[jbat35]

I don't understand the hostility nor the negativity and insistence that you give in your posts. I have reasons for what I say and ask. If I say I cannot do something, or that I am doing something, then that is my choice and my plan regardless of if you would or not. We are all members of this forum here, and if we made it here most of us have looked into most topics that are large parts of the firearms hobby, enough to know if it is for them. This topic is also solved, I got my gun in a .223 caliber, why keep arguing about my choice? This is my last post, to straighten up some stuff, and then I am done with this thread.

I read your OP a few times, and I read that you currently own a .22 lr and a 12 ga. Most people would add as well that they had some experience with other cartridges at that point, either that they had owned or shot in the past. You still didn't answer the question I asked about how fast it your rifle went from a MOA shooter to a 5 MOA shooter? Most people I know that have a consistent MOA shooting rifle will do something about it when they can't get it to shoot better than 1.5 MOA anymore, let alone shoot it to 5 MOA and then rebarrel.

I have shot guns of many different calibers, and there are very few I have not shot. I haven't shot a .338 lapua, .222 Remington, some of the high power magnums, and .17 hm2 of all the common calibers you would find in your local cabelas/scheels. Doesn't mean though that I know much if anything other than a standard assumption about the flight characteristics or experience based knowledge that the enthusiasts here do. I was open to many, and had no idea what people may say so I stayed open. I assumed that there was no need to mention the .243 as well as the .22-250 as they are common "burnout" calibers when fired often. Once the rifle hit 3 moa, we ran it really hard as a "lets see how hot this sucker can get." Barrel was shot, I had the replacement already, and wanted to see how much temperature had effect on accuracy as we see smoking ar's all the time at the range.

Another thing why rebarrel and then sell? Why didn't you rebarrel to something else if you thought the .243 barrel burnt out too quickly? You could have probably changed it to a .223 for less money than the new Savage you bought. Why spend the cost of a new/used take off barrel, even if you installed it yourself just to sell a rifle? A Savage action is worth between $250 and $400+ depending on features.

Because I didn't need to buy a new barrel, a friend of mine did a conversion and traded it for some work he needed done on his car. A brake job with parts already included for a new barrel, that's not a bad deal at all. And with a fresh barrel it sold for a quite near new price.

Yes you can but you stated you didn't want surplus because you wanted to shoot "well 90% of the time."

Now you are quoting prices of "new" surplus and Hornady SM ammunition. What happened to buying more "expensive" over "cheap" for better groups? I mean if your really that serious about shooting groups why aren't you buying Federal Gold Match? I'm sure the Federal M193 and Hornady SM will shoot well, but it isn't going to be as good as Federal GM ammunition. Besides are you seriously going to lay down $600-800 for 2000 rounds before finding out what your rifle likes?

That was federal premium I was quoting as it is the most expensive of the ammo that my bulk retailer has. If you know where to look, and when people get desperate, you can get great ammo for less than 40% store price.

You said you wanted to shoot around 2K rounds a year, and you shoot nearly every weekend. So for 2K rounds a year you shoot 40 rounds a week on average. It takes me an hour on a single stage press to reload 50 rounds of better quality .223 ammunition than I can buy, about 1.5 hours if I have to polish the cases, 2 hours if I have to trim. The press kit I showed you will allow you to more than double that an hour. So for one hour of work you could shoot for a whole month before you needed to sit at a bench again. Or you could sit for six hours and load a 6 month supply of ammunition, once you finished load development, which from my experience with .223 doesn't take very long 20-50 rounds to find a good varmint load.

When you can reload match grade ammo for less than .40 cents a round, let me know.

Ammunition costs aren't going to get any cheaper nor is the equipment to reload, you would be far better off investing in the equipment now while you money isn't going toward things like rent and utilities, mortgages, or insurance. Trust me the equipment will pay for itself very quickly as you start adding more firearms to your stable. However you can't see past the shooting stage yet, to realize you don't need a $1200-1500 progressive set up.

When prices do go up and gun stores start foreclosing more and more, then I will still be sitting where I am, getting the discount ammo the way I still do. And in that day the powder, primers, brass, bullets, and other consumables in the process will be just as expensive. The presses may even be the cheapest part at that point, as soon anyone can jump in and produce a high quality metal lever and sell it for cheap versus the regulated and taxed components that went up in price most likely because of government pressure/regulation that doesn't apply to 1048 ansi carbon steel forged into a lever.

Your wind isn't anything special nor do you live in the only place that it blows harder than 20 mph, or that it gusts, shifts, and swirls. Like I said learning to read wind and still hitting your target is as much fun as making small groups IMO. Once you learn to read the wind you can usually make an 80% or better hits on target in a dog town, and better percentages on larger targets. I've used my .22 WMR effectively all the way out to 150 yards, using Federal 30 grain TNT ammunition. Don't get me wrong wind is and can be a PITA, but if your going to learn to shoot effectively you're going to have to shoot in the wind and just have to learn how to read it. If I had to wait for a calm day to enjoy shooting I wouldn't shoot.

Your opinion is your opinion, but with this caliber, I will be shooting it to a decent extent. I'm not going to be content with shooting a .223 to just 200 yards all day every day. I will be pushing it a lot. And when your already pushing a caliber to its limits, and already working with the massive amount of wind compensation, I would rather not use a bullet that weights 17 grains. And at my school, it has become common practice for other students to go out with bed sheets and longboards, so think what you want about the amount of wind we have, as today we have around 24 mph. And yes, wind does gust as well as change direction. I have yet to hear of steady stream and direction wind for more than a minute at a time that goes in 1 direction + or - 1 degree and the same tol for its speed.