Woke up at 6am this morning to gusty winds already swirling and knew the varminting would be pretty much out of the question for this day.  Bummer !!!

The HMR was able to get some close range work on a couple unfortunate gophers but that was it.

Not a total loss though.  Was able to fine tune a load in the .223 that achieved better velocity and a lower extreme spread then I had before.  Accuracy was ran at 100 yds.  Results not bad, with the winds.  Best 4 shot group come in at .657"; .269" for the first three.  Stinking flyer.  I'll blame it on the wind.  What the heck    .  Anyway, looking forward to a little accuracy testing when the wind subsides.  The tinkering around payed off, I guess.  Simple primer switch and a hundredth shorter seating depth and presto.  Always wondered what this .223 would do with the action glass bedded into a thumbhole laminated stock and a much needed trigger job.  Probably should find out.

Oh yeah.  Got to fiddle with a fello hunters .340 WbyMag also.  He's getting this thing ready for a trip to Africa later this summer.  Lucky fart.  That 225 gr. Partition at just over 3000 fps should be a safe and dependable load in the heat over there.  Looking forward to hearing about his results when he returns.  Pits about the varminting but it's never a disappointing day when you can get some quality reloading and magnum play-time in    .  Later.  >>  klallen   

Man,your climate must be like our highlands.Wind and more wind.Makes me think someone transplanted siberia.Nice .223 group even with the flyer.I took the 243 in for the offhand and placed third.My son won using a borrowed tikka .223.It was for score and the little blighter hung every shot in the 10 at 50 meters.Then he backed up with 9/10 at 100.Blew all the rest of us away.

How did you find the 340 mag?

Have a good one macca.

Hi MACCA  >>  Sounds like the boy's a natural at the shooting thing.  Congrats to him and your third finish.  That's one thing I've never done is shooting competetively.  Seems like it would be a whole different kind of pressure competing against others for score.  Not sure I'd be any good at it.

The .340 WbyMag wasn't bad at all.  225's at 3000 fps pushed ya, but not overly so.  If this wasn't going to be an African load (designed for the heat over there), I'd imagine it could be safely pushed to levels that were a little more     ...     lively    .  There's a Sako TRG-S .338 Lapua Mag at one of our local stores over here.  Been thinking about getting into the .338 caliber class with that one.  Just don't like the cost of reloading for it.  The .340 WbyMag wouldn't be a bad option either.  .338 based on the full length RUM case would probably be the cheapest way to go of them all.    We'll see.  Chat with you later.  >>  klallen

I'm experimenting with the 60-grain Vmaxes in my 10FP and I'm pretty happy so far. Over 26.2 grains of Varget/WSRs/Win brass I've gotten a couple dang near one-holers, except for mysterious flyers which I think were due to lousy primer seating. Yes, I should know better.

Had one where the first was a flyer, and then four shots in .269. And I had a 1.013 cluster at 300 yards for four shots with another funny flyer that knocked the group out to 1.80. Next batch I'm gonna be a good boy and really pay attention with the primer stroke...I use a Dillon 650, running it a little slower now and tapping the powder slide at the top of the stroke, that really cut back on bridging powder messes and makes the charge consistency pretty good.

This might be the load that finally, FINALLY gets me under an inch at 300.