80 SMK vs 77SMK range report

[hounddawg]

Last night I was looking through my bullet cabinet and found a bunch of .223 that I had totaly forgotten I had including 250 77 SMKS. I planning to run to the range today to center a scope on another rifle anyway so I loaded up 20 of the 77's last eve and took up some 80 gn SMKs that I had loaded earlier in the week for comparison.

The wind was pretty brisk so I was not expecting any great groups but I zeroed the rifle on a splatter target and proceeded to shoot 10 of the 80's followed by a magazine of the 77's. When I pulled my target I was pretty pleased with the 77's. I was using a old recipe for a 5.56 Wilde chamber and a hard jam on the bullet. The 77 load is too hot to post on a forum so I blanked out the powder charge but it is Varget with both bullets. The 80's are seated just off the lands.

The 77 rounds were thrown and trickled to weight on my beam scale and seated with a Wilson inline seating die with Imperial dry lube. The charges for the 80's were weighed on the Smartweigh and seated with a RCBS seating die. All cases were FL sized with a Redding S bushing die and primers were CCI 400's

Rifle is a Savage 10 action, 16X Clear Ridge scope, Choate tactical composite stock, and a Criterion 1 - 7 SS barrel match chambered

The 80 grain load always gives sub MOA 10 shot groups and have had a couple in the 6's and .5's at 300. bad part is it falls apart after 300 due to a 150 + FPS extreme spread over the chrono so I have been looking for a more velocity stable 600 yard load. The two flyers at 5 oclock on the 80 SMK were most likely caused by me not the ammo or rifle. Next week I plan to load up 50 of the 77's and play with the charge and seating depth and shoot them across the chrono. Hopefully on a calmer day.