It is Soooo true that every gun has its own preference for ammo. The bbl is like a tuning fork and when you get it right, it makes a big difference. With rimfires, we lack the ability to reload and find a load that is just right for our gun. That is a big handicap in my opinion. With my centerfire long range rifles, a good hand load is usually able to tighten a group by half. Example is my 700 Rem 223. It shoots premium varmint factory ammo with nosler or hornady ballistic tips in 0.50" groups at 100yds. It shoots my hand loads using the same bullets in groups that are closer to 0.25" with a best of 0.152" c-c. It typically is able to group 0.50" at 200yds using the same hand loads but is lucky to group under 1" using any factory ammo at the same distance. From what I can tell, the only real difference is my getting the OAL right and the powder charge to be very consistent. I am usually using a hodge podge of mil-spec brass of all different head stamps. I am not a bench rest shooter. I am a varmint shooter and never found much value in buying one brand of unfired brass for my rifles. I do use a full length resizing die and trim every casing to the same OAL. I use a taper crimp as that seemed to get better results for my guns. 22lr match shooters usually test many brands of ammo and once they find one their gun like, they will test many lots of the same ammo to find the one that is best for them.Originally Posted by gsperaz
I have a Savage 93R BRJ in 17HMR. It likes the Hornady 17g BT's and the Federal 17g HP's the best so far. It hates the Winchester 17g ammo. So far the only 20g ammo I could find was also Winchester. It shot these OK but not better than the others. The CCI 20g 17HMR ammo has been impossible to find here in recent months. It is reported to shoot the best in most of the HMR's. Both my HMR and my B-Mag have printed very nice 100yd and 200yd groups from a bench on a not too windy day. The HMR did 0.850" at 100yds and 1.30" at 200yds. The B-mag has done 0.687" at 100yds and 1.250" at 200yds. Typical is closer to 1" at 100 and 1.5-2.0" at 200. Still that is not too shabby for low priced rim fire rifles with cheap scopes on them. If your gun is not able to do that, I would start by checking a few things like:
1.) Is scope mount tight and secure?
2.) Is the bench you are shooting from stable? It is amazing how much better you can shoot from a solid rest and how poorly from a less than solid platform.
3.) Are you using good sand bags and getting the gun bedded in well?
4.) Wind? If there is any, groups will open up.
5.) Is bullet dispersion horizontal or vertical or random? Horizontal is usually due to either technique/trigger pull or wind and vertical is usually due to ammo or the bench or rest is moving. Sometimes a "U" shaped dispersion is due to the bbl contacting the stock somewhere. My B-mag does this sometimes.
6.) Is trigger adjusted to the lightest pull? The Savage trigger is not great. It is OK, but creepy. Better than a lot of modern guns, but not match grade.
7.) Choice of tgt? A good tgt is easier to consistently aim at the exact same way each shot.
8.) What power is your scope and what type of recticle are you using? Is the recticle fine enough to get good precise aiming point every time? My HMR uses a 3-12x scope with a duplex and my B-mag a 6-24 scope with a mil-dot. The better scope/recticle combo on the B-mag makes it consistently more accurate, especially at the longer ranges where the cross hairs can cover the aiming point. The lower powered scope on the HMR makes it the better hunting gun for deep woods where field of view is more important than ultimate precision.
Irish
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