Varmageddon Bullets John Barsness
The 40-grain 0.224 proved to be slightly more accurate than 40-grain Ballistic Tips in John’s Ruger No. 1B 22 Hornet, perhaps because of the flat base.
One of the problems with shooting ground squirrels, whether the
big ones called prairie dogs or the smaller ones called sage rats, gophers, etc., is being able to afford lots of ammunition. Most prairie dog shooting is high-volume, the primary reason most of us reload. Oh, we like to fool around with rifles and hand- loads to get them to shoot their best, and certainly accuracy helps when attempt- ing to hit tiny targets at several hundred yards. Most of us, however, handload primarily because it’s the only way we can afford to shoot hundreds or thousands of rounds at small varmints each year. This isn’t to say rimfires won’t work
on small rodents. They will, especially the smaller ground squirrels. If we buy bulk packs of cheaper 22 Long Rifle hollow- points the price is around four cents a shot, but their effective range isn’t much more than 100 yards. We can shoot a 17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire and double that range, but the cost per round goes up to 20 cents, and only if we really shop the sales. Let’s look at the price of handload-
ing, using as examples the 22 Hornet and 223 Remington. Small rifle primers run about three cents a shot in either round. Powder for the Hornet costs about four cents a shot, if we use the near-standard load of 13.0 grains of Hodgdon Li’l Gun with a 40-grain bullet. In the 223 the price of powder per shot doubles, unless we shoot reduced loads of a faster powder; then it’s about the same as shooting a
Page 42 Spring 2013
Hornet. All together the price for primer and powder is 7 to 11 cents per round. Bullets are the big cost. If we shop
carefully we can sometimes get bulk-pack softpoints or hollow-points for 10 cents a bullet, but 12 cents is average. Unfor- tunately, neither softpoints nor hollow- points expand as violently or shoot as flat as plastic-tips, and they’re often not as accurate, either. The trouble with plastic-tipped
varmint bullets was, of course, cost. Even when purchased in 250-bullet boxes, the price is usually at least 15 cents per shot, and often more like 20 cents. A plastic- tipped bullet costing a mere nickel more than a bulk softpoint or hollow-point adds $50 to the cost of a 1,000-round prairie dog shoot, and many of us shoot far more than 1,000 rounds a year. So what would you say to plastic-
tips costing only 12 cents a bullet? I just checked the MidwayUSA website, and found the everyday price for 250-packs of a very accurate 55-grain 224 plastic tip at $28.99, a per-bullet cost of 11.6 cents. The bullet, of course, is Nosler’s new Varma- geddon, and I know they’re very accurate because in the spring of 2012 I shot more prairie dogs with Varmageddons than any other bullet, with six different rifles. They also really expand on dogs. Nosler brought out the first plastic-
tipped varmint bullet, the Ballistic Tip, back in the 1980s, and shooters soon found the new bullet not only shot flatter but
Shawn Finley gives the new AR- 15 Varmageddon rifle a workout. Shawn is Nosler’s national rifle sales manager, but shoots rifles really well too!
expanded more violently than any other varmint bullet then on the market. Both improvements were because of the sharp plastic point, stuck inside a very large hollow-point. The bigger hollow-point allowed the bullet to expand even way out there, while the tip raised ballistic coefficient significantly. The Ballistic Tip completely changed the way many of us looked at traditional rodent rounds. These days, for instance, I usually shoot a 22 Hornet where 25 years ago I would have used a 223, and my 204s and 223s have taken over the slot formerly reserved for a 22-250 or 220 Swift. Other companies soon brought out their own super-accurate, plastic-tipped varmint bullets, and the shooters who used Ballistic Tips, V-Maxes and BlitzKings really liked everything about them – except the price. Eventually Nosler went to work on
that problem too, and the result was the Varmageddon. How did they bring the price down? Obviously gilding metal, lead and little plastic points are all pretty much fixed costs. They fluctuate a little with market forces, but still pretty much cost the same for any manufacturer. Instead, Nosler’s engineering de-
partment found a way to make accurate plastic-tipped bullets much quicker, re- ducing what’s called “machine time,” the other major cost of production. For those shooters wanting to save even a little more money, Nosler makes a hollow-point ver- sion of each Varmageddon. Prices for the
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196