Was out shooting sage rats this afternoon..

started out with the 10/22 and a 6 power scope...

out to about 75 yds that gave me " bang-flop".. nothing spectacular...so after 50 shots or so..I put that up...

and got out the 17 HMR... out to about 125 yds.. same results...'bang-flop'.. nothing spectacular again..so I put that up after about 10 shots..

Finally pulled out two different 223s...both shooting 46 grain Win Hollow Points at about 3100 fps... and it still allows you to see your hits within your scopes sight picture...

No bag flops here..when those 46 grain HPs hit them, they will literally explode unless you just graze them... and that still kills them...

after walking out in the field to check out some of the hits with the 22 LR, the 17 HMR and then the 223....no question about it... the 223 is like hitting them with a missle...

hand loading the 223 still is cheaper to shoot than the 17 HMR and still shoots further and flatter...

so I am still trying to warm up to the 17 HMR...accurate yes, but fun? not compared to the 223 with a fast Hollow Point..

I think you have the right answer. You do what I do..take them all, shoot them all, and re-evaluate on the next trip...


I see I'm not the only one who does a BDA on occasion....( Bullet Damage Assessment)...

Ingwe

I'll take out my .17 hmr, .22 mag, and .223 for gits and shiggles with the dirt rats.

The 17 is fun when going for head shots only.
The 22 mag gives the best "thwop!".
The .223 is best for gopher explosions.

Used to shoot a lot of $0 gr NBTs in a .223....


Spectacular.....


Ingwe

50 BT's just erases them..

I tend to use both the .17 HMR and a centerfire. I use the .17 to take the innocent ones, then the centerfire to take the longer ones. Especially with prairie dogs, the centerfire seems to spook nearby dogs underground much quicker.

If you buy .17 HMR's in large batches the price is about 20 cents a shot. It's hard to beat that with a .223 even in reduced loads with the cheapest bulk bullets--and then there's the reloading time, one reason I shoot quite a few .17's each year.

Reloading is a hobby.. so I don't look at as time spent doing a job..

I don't buy 17 HMR in bulk and it is 20 cents a shot locally..

however I do buy bulk bullets from Mid South and Hornady Bulk bullets..

my two powders for 223 volume shooting are Blue Dot and SR 4759..

so the price for the 223 in cheaper.. and the explosive factor is what make it fun..

plus using 10 to 15 grains of powder, it doesn't have a big boom compared to regular 223 loads..

Was out for gophers yesterday. First time I'd used the hmr on 'em. I did appreciate the extra distance afforded over the 22lr. My 7 year old son was with me as well and he really enjoyed it when I shot one at 20 yards in the middle of the dirt track in front of us. I didn't expect that I'd see a gopher fly with the hmr but this little guy hit about 5 feet with parts flying everywhere. My son was thrilled, that's for sure! Of course none of the other kills were that spectacular... but he's not afraid of the report of the 17hmr either. He won't come if I pack a centerfire.

Pretty well sums up my feelings too.
I just don't enjoy reloading as much as I did 30 years ago....
It's OK, but the 17's niche is that after the shot the case goes back to the earth.

I also have an intermediary step between regular long rifle and HMR,
a Winchester 52B loaded with Remington Yellow Jackets.

Bang flop fills at 100 yards or a little more on ground squirrels with
very little noise via the 28" barrel.

Seafire,

So what's your favorite powder charge and bullet combo for reduced loads in the .223?

PM sent answering that question...

Im anxious to try some of Seafire's reduced loads for my .223, especially after read posts like this and the previous posts about reduced loads. I have a extra scope setup for just the occasion. I just need to get the components then i'll be well on my way.

Brett (Mac)

That is my experience and base line armament combo as well, although sometimes a 222 will supplant a 223 and I will often have a really long range rig about for some 'watch this' shootin times with the buds.

The 22 MAgnum has it ALL OVER the 17 RF's for a quick death and "THWOP" music.

Seafire, glad you figured it out.

After your help with blue dot and the 223, the others just are a let down.

In August of 2008 me and my nephew met a rancher that begged us to come and thin out the PD's on his ranch, the following weekend we went to the ranch and WOW thousands and thousands of prairie dogs. we started out with 223's but being 95 degrees you could only get 7 or 8 shots down the barrel before the barrel got too toasty. we switched to the 17HMR's and between us we shot the entire brick (1000 rounds).
The rancher was disappointed that we did not thin them out enough so we drove 35 miles to the nearest town and bought 1200 more rounds at Wally world, by the time it got to be too dark to shoot me and my nephew had shot 2200 rounds of 17HMR.
To me this was the FUNNEST day of PD hunting I have ever had. no way we could have ever put that many rounds through a 223 even with reduced loads, bash the 17HMR if you like but I think I will keep mine just to save the throat erosion in my 223's
B

Boatanchor..

you haven't tried it evidently...

I set up with two 223s, and alternate between them every 15 shots or so.. I can shoot 3 to 4 shots every 2 minutes and shoot that all day long out of one 223 barrel using Blue Dot without having the barrel heat up so much, that I have to stop using it..

having two side by side off the hood of the truck, I can shoot them all day long without stopping except to eat, use the bathroom. etc... right up to the time I have to stop shooting because I have a headache from Scope Squint...

not bashing the 17 HMR... but I just prefer the red mist factors with the 223..

any day you can shoot 2200 rounds in aday at varmints.. regardless of caliber used is a good day..

may I live long enough and have enough target opportunity to wear out every 223 and 17 HMR rifle I have...

may we all have that opportunity! regardless of what we shoot..

preferring one round over another doesn't mean one is bashing the round they are NOT using..

Seafire; Another question for you regarding your Blue Dot loads in a .223..
I figured they wouldn't heat up as bad as "normal" loads...do you feel they also will add to increased barrel life?
It would make sense, and you sound like one of the folks that does enough shooting to have found out...

Ingwe

definitely adds to the barrel life substantially...

also consider the fact that a pound of powder yields 500 shots or more..

I can attest to one rifle that I did trade off, only because I was offered $100.00 more than I paid for it..had 15,000 rounds down the barrel when I let it go..

10,000 of those were Blue Dot loads with 55 grain bullets on them...

the guy who bought it put another 2000 down the tube, and it would still group that could be covered with a dime at 100 yds with 55 grain Ballistic Tip and 25 grains of H 335.

Handloading to me is a necessary evil to -

A) make my shooting cheaper
B? make my loads more accurate fpor a particular rifle.

It is not a hobby to me. Anytime I load more than 40 rounds at a sitting, it becomes mind numbing work to me.

By my reconing the components alone for your .223 Blue dot loads would cost the following per 100 rounds most places

$3.00 per 100 primers (average price these days with either tax or shipping /hazmat)
$4 powder
$10 per 100 bullets
At least another $2 per loading for brass wear per 100 rounds even the cheapest mill surp brass.

Thats' $19 worth of just materials, not including the amortized cost of equipment and time.

17HMR loads(Hornady V maxes) are available online for $20 to $22 per 100 when you buy a 500 round brick shipped to your door.

I would just as soon buy the 17HMR ammo and have fun shooting. So would many folks and that is why the 17HMR still sells very well.

But, as a .22 Hornet lover, I can also see the attraction of the quiet ,cheap to shoot reduced .223 loads. Especially to someone who actually likes reloading lots of ammunition.

I don't, so to each his own..

It's all good.

Seafire;thanks for the reply...thats also about what I figured. Shooting "normal" .223 loads Ive gotten anywhere from about 4500 rounds to 10,000 through a barrel depending on the barrel and the abuse I give it before I start seeing a fall off in performance.
Presently shooting a Hart bbl and trying not to abuse it, got 7000 through it and nary a sign of wear, even in the throat.
But, at the price of barrels and as you mentioned, the price of powder...
Anyway, thanks much for the input..I gotta go find some Blue Dot!!

Ingwe

Jim..I agree with your post as well, handloading used to be a hobby, it is now a chore..
My problem is I like the shooting end too much, and have come up with pretty much the same figures you did for costs, and have batted that argument around with myself, and others....
But the bottom line is I like any of the little guns that go bang, so I settled it by just shooting BOTH!

As you said so cryptically...its all good!

Ingwe

Handloading is a family value at my home.. not a chore...

it keeps me out of the wife's hair...

and she is happy I am busy doing something.. instead of complaining to her about how she is married to the damn TV and it being the center of her social life...

I like being busy.. she loves sitting on her fanny in front of the TV not doing a darn thing...

so see, it is a family value...

If you say so..

I like the HMR a lot. I think of it as a .22 hornet I don't have to reload. And, unlike my centerfires, I'm not that anal about cleaning my HMR thoroughly at the end of the day.

If I'm going out on a Sunday to shoot, I have to come home early enough to get my centerfire clean before I go to bed which can take a couple hours. Gotta get up by 4:30 for work which means being asleep by 8:30, which means being home by 5:30 to get chow and clean gun. Which means leaving the killing fields by about 4:00 or 4:30 just when the fun is starting to pick up.

Or I take the HMR, shoot 'til 7:00, put my foot into the skinny pedal, grab a cheeseburger on my way into town, have it choked down before I get home, throw my day pack and HMR on the floor and roll into bed.

Almost 3 additional hours of shooting. HMR has a purpose!!

Another angle is, if I feel like hiking in, ammo is a lot lighter and I'm not trying to save my brass, so the empties can go down a squirrel hole where they're not an eyesore (might puzzle some archeologist of the far future, but that ain't my problem), the ammo boxes can go in the first unburned slash pile I find so they go up in smoke .. etc. Major convenience factor there.

Finally, I like packing a 2nd rifle. Twice a couple years ago I drove 2 hours to a shooting spot, burned a bunch of ammo, then had a primer pierce and destroyed the trigger. The first time I finished the day leaving the action open, then putting the safety on, only chambering a round when the sights were pretty on-target, and firing by taking the safety off which dropped the firing pin. Not ideal. Interesting, but not ideal. The second time I happened to have a 16-1/4" TC carbine barrel in .32 mag with a Weaver 2.5X disassembled and stowed in my pack. I put that together and shot another 30-odd diggers. Good day. So ... I learned. 2nd rifle is a good plan. There is nothing that sucks worse than having to drive home mid-day with a busted gun and no more shooting. And the HMR fits in a gun rug with 4-5 boxes of ammo really well.

Which is not to say I'm giving up my centerfire any time soon. I love big splat. .204, Swift, 6x.284, etc. But some days small splat will do.

One thing you do that I don't think I'll ever get into is the reduced loads thing. It sounds interesting, but there are too many other things to do first!

Tom

You CLEAN your centerfires??? More than once a YEAR? Wow, dude, life is way too short for such. My 222 and 223's will shoot under a 1/2 inch all spring and summer long, THEN I will spend about 15 minutes with some foul out and Butch's bore shine and a bore snake. A topper of a smidgen of light oil and we are good until the following spring.

lol.. I've got a guy in another thread telling me I'm horribly abusing my rifles for not scrubbing the bore after every 20 shots.

Seafire,
I agree with alot of what you post, and you love to champion the cause "shoot shotgun powder instead of rifle powder for a reduced load............".

But to just put a different spin on things if I want a reduced load for my 223.... I will use my 222 Remington.
If I want to reduce my load further I will use my 221 Fireball.
If I want to reduce my load further I will use a 22 Hornet.
If I want to reduce my load further I will use a 22WMR.
If I have left over Blue Dot I will use it most likely in a shotgun.

My point is if you have a date with the "Prom Queen"(223Remingon) Why dress her up as a "Crack Ho"(22Hornet)and put a bag on her face.
why not just buy a 22 hornet in the first place.
B

Well Boat Anchor, ACTUALLY given the volocity ranges of his Blue dot loads, Seafire is getting Fireball velocities, if I am not mistaken. So since he handloads ,he has no need for a Fireball.

Period.

I don't know of any rifle chambered in .221 Fireball that is not chambered in .223 as well. Fireball brass costs about 40% more than .223 and is harder to find. If you are going to shoot .223 reloads anyway, the only change is the powder, to get the same performance.

But then again ,all this is MOOT since the thread was about reduced .223 loads vs 17HMRs.

BoatAnchor..

I have to admit..

I don't own a 222, or a 22 Hornet or a 221 Fireball...but do own several 22 Mags..

however with all the 223s I have, I have brass that fits them all, yet at the load bench.. I can have a 222, 22 hornet or a 221 Fireball...

I don't do this to get into competition with anyone of what is better...

My use for Blue Dot in the 223, is for high volume shooting.. there is a lot of advantages..

of course if I was only shooting a few rounds in a day at rock chucks or ground hogs.. I wouldn't bother with it at all..

I also develop all of these loads for versatility with ONE cartridge ( and duplicate it with the 22.250 also!)

22 hornet or 218 Bee provide excellent velocity for high volume sage rat shooting... but 223 brass is more plentiful and available.. as are 223 rifles..

Flexibility and economy are my two major factors of working with these loads..

stationary varminters, I run loads with 55 grainers running at 2800 fps..

on a walking varminter in 223, 2400 fps works more than fine..thinner barrel, lower charge takes longer to heat up..etc...

I don't advocate replacing regular 223 loads with these lighter loads... but I advocate the lighter loads can offer versatility to a fire arm...

Please tell me more about this dual chambering concept

He meant, I am sure, that rifles available in 221 can also be purchased in 223. Mostly true I suppose. I load everything I have up to max speeds and go down in chambering or cartridge class as needed which gave me the excuses I needed to buy the wonderful SAKO riihimaki 222 that has now graced my safe for a decade or so and to play with a myriad of 22 MAgnum and 17HMR rifles over that same span. No more 17RF's in my collection, just accurate 22 MAgnums and LR rimfires.

Yeah, definitely. I "never" put a centerfire back in the safe dirty. It may not matter with relatively low performance ... say 3300 fps or less? ... cartridges but when you start running up 4000 and beyond, copper buildup can hammer accuracy, at times it can even initiate bullet jacket failure.

Extreme examples:

My great grandfather had an old Winchester 95 in .30-40 Krag. He got really mad at me 'cause I "ruined" it. It hadn't been cleaned in 40 years and he was sure it wouldn't shoot straight after I cleaned the barrel.

OTOH, I had a .17 Remington TC Contender barrel that shot just under .75 MOA when clean, but between rounds 15 and 17, accuracy fell off a cliff. It suddenly became a 2 to 2.5 MOA rifle.

Each gun is different. If your gun remains accurate enough and you're comfortable with leaving it dirty, I'm not going to tell you not to, but on the other hand, I'm not planning to join you.

I guess I should have put MODEL OF RIFLE .. in the sentence.

And I stand by that.

Shooting sage rats or whistle pigs as I call em, with a 17HMR almost isn't in the same ball park as a 22 centerfire, Hornet included, for terminal results. Good 22 Mag ammo comes closer but still falls short. At least this is my experience. No expert here but have, use, and own, all of the above.
That said, we still shoot far more with a 22LR than all the other's combined

As far as cleaning goes, for the last couple of years I've been using a foam cleaner "wipe out" with excellent results. Just a patch or so after the foam does it's job. Has to be much easier on the bore or so it would seem. I never did like the idea of running a rod back and forth through my rifles bore dozens of times like some seem to do.

700LH: You ARE right about the 17 HMR and 22 centerfires NOT being the same!
Thats obvious.
And comparing a rimfire to a centerfire is NOT practical or useful in terminal results OR in ballistics.
What MANY fail to mention is the CONVENIENCES of the rimfires over the centerfires!
I Hunt Varmints with many Hunters who do NOT reload!
They (and I and many reloaders!) LOVE the 17 HMR.
Compare the costs per round of 17 HMR ammo with factory loaded ammunition for your favorite centerfire Varminter someday - now theres a comparison!
THAT is a more apples to oranges comparison as opposed to the apples to grapefruit comparison of dangerous squib loads in a centerfire vs the safety and convenience of factory loaded 17 HMR ammunition!
I go through MANY thousands of rounds of rimfire ammunition (22 LR, 17 Mach2 and 17 HMR!) in a year and the time and tedium that saves me in not having to handload those MANY thousands of centerfire rounds is WORTH it to me!
In spades.
Plus I Hunt several farms/ranches where centerfire rounds are not allowed for Varminting - rimfire ammunition is perfect for these situations and extending the "fun factor"!
And, I also must "settle" for 22 L.R. ammo for much of my Ground Squirrel Hunting - its still FUN and I learn a lot from the use of this tiny but accurate round.
I had three friends out last week from the west coast - we were Hunting Ground Squirrels, Badgers, Weasels Rabbits and other assorted Varmints.
Along on the Hunt were 12 Rifles (not counting mine!) and they came in calibers including 22 LR, 17 Mach2, 17 HMR, 218 Bee, 204 Ruger and 223 Remington.
90% of the rounds fired on this 6 day Hunt by my friends were 17 HMR rounds!
My friends ended up with a kill count (kept by me on a thumb clicker!) of 2,965 Ground Squirrels, alone!
One of the Hunters had to return to town twice to buy more 17 HMR ammo!
When traveling and the "shootin" gets good - the factory 17 HMR ammo and its availability ADDS to the "fun factor"!
No time or place to reload centerfires need be planned for when use the highly fun, accurate and lethal 17 HMR!
Plus the quiet report of the 17 HMR will NOT put down Colony Varmints any where near the degree that centerfire 223 ammo DOES!
That adds to the "fun factor".
Plus the absolute absence of recoil with the 17 HMR allows the shooter to ascertain the point of impact of his bullets and this adds to the "fun factor" as compared to the relatively significant recoil and muzzle blast of centerfires (including the 223!).
Again, you ARE correct about the 17 HMR NOT being in the same ball park as the 22 centerfires - but it IS in a ball park I would rather be in for much of my Varminting!
By the way we made shots on Varmints this past week with the 17 HMR out to Leica and Zeiss lasered ranges of 240 yards!
DON'T sell the 17 HMR short - its a fantastic cartridge in MANY ways and instances.
And its safer and more convenient than 22 centerfires - is it not?
Long live the 17 rimfires!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy