I picked up a Rem 700 varmint in 223 last fall. Put some decent glass on it, and upgraded the stock. I've settled on a good load with 53gr Vmaxs, but I wanted to push this rifle with a mushrooming round. Last week, I worked up some ammo using heavy sierra 65 gr. gamekings. No big deal, right, unless you've looked at the 65's closely. Sierra suggests a 1:10" barrel to stabilize this longer hunting bullet, and my rem is the bull barrel varmint with a 1:12" barrel. It isn't supposed to shoot these very well, but I decided to see for myself. The pics below show the results. Using upper end load data from sierra and hodgdon, I found that my rifle shot the longer 65's pretty well, with just initial test loads. The velocities were very close to what was expected on the upper end of the charge spectrum, and the bullets stabilized, hitting nose first at 100 yards. The groups were just a smidgen over MOA, with one group a little under MOA. All in all, I think as long as these loads are repeatable (I'm going to try to refine them a little to see if I can tighten them up a bit), they will do well with hogs and deer in short range situations.

B: 25.7 gr Varget. Avg 3033, sd 16
C: 26.3 gr Varget. Avg 3096, sd 20
D: 25.0 gr H4895. Avg 3164, sd 5
E: 25.5 gr H4895. Avg 3246, sd 8



Also tried some 63gr sierra semipoints. These are blunt end flat-base varmint pills, and they also shot well on the first round of testing.

X: 25.0 gr H4895. Avg 3153, sd11
Y: 26.0 gr Varget. Avg 3074, sd 20



The Rifle:

Very nice but you know that thing won’t kill a deer. Will probably just bounce right off it. 😁

I'm thinking that if naysayers see '223' and 'deer' matched together positively in a lot of posts, they'll begin to believe. Much in the same way they currently believe the negative hype.