For rockchucks to coyotes what do you guys think of the 204?
I have a chance to pick up a Rem 700 ADL for a great price.
This will be solely for varmints and plinking.
Sorry if this has been asked a thousand times.
I owned a 700 ADL in .204. It was awful. Never would stay consistently under about 2.5 MOA. It was impressive when I hit something with it because with that kind of accuracy, hits only came real close while the bullet was still hauling a$$.
I am a .204 fan, though. A couple years after the ADL debacle I decided to give it another try and put together a pacnor barreled 700 I really enjoy. It puts a hurt on little fuzzy things.
Plus: .223 level recoil, .22-250 level trajectory.
Minus: Achieved with light, high BC bullets, so in situations where bullet weight matters, it has less "snot" than either.
Plus: for it's trajectory, it burns less powder so in that sense it runs cheap.
Minus: there are no good, inexpensive .204 bullets like you can find in .22 caliber.
I like mine a lot for small rodents .. ground squirrels and the like. I believe it could be an ideal hide hunting cartridge. However, for a rifle for the sole purpose of turning live coyotes into dead coyotes, I like 6mms and .25s.
I'm of the opinion that 7mms and .30s are not out of line if the country you're calling coyotes in has big cats or bears, too. When you make cheeseburger noises, consider what might come to lunch.
The first time I ever called, something answered .. no idea what it was. I was in a buckthorn patch on the riverward side of a road cut by a little highway, 4:00 am, moon out. All I had was a little squeaker. After a couple squeaks, something cut loose with a gawd-awful low gravelly roar from the other side of the highway where the buckthorn patch continued on up the hill. I don't know what it was, but it sounded like it was 750 pounds with an attitude problem. It was probably some itty bitty thing that was all speaker
but it sounded like it was going to ass-[bleep] me first, then gnaw my corpes later: I wasn't taking chances, I got back in my truck and I LEFT. Y' might say it made an impression on me.
Tom