Accurate Varmint Loads - Berger Bullets

AccurateVarmint LoadsFine Tuning HandloadsBy John HavilandHitting a prairie dog across the plains or a coyote the moment before it disappears over afar ridge requires good handloads as muchas good marksmanship. Accurate handloadsstart at the loading bench with case preparation, powder and bullet selection, cartridge assembly and shooting – to select the best load for a given rifle.Case PreparationHandloaders are a finicky bunch and tend to fixate on trivial matters, particularly case preparation. Fastidious advice suggests that cases with uniform primer pockets and flash holes provide the best accuracy. No doubt,that’s true; however, today’s brass is very uniform in dimension. A batch of.243 Winchester cases trued up with a Redding flash hole deburring tool anda Redding primer pocket uniformer tool showed the Winchester brand caseswere very consistent to begin with. The flash hole tool is designed to removeinternal burrs that might obstruct primer flame. Two turns of the tool’s cutter head removed a miniscule amount of brass from around the .243 flashholes. The primer pocket tool cuts primer pockets to a uniform depth squarewith the case head. Again, two turns of the tool’s cutter barely scraped thebottom of the pockets to bring them to correct depth. These two accuracysteps fall under the heading of “it doesn’t hurt anything, so go ahead if itmakes you feel meticulous.”Cases do vary somewhat in neck wall thickness, and turning them to auniform diameter is time well spent. Most of the batch of .243 cases variedonly .0015 inch in neck wall thickness, with a few up to .004 inch. Some lotsof 7mm and .30-caliber magnum cases I’ve measured varied .005 inch. Turning those necks to a consistent thickness helps seat bullets straighter in thecase necks and with the center of the bore.28RIFLE’S VARMINT 2012

A handloader who has done all his homeworkcan provide very accurate cartridges for mostvarmint rifles. Trying new powders might helpvarmint rifle accuracy. This .243 Winchestergroup was shot with Hornady 75-grain V-MAXbullets and SUPERFORMANCE powder.2012 RIFLE’S VARMINT29

AccurateVarmint LoadsWhen turning necks, peel off only the thick side. Removing more brass than that will thin the necks toomuch, and a sizing die will fail to reduce the necksenough to tightly hold a bullet. Necks should be cutcompletely around their circumference only to fit a custom chamber.Trimming cases to the correct length is a necessity.Too long a neck creates the hazard of the case mouthjamming in the throat and pinching the bullet whenthe cartridge is fired. This can cause pressures to gothrough the roof, and perhaps parts of your rifle. Neckstrimmed to the same length also provide a more evenbullet release.How the burr of brass on the case mouth, left fromtrimming, is removed is one factor in building an accurate load. The curl of brass on the outside must becompletely removed or the case will sit crookedly inthe chamber, and that’s not good. The lip of brass onthe inside of the mouth must also be cut off. This bevelcut should be the same all around the inside of the rimand straight with the mouth. This angle allows a bullet base to easily enter the case mouth, reducing theforce required to seat bullets, both of which contributeto straight bullet seating. An RCBS Trim Pro 3-Way Cutter, installed on a case trimmer, trims case necks, deburrs the outside and chamfers the inside of the mouthsin one step.A little experiment was conducted to determine ifconditioning primer pockets and flash holes and turning necks is worth the work. I loaded 10 plain .243 Winchester cases with 38.0 grains of Vihtavuori N140 andA chamfer on the inside of the casemouth allows a bullet to seat with lessforce and straightly in the case neck.Seating depth can influence accuracy. Finding a sweet spot– how far short a bullet should be from the rifling – oftenrequires experimentation.Sierra 70-grain HPBT Match bullets. The same loadwent in 10 other cases with primer pockets and flashholes worked over and necks cut to a uniform thickness. The plain cases shot five-shot groups of .25 inchand .61 inch at 100 yards from a Cooper Firearms Model22. The prepared cases shot five-shot groups of .69 and.82 inch. There was really no difference in accuracy between plain and meticulously prepared cases.Case SizingHandloaders have three case sizing options: fulllength, partial and neck sizing. Cases pushed fully into asizing die have their body narrowed in diameter, shoulder setback and neck completely sized. This generousamount of sizing produces accurate ammunition and isbest when cartridges will be fired in more than one rifle.However, shoulder setback is often excessive with fulllength sizing. An old 7mm Remington Magnum sizingdie I have sets shoulders back .017 inch. That much siz-When turning necks, more thinning thannecessary might remove too much brassand ruin the case. The bright spot on theneck of the case at right shows wherethe thick side of the neck was removed.It is pictured with an unaltered case.Turning primer pockets and flash holes on cases removedvery little brass, and John’s testing revealed that it’s notnecessary.30RIFLE’S VARMINT 2012riflemagazine.com

AccurateVarmint Loadsing and stretching resulted in casessplitting in front of the belt after firing three times.Partial sizing reduces shouldersetback and slightly sizes the casebody. To partially size a case, set afull-length sizing die a turn or twofrom contacting the press’s shellholder. The exact setting dependson how much shoulder setback isdesired. I bump shoulders back onfired cases .002 inch, measured witha Hornady L-N-L Headspace Gauge.That limited sizing provides a glovefit of a cartridge in the chamberwhile assuring positive chamberingand long case life.Sizing that reduces only neck diameter provides the tightest fit ofthe case with the chamber and bullet with the bore. However, necksized brass springs back less eachtime it is fired. If a neck-sized casehas expanded to the point any extrapressure on the bolt handle is required to chamber the cartridge,tension is placed on the receiver,and the bullet from that cartridge isguaranteed to fly wide. After beingfired three times or so, neck-sizedcases require partial sizing so theyfreely enter the chamber.Powder and BulletSelectionA varmint rifle should shoot respectable groups with any suitablepowder. Perhaps one propellantproduces groups that are not quiteas tight as those shot with anotherpowder, but those groups shouldstill be reasonably tight and showno signs of stringing. If they’re not,the rifle’s receiver or barrel is mostlikely improperly bedded.Five different powders weretried when I was searching for anaccurate load with Nosler 70-grainBallistic Tips to shoot in my Cooper Model 22 .243 Winchester. Thepowders were picked on the suggestions of various handloadingmanuals. Five-shot groups variedfrom .35 inch with VV-N160 to .73inch with Big Game. Velocities fromall five powders ranged from 3,300to 3,450 fps. Big Game provided thehighest velocity at 3,450 fps, with anextreme velocity spread of 53 fpsfor five shots. VV-N160 was closebehind with a velocity of 3,340 fpsand a very low extreme spread of 13fps. So I had the enviable problemof deciding among several powders.The charge weights of all fivepowders nearly filled a .243 case, sowhen the Nosler bullet was seated,it nearly or slightly compressed thepowders. That kept the powder columns locked in position to providea more even burn to reduce velocity spread. Say I loaded my .243 withBerger 88-grain Match bullets and apowder that produced an averagevelocity of 3,200 fps with an extreme velocity spread of 80 fps. At200 yards the vertical dispersion ofbullets would be only .3 inch at thehigh and low velocities, but the vertical spread will have grown to 3.0inches at 500 yards. By choosing apowder like VV-N160 that achievesThe top group was fired with Hornady95-grain SST bullets seated in .243Winchester cases just short of contacting the rifling in a Cooper Arms Model22. The bottom group was shot withthe same bullets seated to a shortercartridge overall length. Deeper seating produced better results.32RIFLE’S VARMINT 2012Consistent neck wall thickness caninfluence accuracy, though most caseshave uniform neck walls.a low velocity spread, the verticalscatter is next to nothing, and handloads are that much more precise.Some bullet brands, styles andcalibers are potentially more accurate than others, but to condemnany bullet on the market as inaccurate is way off the mark. Finding anaccurate bullet for a specific riflemay require shooting several different weights and styles.Cartridge ConstructionBullets seated to the correctdepth and sitting straightly in acase offer the biggest gains in accuracy. After experimenting with various bullet seating depths in a .223Remington, .22-250 Remington and.243 Winchester, I found there wasa sweet spot where accuracy wasbest with specific bullets in thoseparticular rifles. The only way to determine that agreeable spot is to testit. All rifles have different amountsof wear in the leade, or beginning ofthe rifling, and their chambers arecut with reamers of slightly differentdimensions. Cartridges that fit andshoot accurately in one .223 mightwell shoot poorly or even jam thebullet into the rifling of another .223.I shot the three rifles with bulletsseated at various depths to determine what cartridge overall loadedlength (OAL) shot the best in therifles. The Cooper Model 22 .22-250Remington has a long and wornleade, so OAL is 2.576 inches forSierra 55-grain BlitzKings to touchthe beginning of the rifling. Thatlength is more than .2 inch longerthan the 2.350-inch maximum OALfor the .22-250. As the accompanyriflemagazine.com