Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles .17 Remington and Berger Bullets?

OK, I've always used Hornady's but I found a couple boxes of these Bergers for a good price in our beloved Classifieds. I've burned through all my V-Maxes so today I tried to work up a load so I can get back to the gopher wars...

All loads shot pretty decent. Except the last two. They were pushing 3,900ish and the first quick group resulted in only two holes....

The second bad group was 1/2 grain hotter and it resulted in a keyhole. The groups in question are on the bottom left and the group @ 1 o'clock above that. In the pic it also appears that one of the two bullet holes may show the bullet was yawing. If you look at the bottom/center 1" dot you can see a "keyhole" just to the left of it.


I gave Berger a quick call when I got back. Their tech guy said the 1-9" twist and these speeds shouldn't be a problem.

I hate cleaning rifles. I swab this one out every 50 rounds just to get powder fouling down and knock off a bit of the copper build up. Could fouling be the culprit here? She's getting the "Wipe Out" treatment as I type.


Travis

Here is another pic of one of the groups:

Check out the hole on the left.



Travis

As you probably know, 17's can be finicky..I've had best results with 20 or 25 grain V-max's...I started out with berger 25 grain MEF's, and I never did get them to shoot very well.. however I never seen any key holing like that.

The 20gr V-max is my best shooter, CCI BR's and varget.

moly has been great in mine..try it

I read a thread recently where you had bought a 17 mach 2. If you have any extra ammo around for that you could disassemble it and reload those bullets in your .17 Rem right? Wouldn't that be cool? Then you could load the Bergers in the mach 2 cases.

No I'm not serious.

I shoot 20gr V-Max in my M700 with 25.5grs of Varget. The bullets are coated with WS2 (aka Danzac)

One time I had an oblong hole in my target from a 45-70 that was keyholing. Does that help in regard to your original post?

TFF!


Travis

Cleaned her down to the bare metal and this thing was terribly filthy. Wipe-Out is good stuff BTW.

This load is traveling 3,700ish and I got another keyhole. Second group fired with the clean tube:


No other problems with the other six groups fired:


Loaded up four of these at 3,900ish. This is the load that keyholed the two previous times. That's 3 shots at the nine o'clock:



The 3,700fps load gave me no other problems other than the above pic.

Tried calling Berger again but the tech guys had already left for the day.




Travis

I STILL haven't shot my .17 Rem., but I seem to remember a couple of articles in gun mags 10+ years ago that made a point of saying that you needed to clean a .17 very frequently... like every 20 or so rounds. Doubt this helps much, but just maybe...

Try some WS2 on the bullets. Should help with the fouling. I will be trying some Berger in mine soon and will post my results.

The fouling has been elimnated as the issue but thanks. I know I had it cleaned down to the bare metal and I still got a keyhole.

I did try the "non-match" Bergers and they are shooting just as well, same POI, and no keyholes. I'll just be loading all those up for now.

If anything I've discovered (after thoroughly cleaning this tube finally) that the .17 fouling problem is largely a myth IMO. You couldn't get a barrel much more filthy than this one. And it still printed nice groups as seen from the initial picks.


Travis

I gotta pipe in on this one. I have been shooting .17 Rems for 20 years and currently shoot a CZ-527 in .17 rem and have had the barrel cut back to 21". I have been playing with the Berger 30gr lately and have found the best accuracy when keeping them under 3800fps. I settled on Varget ignited by CCI 450 primers. The 25gr V-Max does not seem to care about velocity as it shoots 1/4 MOA at all velocities with all powders tried. That bullet is infallible!

So far the best accuracy I have achieved with the Berger 30gr was with the uncommonly slow powder (for cartridge) of H-414, at the 3600fps mark. These were compressed loads.

I think the Bergers, in my rifle at least, are partial to slow, heavily compressed powder charges that yield slower velocities. BTW, using H-414 and CCI 450 primers, my Standard Deviation came down to 7.0 +/- in the 3600fps range.

Just my findings, YMMV.

Thanks AHF. I've always used the V-Maxes but this rifle definitely likes the Bergers more better. The Hornady's took awhile to find a good load. These Bergers shoot 1" or better with damn near everything I tried.

The head "bulletsmith" at Berger is supposed to give me a call. Hopefully today. Maybe he can explain the keyholes.

The load I'm using is 24gr.'s of IMR 4320/ 25gr. Berger/ and Rem 7 1/2 primers. Gives me 3,900+ fps.


Travis

Deflave: Travis, I am not sure if you have a "culprit" as yet?
I say keep trying loads with the Brger 52's - they are wonderful bullets.
I use them (Bergers) in all three of my 17 Remington Varminters.
The Bergers are accurate and VERY lethal on all manner of Varmints.
I don't shoot them much on Gophers though (to expensive!) as I prefer to use rimfires and thus save the barrel wear on the centerfires along with the "dinero".
Best of luck with your 17 Remington - also this, I have had real good accuracy with the Bergers and H 4895 powder.
Damn the torpedoes - full SPEED ahead!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Just loaded up 150 with the "non-match". They shoot plenty good. I'm sure I could have gotten a bit more speed out of them but I am sick of dragging all my crap to the range. 3,900fps it is!

Berger still hasn't gotten back to me just yet.


Travis

deflave, are you shooting the 25g HP Match? I shot thousands of them through the exact same gun you are shooting?

Also, 50 rounds is a lONG shot string with a 17. It would help you a lot to use a good bronze bristle brush every so often just to "check" that you have got all the carbon fouling out of the barrel.

I shot the barrel out of of 4 17 Rem's on p. dogs and killed quite a few yotes with one when the hides were bringing $55 on a large yote.

Anytime you see a bullet starting to yaw and go into the target sideways, you know you have a copper issue (I'm assuming that you are not shooting a 30g Bullet).

One thing that you can take to the bank is that the Berger bullets copper foul less than Hornady bullets.

We found a great use for Todd Kindler's SPL wax in waxing the bullets on the 17 Rem, it cuts copper fouling and the Standard Deviation on speed is cut to single digits.

For high volume shooting, we went to AA2015 and H322, start at 21g and go up with the 25's. You should hit an accuracy node around 3850 where the bullets are all touching. Shooting substantially less powder increases the number of shots in your string.

On dog towns, we got shot our 17's till the bullets started hitting the truck 30 yards in front of us, usually around 75 shots on factory tubes. When we started shooting the 2015 and the h322, strings were extended to 125 rounds when coating the bullets with wax. It does take about .3-.5g more powder when you use the wax. I think that the wax runs about $12 for enough to coat 5000 bullets...really great stuff.

You stated that you hate cleaning guns, you had better become an expert at it when you own a 17. If by chance you are leaving powder fouling in the barrel, it won't take long before the heat and pressure cooks it in so hard that it WILL NOT come out even with Comet on a new bronze bristle brush....I learned the hard way.

Good luck!

Bergers are a PIA, I won't touch them again.

Thanks for the info Keith. These are in fact the 25gr match bullets, not the 30's. I've been shooting and reloading for the .17 Remington for going on 15 years now and I have never seen this before.

The fouling is not the issue. As written above, the fouling was removed from the tube and it's still keyholing those match bullets. Unless of course the tube is just FUBAR'd. But I doubt it would be shooting these little groups iffin' the barrel was fried.



Travis

Bullets or customer service? These are the first I've ever tried. They shoot great, but I'll be damned if I can get ahold of the guy I'm supposed to speak with at Berger. The CS tech's told me they had no idea.



Travis

Not the company, the bullet.