Watching prairie dogs flip up in the air, turn inside out and rain pieces has always brought a smile to my face, especially after nearly breaking my ankle so many times in the pot holes they leave everywhere. We have a nearly endless supply of them here in Wyoming and ranges of well over 250 yards are very common. The 204 Ruger has a muzzle velocity of around 4,000 feet per second [give or take a hundred] - The little bullets are about the same weight as an average .22 round but they are smaller and so much faster than the 1100 feet per second velocity of a .22. If the wind is blowing, this is not your winning combo but it has very little kick and it does not bark too loud.
I originally used H335 and had great luck with accuracy but H335 became very difficult to get so I worked up a load for W748 - I did also get an extra 100 ft/sec over the H335 load for the 40gr bullet.
Here are (7) 5 shot groups
20190928 | 204ruger | 40G horn vmax | W748 | WSM primer | used brass | |||||||
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | powder chg | average | deviation | spread | min | max | ||
1 | 3631 | 3629 | 3658 | 3710 | 3794 | 27.1 | 3684.4 | 62.10507 | 165 | 3629 | 3794 | 1 |
2 | 3874 | 3853 | 27.3 | 3863.5 | 10.5 | 21 | 3853 | 3874 | 2 | |||
3 | 3697 | 3753 | 3663 | 3661 | 3686 | 27.5 | 3692 | 33.41856 | 92 | 3661 | 3753 | 3 |
4 | 3695 | 3730 | 3765 | 3726 | 3717 | 27.7 | 3726.6 | 22.7033 | 70 | 3695 | 3765 | 4 |
5 | 3746 | 3684 | 3828 | 3738 | 3715 | 27.9 | 3742.2 | 48.00167 | 144 | 3684 | 3828 | 5 |
6 | 3698 | 3718 | 3801 | 3771 | 28.1 | 3747 | 41.03048 | 103 | 3698 | 3801 | 6 | |
7 | 3816 | 3837 | 3810 | 3774 | 3862 | 28.3 | 3819.8 | 29.27388 | 88 | 3774 | 3862 | 7 |
Like I was mentioning, the best accuracy is not always the best consistency as shown by the table above and the targets below
I ultimately did a compromise between group 4 and group 5 - this is where both accuracy and consistency was the best. Any little breeze influences this round so there is a bit of guess on the accuracy part but the standard deviation is most acceptable with a charge weight of 27.8gr