July 11th 2023How accurate does Varmint Ammo really need to be?Photo by forum member R. Hardy. View Related Accurate shooter Forum Thread. We’re in the middle summer, so many people will head to the Hinterlands on prairie dog Safaris. You may shoot hundreds over the course of a weekend on a good P Dog adventure. You’ll need a lot of ammo. You may not have enough time to load bullets to benchrest standards and you might not have the budget to buy match-grade bullets. You can save time by throwing (rather than weighing) your charges or loading on a progressive presses. This raises the issue of ammo precision — what is “good enough?” Here, a Sierra Bullets expert explains how to load ammo efficiently for varmint hunting.
I load and fire ammunition for a living. In my job at Sierra, I am constantly testing bullet accuracy to meet our production needs. Due to this, I test bullet accuracy for our production needs on a daily bases. I have to maintain a very tight tolerance range to ensure that our customers (you!) receive the most accurate bullets available. Over the years, I have learned many tricks to tune a load, prep brass, and clean barrels in order to keep a firearm shooting. When competing in a sporting event, I use the skills I have acquired and push them to their limits. I also ignore many of these things, except for safety, and simplify the process when the shooting I am doing does not require it. Recently I went on a Prairie Dog Shoot in Wyoming with some friends. The weather was good, as were the targets. We only had to contend with some difficult winds. We had a good time and made a lot of shots on those small rodents. Due to time constraints and the need for accuracy, I made some compromises in the loading process of the.223 Remington and TC Contender rifles. A miss is a miss when shooting at a prairie-dog, but a poorly-placed bullet can hurt your ranking in a match if you are shooting at the X-Ring, for example, at 1000-yards. I can miss a shot or two at a varmint because of the ammunition’s capability, but not my match ammo. For the Wyoming trip, I used a powder measuring device and dumped the charges directly into primed cases which had been sized and primed to full length. I know that the powder measure I used has some variation, but it is not significant enough to warrant weighing each charge. I used a competition seating tool to seat the bullets and checked the OAL of the cartridges occasionally to make sure that nothing had changed. This varmint ammunition, with thrown charge, put TEN shots within ONE inch at a distance of 200 yards. This is half MOA. What’s the point? Absolutely!
The ammo I was planning to take with me to Wyoming produced a shot of under one inch at a distance of 200 yards. [Editor’s Note: That was TEN Shots – see above.] Note: The author Tommy Todd explains that he uses more precise methods when loading ammo to compete in F-Class matches. He uses an arbor press to carefully seat his bullets and weighs each charge. Todd adapts his method to his application. The lesson is to load with the precision required by your discipline. READ the full story HERE.
Similar Posts:Tags: .223 Rem, Prairie Dog, Sierra Bullets, Tommy Todd, varmint hunting, Wyoming Hunting
