What I would like to do is load my 17 hornet down to 17 Mach II levels for gopher eradication around my place.
According to Q/L 4 grains of Blue Dot will yield 2138 fps from my 17 Hornet. So I need something that will disintegrate when it hits
anything. My closest neighbor is 300 yards or so and he uses the 17 HMR. I want to play it really safe.
There was a Berger 15 grain but can not find any.
What say you?
The 17 grain V-Max is designed to fragment at HMR velocities and not to ricochet. I haven't seen it as a component bullet. The 20 grain V-Max may not completely fragment at those velocities. But would still be worth testing. Not sure if you would get anywhere contacting Hornaday for the 17 gr. version.
I am going to try some Lehigh Defense Controlled Chaos bullets in the 17 Rem. These were designed for culling near suburban environments. They partially fragment but the base stays in tack so could ricochet. I don't think a gopher would stop these.
The problem is most 17 cal. bullets have jackets that are designed to hold up to mach 4 velocities so are too heavy to completely fragment.
I wonder if the dogtown Midway bullets will do?
You might want to contact crod1972. He has some 17 grain .172 VMAX for sale not too long ago.
And they disappeared quickly.
In my experience the plastic-tips expand more violently than any hollow-point, especially .17 hollow-points, where the hole is really tiny. The two I've used that do the most mayhem are the 20-grain Hornady V-Max and Nosler Tipped Varmageddon, and both expand nicely when started as slow as 2100 fps (an experiment designed to reproduce .17 Mach 2 performance in the .17 Hornet). They would sure work at HMR velocities.
20 or 25 grain Bergers do well i my 17 Ackley Bee. They do not exit a groundhog broadside, but will take the head clean off a squirrel.