Great day with a new .204

[ajlandis]

Today I finally got a chance to run 50 rounds through a new 12FV-s .204 that has been sitting in the back of the safe for a while. No work done to it, except for an uprgade to a duramax stock. Wearing a 4200 6-24x40. Had three boxes of factory ammo: remington 40 grain accutip-v boat tail, hornady 32 grain v-max and hornady 40 grain v-max.
Two shots had it close enough to start shooting groups.
At 100 yards, I shot a 3-shot group of each ammo. The 40 gr accutip grouped .53", the 32 gr vmax was 1.56" (I think I pulled, but it is what it is) and the 40 gr vmax was .39".
Moved to 200 yards and fired two, 3-shot groups of each load. The rem accutip groups were .60" and .62"; the 32 gr vmax's were 1.58" and 1.61"; the 40 gr vmax's were 1.40" and 1.42".
Came back to 100 yards and shot two more groups of each.
Rem 40's shot .58" and .62" (the .62 was a 5-shot group) for a 3-group average of .576"
Hornady 32's shot .73" and .68" for a 3-group average of .99"
Hornady 40's shot .46" and .61" for a 3-group average of .486"
I let the barrel cool for a while after every third group. Never have cleaned the barrel. If you guys could see my shooting "bench" you'd wonder how the groups turned out as good as they did. Man, I love it when a rifle shoots like this right from the start.

[kkeene]

Good shooting! The 204 Ruger is a fun round.

I know that some people have had luck with 32 gr loads but I have not. If you hand load try 39 gr BlitzKings and work up to a max published load of H4894. Good accuracy and velocity in most guns.

Keith