If our church had a confessional I would be in there a couple of times a year repenting of spending too much money on different bullets. I have three kinds for my 270, 4 for my 221 Fireball, 3 for the 223 Remington, 4 for the 204 ruger, 2 for the 22 hornet, and on and on and on, but only one type for the 17 hornet. It’s new, give me some time for that one. I am always trying something new, always experimenting with new bullet that has just been released or another type that I found on sale for cheap, or because of current laws bullets cannot contain any lead for hunting purposes. Sometimes the experiments ended in success, sometimes not so much. Sometimes the bullets get along with the rifle, sometimes they don’t, and I freely admit that if a certain bullet doesn’t show accuracy potential after a couple of tries I move on to something else and may come back to it at a later date if I don’t like the results of other testing.
Take the 17 hornet that I just got. For whatever reason 17 caliber bullets are hard to come by at the time of this writing, possibly because spring time is varmint time and reloaders are gearing up for spring and summer biodegradable pop up target shooting. With that being the case, Hornady Vmax were all I could find and that’s ok , Hornady makes fantastic bullets. There were plenty of 20 and 25 grainers to be had but I was only interested in the 20 grainers or something lighter.
The 17 hornet came out around 2011 I believe and I drooled over it a bit but never had the money to get one. I was finally able to do that and immediately researched load data and had two powder types and three primer types to start with , but only one bullet.
I did buy some factory ammo to break the barrel in with to save time with load testing and because new brass was scarce at the time. Load testing and new barrels don’t always go together well, and you might just pass on a good, accurate load that wasn’t grouping well because of a new barrel. After breaking it in, I tried some reloads that I had made, and the slower velocity loads shot about an inch and a half group at one hundred yards. I am not a speed demon when it comes to bullet feet per second but the faster the bullets were driven the tighter the groups got but I still wasn’t happy with the grouping, just under an inch at one hundred. What to try next? Try a different primer with the powders I had on hand and change the overall cartridge length. The rifle is a savage model 25 that uses a detachable magazine, so I new I wasn’t going to get much on overall length. If it doesn’t fit in the magazine you can only load one round at a time , and I could live with that but didn’t really want to so other primers gave me more hope.
So going from Remington primers to federal and a slight overall length , again at the higher velocities shrunk the groups to under three quarters inch, making me feel a little better about the cartridge. I’m not done with testing , I still want to try other powders and bullets but this shows you what you can do to wring out a little more accuracy. God bless.
Written by, Rick Tonkin
