The Hornady bulk 55 grain soft point isn’t going to be match accurate. It’s a blasting bullet. I use them for jackrabbit loads. They work for a walk in the sage jump shooting jacks. Well at least until most of them died. If it shoots 1.5. I would call it a day.

There's a thread in the AR's and Tactical forum
from about a year ago with much informative
posts regarding this

Can't remember exactly. "Magic Bullet " or
something similar ?
It was worth reading ( to me)

Thanks for the replies.

I’ve shot a couple hundred of these so far, seem to be an excellent bullet, especially for the price.

Ended up with several pounds of CFE-223, that I don’t really need. Loaded up a box full at 27 grains with the 55 SPs, in mixed, range pickup brass. Shot well in the Colt and PSA (1.75 MOAish) and better in the Tikka (1.5 MOAish). Loading the rest and will order a few k more.

Will likely do more load work in the Tikka, in some good brass to see what happens, but I’m more than pleased with the above load for me all around bulk loading.

Maybe a bad run of that particular bullet? Maybe try a single box of 100 and compare?
Good luck,
Rick

With 1x fired R-P brass, 26 grains of Tac and cci 450s I get solid Moa groups with those bullets.

I never got them to shoot as well as the tipped varmint bullets or match bullets but they are at least an MOA bullet.

They kill great too.

I've shot thousands of them thru bolt actions, with a load of 12.5 or 13 grains of Blue Dot.

Running between 2550 to 2650 fps MV. In about any of my 223s, they average a decent 1/2 MOA.
Out here, for those east coast guys, imagine shooting between 250 to 600 rounds in an afternoon.

So Blue Dot, give me over 550 rounds per pound of powder. Single shooting them also, it can shoot a rifle say two to three shots every 2 minutes or so.. and the barrel NEVER heats up enough for me to have to let it cool to regain accuracy.

If you are an AR type guy, Blue Dot won't cycle your bolt in one... BUT, if you put a spring in it meant for an AR 9, it will cycle your bolt all day long. Learned from John Noveske, whom I knew personally as he lived here locally and ran into him at the range all the time, and been to his home many times. That is what he use to do with his personal ARs when he went high volume shooting of sage rats. Got the load from me and I got them from the Calhoon Web site and just worked up loads in a lot of calibers.

SteveRedd reminded me of this, as he worked it out also, like Noveske did.

Some Shot gun powders and some powder that were used for cast bullet shooting, can be amazingly accurate and work fine with Jacketed bullets. Even on barrels 'shot out' on rifles with high mileage on the barrel.