40 - Grain Bullets In .224 Centerfires
John Barsness
When shooting small rodents like prairie dogs and ground squirrels the 40-grain plastic-tips provide the fl attest trajectory and most “lift” in smaller .224 centerfi res out to 400 yards.
E
ver since the smokeless-powders revolution got serious in the early 20th century, most varmint
shooters have leaned primarily on .22 centerfi res from the 22 Hornet to 220 Swift. Over the past decade I’ve come to the conclusion that 40-grain bullets are the best weight in the smaller .224s, and a very useful choice in the larger rounds. This isn’t exactly standard thinking, but some other varmint shooters have come to similar conclusions. To understand the standard thinking, we have to go
back a ways. In the early days of smokeless .22 centerfi res, almost all were loaded with 45-grain to 50-grain bullets, often fairly blunt-nosed, probably because of imperfections in early jacketed bullets. The shorter a bullet for its weight, the easier it is to stabilize, even if the bullet’s not perfectly balanced (the reason Ned Roberts found round-nosed bul- lets most accurate in his famous 257, and the reason that fi ne cartridge was handicapped by round-nosed factory loads for so many years). This also is partly why early .22 centerfi res had relatively
gentle rifl ing twists. The 22 Hornet had a standard twist of one turn in 16 inches, while the 220 Swift’s was 1:14, which Remington copied when making the 22-250 a factory round in 1965. Even a slightly imbalanced bullet will often shoot fairly well if not spun too rapidly. It was after World War II that .224 bullet weights started
edging up. It became common to load 55-grain bullets in larger .22 cartridges, and sometimes even 60-65 grain bul- lets, though the latter were often somewhat blunt because of slower rifl ing twists. It wasn’t until fairly recently that bullets much heavier than 60 grains appeared in .224, mostly because
Page 24 Winter 2012
Even ground squirrels like this Columbian are wider than the difference in 400-yard wind drift between 40-grain and 55-grain Ballistic Tips shot from a 223 Remington.
of faster-twist barrels used in service-rifl e target shooting with the 5.56 NATO/223 Remington. Twists as fast as one turn in 6½" are now used to stabilize .224 bullets as heavy as 90 grains, and many factory 223s now come with 1:9 twists. Heavier bullets with long, sleek shapes cut through the
atmosphere better than light, blunt bullets, reducing wind drift over longer ranges – but because of lower velocity they don’t shoot as fl at over conventional ranges, the reason most varmint hunters stayed with lighter .224 bullets. In the 1990s, however, “eye safe” laser rangefi nders for the civilian market put accurate fi eld ranging into the hands of hunters, and many varmint hunters started using heavier .224 bullets for longer- range shooting, even for small varmints like prairie dogs. At the same time, lighter varmint bullets were becom-
ing sleeker, thanks to the plastic tip revolution, increasing both ballistic coeffi cient and explosive expansion. They also became better balanced, because of precision manufacturing. This meant that lighter bullets shot accurately even in rifl ing twists that, according to older theory, were way too fast. It turned out that the big problem wasn’t rifl ing twist but the older bullets. Today it’s common for 40-grain .224 bullets to shoot extremely well even in 1:9 twists. While there’s no doubt that heavy .224 bullets are far
superior for long-range target shooting, the needs of varmint hunters aren’t always the same as for paper punchers. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s call “long range” anything more than 400 yards. That may not fi t the defi nition of many long-range shooters, but we’re talking about hitting most of the varmints shot at, not setting a personal distance record for a prairie dog shot with the 22-250.
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