17 firwball vs 20 vartarg

I have a Model 11 trophy hunter in 223 as a starting point for a potential build. Can't seem to get past deciding which. My current tendency is towards the 20 vartarg. Will a heavy/ varmint baarrel be better than a light/sporter weight barrel. With such a small round, a sporter weight may adequate. Any real life feed back here. The stock on the model 11 can probably NOT be opened up to accept a heavy barrel. So it is a sigificant cost issue. Appreciate real life feed back on this. My intended use will be casual target shooting.

Barrel weight really depends on how you intend to use it.

Personally I've gotten to the point where I feel heavy barrels are dead weight for most everything but a dedicated bench/competition gun or high volume varmint rifle (i.e. prairie dog rifle where you're shooting a lot of rounds in succession due to the plentiful number of targets in a PD town). In the last year or so I've made the move back to 20-23" sporter weight barrels on most of my rifles as it makes the rifle that much more versatile due to the lighter weight and shorter overall length. My rifles still easily shoot sub MOA at the range with most falling in the 0.5-0.6" range @ 100. I just have to remember to limit myself to 5-shot groups and give the barrel a little more time to cool down between groups. Can't recall every having to (or getting to) take 5+ shots at anything in the field so calling that a negative is a misnomer in my opinion.