223 Remington, load for 40 gr bullet.

[deadeyedyck]

I have a Ruger 77II and would like to load 40 gr bullets. Does anyone have an accurate load they would like to share? Extreme velocity is not the goal, my longest shot would be 150 yards.

 

[R Flowers]

Well, for lots of years I used what Hodgdon recommends as a great prairie dog load in the .223 Remington. That being a 40 grain bullet loaded over 28 grains of H 335. This load was very accurate in my Remington 700 and I killed about a jillion prairie dogs, ground squirrels, jack rabbits, and coyotes with it.

Only problem was after I got to really checking this load with the chronograph I found that it was pretty darned temperature sensitive. The same box of shells would often give over 100 fps faster speeds as the day warmed up, sometimes more than that.

I tried some other powders and settled on N 133 for use with 40 grain bullets. I shoot 26.5 grains of N 133 behind a 40 BT and get good groups at darned near 3700 fps. My buddy's rifle with the max load of 27 grains (according to the latest Nosler manual) gets 3800 fps!

I does not sound like you are interested in these kinds of speeds, but the starting load in the Nosler manual was the most accurate load they tested with that powder and it is listed at 3596 fps.

The .223 is a fun little cartridge.

 

[deadeyedyck]

Thanks for the load, the N-133 starter will be my first try, any special primer for either load.

 

[LoneStar]

It is usually best to use the primer which was used to develpp the data, in this case the Remington 7 1/2.

 

[R Flowers]

Lonestar is right, start with the Remington 7 1/2 and go from there. That is what Nosler used and what I prefer in all my small cased cartridges.

Having said that, my buddy did a bunch of testing with his .223 Remington and got about the worst groups with Remington 7 1/2 primers. His gun prefers Federal primers, it seems.

Just try the Remingtons and if you do not get the performance you are after you can try changing components.