22 caliber-sub sonic??

[HEAD0001]

Anybody casting and shooting a sub sonic load in the 223 Remington?? I am ordering a new Encore barrel in 223 Remington(have not decided on twist yet). I am going to put a suppressor on this barrel. I am looking for a good sub sonic load to shoot ground hog's with out to 100 yards. I can shoot a regular load for longer distances.

I am thinking a cast bullet would give the best performance on ground hog's at sub sonic speed. Any opinions?? Thanks, Tom.

[Ricochet]

The guys I know who shoot subsonic .223 and .308 loads through suppressed black rifles (which are a ton of fun to shoot, BTW) are doing so using jacketed bullets. The guy who loads them affects a great air of mystery, says it took him months to develop the loads, they use pistol powders, and then goes on about the immense dangers of this, as it could blow the gun up if you use too much! Says he saw a .300 Win Mag blown up on The Outdoor Channel that had 83 grains of Bullseye or some similarly preposterous amount in it. But it should be no problem to find a load that will work using one of the fast burning flake powders. I'd start with about 3-5 grains of Red Dot.

Don't expect to work the action automatically.

[Ricochet]

BTW, you could always use a .22 LR barrel and avoid the load development. :mrgreen:

[Scrounger]

BTW, you could always use a .22 LR barrel and avoid the load development. :mrgreen:

Ricochet, that is just too sensible; you know the guys here like to keep re-inventing the wheel...

[Larry Gibson]

With .223 barrel, 24", 1-14" twist with suppressor I used 225438 over 2.2 gr Bullsey for 1053 fps. Also 225415 over same load for 1031 fps (1055 fps "cracked") out of 1-12" twist 22" barrel.

Larry Gibson

[35remington]

"I am thinking a cast bullet would give the best performance on ground hog's at sub sonic speed. Any opinions?? Thanks, Tom."

Actually, the .22 cast bullet will work better on groundhogs the faster you push it. At subsonic velocities, you'd better go for head shots only, as you will find that the cast .22 bullet of wheelweights or harder does not expand at all. A body shot will let most of them get down the hole.

Look at some of Beagle's posts at the castpics site on this forum. He has a lot of info on low velocity .223.

[NVScouter]

Ricochet, that is just too sensible; you know the guys here like to keep re-inventing the wheel...


However subsconic is only relative to speed. A 40gr cast at subsconic is same/same as a .22LR.

BUT

If you push a 64gr bullet at the same speed you get a big boost in killing power! I shoot some subsconic loads in .30cal and the heavier the better for on target kills!

[JIMinPHX]

You are going to want to use the heaviest boolit possible to get good downrange performance. That means that you are going to want to have a fast twist in the barrel. 1:9 or 1:7 is probably best for that application.

Fast pistol powders will give the best performance out of suppressed barrels as they tend to produce the boolit's velocity in the barrel quickly with a minimum of total gas expansion. Slow powders usually require bigger cans from the math that I've seen.

[JIMinPHX]

Also, I second Ricochet’s idea about a .22 rimfire. You can buy a cartridge converter that will adapt a .22LR to fire in a gun that is chambered for .223. You can also buy 60-grain sub-sonic .22LR ammo from Aguila for a few dollars per box. I think that it was about $3.50/50 the last time that I saw it. That stuff carries flat & penetrates a whole lot better than the 40 grain stuff does. Unfortunately, it keyholes badly at 20 feet if you have a barrel with a standard twist for a .22LR. It likes fast twists.

[JIMinPHX]

The smaller case capacity of the .22 rimfire will produce the needed pressure/velocity with a smaller total gas expansion also.

[JIMinPHX]

This brings me to a question that I've had for quite some time. Does anybody know where I can get a barrel for a Ruger 10/22 with a 1:9 twist?

[HEAD0001]

So you guy's do not think a pure lead bullet will not expand at sub sonic speed??

Ground Hog hunting is my favorite thing to do. I need a quite rifle because I am a handicapped hunter, and getting set up is difficult for me. So when I get set up in one spot I have to stay there for the whole hunt. I hunt a lot of barn yard's. Barn yard's yield shots in length from 25-250 yards, and are normally close to houses. This is why I am building the Encore barrel with ther suppressor. If I can keep the noise down then I can hunt some better places, and it would be easier for me to set up, and I think I can get more ground hog's if I can drop the noise level.

Carrying a 22LR is a great idea. The problem is I would have to then carry two guns.

So I may possibly be trying to reinvent the wheel, but I am really just trying to makes things easier, and kill more Ground Hog's. I got 93 last year with three coyotes(dumb one's) thrown in. Tom.

[Larry Gibson]

Don't know about ground hogs but I do know about rock chucks (they chuck rocks instead of wood!). I have killed numerous of them with the suppressed 225415s cast of pure lead around the irrigation ditches outside of Redmond/Bend Oregon. The land owner wanted a few erradicated "quietly" because of close neighbors. A friend told him to call me and I found the "work" interesting. He told a couple fellow farmers about me who gave me more "work". I think the longest shot I tried was on a bhuda chuck at around 200 yards (I'd paced off several spots and made range card for each "hide" so that was my guestimate). The next year I switched to a .22 Hornet with the suppressor on it and used the old standard Hornet load of a 40 gr jacketed bullet over 11.5 gr H4227 (2625 fps out of my #3 Ruger. The farmers paid no attention to the ballistic crack, neither did the neighbors and the chucks didn't live to tell about it.

Larry Gibson

[HEAD0001]

Larry I went to the Lyman web site and looked at the bullet you recommended. Thanks. I was not sure if I would need to gas check the bullet??

Did you ever shoot this bullet along with jacketed bullets at the same time?? I know that is a NO_NO, but I was thinking that at such a low velocity there would not be any leading.

I do have a 22 Hornet, but I was really hoping to be able to get 250-300 yards from this rig.

I am assuming Rock chuck's would be harder than wood chuck's??

Which Lube?? Thanks Again, Tom.

[JIMinPHX]

Carrying a 22LR is a great idea. The problem is I would have to then carry two guns.




I was talking about using a cartridge converter so that you could fore the .22LR ammo in your .223.

1 gun, two different types of ammo at your fingertips.

[HEAD0001]

Jim I have never heard of or seen one of the things you are talking about. Do you know who makes them??? Thanks, Tom.

[Scrounger]

Jim I have never heard of or seen one of the things you are talking about. Do you know who makes them??? Thanks, Tom.

http://www.mcace.com/

[Leftoverdj]

I'm with JIMinPHNX. Much as I like casting and reloading, there is no way on earth I would reload to duplicate the performance of a readily available inexpensive rimfire load.

[carpetman]

I have shot a bunch of jackrabbits with the 58 grain RCBS around 2000-2200fps velocity. Body shots work great. This is a gas check design but they do as good without a check as with them. You have more range than with a .22 rimfire and the noise is not bad at all. Really no more difficult to cast than larger cals.

[Larry Gibson]

Larry I went to the Lyman web site and looked at the bullet you recommended. Thanks. I was not sure if I would need to gas check the bullet??

Yes I GC'd the bullets as I was using plain lead. I sized .225.

Did you ever shoot this bullet along with jacketed bullets at the same time?? I know that is a NO_NO, but I was thinking that at such a low velocity there would not be any leading.

With some guns I'm not really sure that's a "no-no" I've interchanged cast with jacketed loads in numerous handguns and rifles without any apparent accuracy pr pressure problems. I hae not ran an conclusive tests though.

I do have a 22 Hornet, but I was really hoping to be able to get 250-300 yards from this rig.

It's very easy to load the .223 down to Hornet velocity with 40-45 gr Hornet bullets and faster powders such as 2400/4227, etc. This reduces the amount of hot expanding gas your suppressor has to deal with and reduces the ballistic crack in suppressed rifles, mach 2 is quieter than mach 3 in all my rather subjective tests.

I am assuming Rock chuck's would be harder than wood chuck's??

Only harder in the sence that they are usuall a little smaller than their wood chuck cousin.

Which Lube?? Thanks Again, Tom.

Javelina

Larry

[andrew375]

Try 2 -4 gr. of any of the fast pistol powders. I got around 600 fps with 2gr. Bullseye and the NEI .224-71-gc.

If you get Precision Shooting mag. I refer you to the article by Bill Calfee in which he extols the virtues of Eley "sluggers". In reality these are heavy (30gr.) air gun pellets and I just happen to have bought a tin several years ago for experimenting with primer powered loads. This was not successful due to the fowling left by the primer and I lost interest. Anyway, reading the article reminded me I had them and last night I tried them with 2 gr. of VV320. They were almost silent. At 25 yards I had a horizontal spread of around a quarter inch but vertical dispersion was around one and a half inches, which is probably due to differences in neck tension; although all the cases were f/l resized and all from the same lot sometimes the pellet was held quite snug and sometimes they almost fell through into the case. But there is plenty of promise and my next step is to adjust the collet die to squeeze the case necks down to hold the pellets more securely and consistently.

[drinks]

This brings me to a question that I've had for quite some time. Does anybody know where I can get a barrel for a Ruger 10/22 with a 1:9 twist?

A friend got one for his 10-22,came from Volkartson{?}, sp., cost an arm and half a leg, but it let him shoot the Aguila SSS in 1", 50 yd groups.
I think it took about 6 months to get it.
I tried the SSS in 4 .22s, Ruger Mark II, I could get 2" groups from a rest, at 25yds, actually about as good as I can do with any ammo, old Mossburg gave 3" groups at 25 yds with some keyholing, a Winchester 180, I think it is, did 2 1/2" 25 yd groups with some keyholing and my old reliable, 1940's made Winchester 67 gave 1" groups at 50 yds, but they hit 5" to the right and 1" higher than the regular 40gr HS ammo.
You might luck into a shooter, but there seems to be a lot of differences in different guns.

[35remington]

"So you guy's do not think a pure lead bullet will not expand at sub sonic speed??"

No, on body shots they won't, especially ones that whiz through the chest cavity. You'll find killing power of a subsonic .22 caliber cast bullet to be sorely lacking on body shots, no matter how heavy the bullet is.

If you can get sufficient accuracy to make head shots a certainty to the longest range you'll shoot, I'd say it would be a good idea to use subsonics on woodchucks. That's tough to do with most subsonic loads

Truthfully, though, you'll find that higher velocities not only generally produce better accuracy, but more killing power as well.

Shoot a few and you'll find that out soon enough.