A number of years ago I bought one of the first Remington Model 7 Predator rifles in 223 that came on the market. It quickly became my favorite coyote and varmint rifle. Right out of the box it shot almost everything well, but a little experimenting showed that it liked 50 grain VMax's. I settled on a load of 27.5 grains of surplus WC846 and the 50 VMax, chronographing around 3375 out of the 22 inch barrel. I have killed coyotes out to 450 yards, and this rifle would be one of the last ones I'd ever part with.
I am down to my last 8 pounds of 846, and needed to load up some more ammo for this rifle. I had a pound of BLC-2 that I'd had for at least 15 years, and knowing the correlation between it and 846, I decided to try some. Hogdon lists 28.0 grains as max, so that's what I loaded. These loads shot exactly to the same POI as did the 27.5 load of 846. There is a little cratering to the primers, no flat ones, and no other signs of too much pressure, but I'm at my max load.
Out of curiosity, I'm just wondering if anyone else has any experience with this powder in the 223, and what their loads are.
Yes. I've burned a good bit of WC846 in 556 Chambers.
My goto is 28.5gr behind a 52gr match bullet lit with either a CCI 450 or S&B small rife primer. It's very accurate in every 5.56 I've tried it in. This is close to the Vietnam era loading for M193 ball rounds. It's a max load. Be sure to work up to this, perhaps backing off a little more than normal to allow for the greater variance between lots of surplus power, but you already knew that.
