What is an "ideal" varmint weight bullet for .244 rem with a 1:12 twist?

[sjpitts]

My dad has a 1950's Remington 722 in .244 Remington. As I am sure some of you know, the .244 Remington was originally sold with a 1:12 twist designed to stabilize lighter weight bullets. It didn't sell very well and eventually Remington pulled it and reintroduced the cartridge as the 6mm Remington with a 1:9 twist.

I have seen lots of threads where people ask "how heavy" of a bullet they can shoot in an older .244 Remington so they can deer hunt with it. But that is not my question. I already have deer rifle, and I want to load for varmints with a lighter bullet and higher velocity. And naturally I want to optimize for accuracy.

So what bullets do you recommend for that?

I was interested in trying the 62 gr. Varmint Grenade from Barnes. But the website actually lists that bullet for a 1:9 twist. However, the load data pdf for the 6mm Remington at the Barnes website says that "The 1:12 twist originally used in the 244 Remington rifles is still suitable for the 62 grain Varmint Grenade". This makes it sound like it might work, but also like it might be less than ideal, which may make sense given that the bullet is relatively long being lead free.

See: https://www.barnesbullets.com/wp-con...-Remington.pdf

Sierra makes Blitzking bullets in 55 gr and 70gr. Those seem like good choices, but maybe 55 gr is too light?

Nosler makes their Ballistic Tip Varmint Bullets in 55 and 70 gr as well.

So again, does anyone have a recommendation?

Thanks

[scatterbrain]

I have a 26 inch barrel on my .244 and I shoot 70 grain thru 85 grain bullets, thinking about trying the new 90 grain Game Changer. When I look at lighter bullets with higher velocity the give back in velocity increase is soon lost at distance. I shoot 500-600 yards typically and found less bullet drop with the heavier bullets and more retained energy, so I don't use anything lighter than 70 grain.

[2ndtimer]

Keep in mind it is the length of the bullet that determines optimal twist rate of the barrel. So look at flat based lighter bullets, like the Sierra 75 gr HP, the Speer 75 gr HP and 70 gr TNT, and the Nosler 70 gr Varmageddon. Avoid the extremely long boat tail bullets and VLD projectiles, along with the mono metal bullets, which are longer for their weight. PM me if you would like to try some Nosler 55 gr soft point SHOTS bullets. They won't stand up to the 9.25" twist rate in my Stevens. 243 Win, but the might be just the ticket in a 1 in 12" twist. (They are really short!)

[joed]

I shoot a lot of 70 gr bullets in my .243, they should shoot well from that rifle. As said a flat base bullet may be your best bet.

[sjpitts]

I have a 26 inch barrel on my .244 and I shoot 70 grain thru 85 grain bullets, thinking about trying the new 90 grain Game Changer. When I look at lighter bullets with higher velocity the give back in velocity increase is soon lost at distance. I shoot 500-600 yards typically and found less bullet drop with the heavier bullets and more retained energy, so I don't use anything lighter than 70 grain.

Scatterbrain-- thanks for the reply. You make a good point about bullet weight. I probably should be focusing on slightly higher bullet weights. I don't know if I would want to go all the way to 85 grain for a dedicated varmint gun, but I certainly don't need to go down to 55 grain. So I will focus on the 70-80 grain bullets. But maybe I won't rule out the 62 grain Barnes bullet completely. Lead free has some appeal given the way things are headed.

And while I have you-- what 70 -80 grain bullets have worked the best for your .244?

[sjpitts]

Keep in mind it is the length of the bullet that determines optimal twist rate of the barrel. So look at flat based lighter bullets, like the Sierra 75 gr HP, the Speer 75 gr HP and 70 gr TNT, and the Nosler 70 gr Varmageddon. Avoid the extremely long boat tail bullets and VLD projectiles, along with the mono metal bullets, which are longer for their weight. PM me if you would like to try some Nosler 55 gr soft point SHOTS bullets. They won't stand up to the 9.25" twist rate in my Stevens. 243 Win, but the might be just the ticket in a 1 in 12" twist. (They are really short!)

I know that I heard that bullet length was a major part of the issue. But is it really that much of an issue when are getting down to 60-80 grain bullets? It doesn't seem like even a boattail would be that long when it is only 70 grains. But I don't really know.

Basically, how long is too long with a 1:12 twist?

Part of the problem is that not everyone publishes their bullet lengths. And I am not sure if things like the ballistic tip really matter when it comes to length.

Some length numbers (some taken from JBM ballistics site)

Barnes 62 gr Varmint Grenade ----- 0.978
Nosler 55 gr Ballistic Tip Varmint ----- 0.787
Nosler 70 gr Ballistic Tip Varmint ----- 0.910
Nosler 80 gr Ballistic Tip Varmint ------0.990
Sierra 60 gr Varminter ------------------0.732
Sierra 70 gr BlitzKing -------------------0.898
Sierra 70 gr MatchKing -----------------0.834
Sierra 75 gr Varminter ------------------0.815
Speer 70 gr TNT-------------------------0.810
Speer 75 gr Varminter------------------ not on jbm's list

One of the reasons why I am a little hesitant on the 62 grain Barnes, because it is listed as being a bit longer -- which again is understandable because it is lead free. That and their website is not clear. But what about the 70 gr Nosler? That is a boattail--- so that explains why it is also a little longer. But is that too long?

Thanks again

[Unclenick]

Sjpitts,

If you could hold the shape of a bullet constant and increase its mass, say, by using a more dense alloy in its core, you would find it is stable at lower spin rates than a same-sized but lighter bullet. This is because angular momentum (rotational momentum) is what creates gyroscopic stiffness. When you elongate a bullet without changing its mass, you give the drag forces trying to overturn it both a longer lever arm from the center of mass and a larger side surface area to act on to the degree the nose is yawing to the side of the trajectory path. Since bullets cone (the tip circling the trajectory axis through the bullet center of mass) as they recover from initial yaw, the mass of the tip also makes a centrifugal contribution to trying to cause the bullet tumble in the early part of its flight. That influence also increases with the tip's distance from the center of mass. The overturning drag works out to be proportional to the square of the sine of the angle of yaw the bullet exhibits. When you combine that with the coning centrifugal effect, it gives bullet length inverse exponential significance to stability, while mass has only directly proportional significance to it. Above Mach 1, increasing velocity produces an increase in stability by getting further from the peak value of the drag coefficient. It is the least significant contributor.

While they are not perfect, there are a couple of different kinds of stability estimators available online. I'll mention the easiest one to use, which is at the JBM ballistics site at the bottom of this page. Obviously, you need to know the length of the bullet you will use (the site has a long list of them called Lengths on the side menu). You need your expected or measured muzzle velocity as well as the bullet's weight and diameter. You need the pitch of your rifling and the altitude and atmospheric conditions you will shoot in (or you can just leave those at the default which is for the ICAO standard sea-level atmosphere).

The result from that calculator is an estimate of a dimensionless number called the gyroscopic stability factor (sometimes symbolized as s or GS). All you really need to know about that is that bullets that have a GS of above 1.4 tend to shoot well. Sierra used to give a range of 1.4 to 1.7 for best target accuracy, and 1.3 to 3.0 for "hunting accuracy", but a lot of modern bullets are so well made and have such good mass symmetry that they will keep shooting very accurately with numbers in the mid-2's and occasionally higher.

[scatterbrain]

I have a penciled note on my desk that says to keep it under 1.1 inches for a 1:12 twist barrel. I was wanting a heavier bullet at the time. Now, that isn't referenced to any scientific site but it has not caused me any problems in shooting my .244 for over 60 years.

[TX Nimrod]

The OP doesn’t mention the range for his shots. If ~500 yards or less, go with the 55s. Out to at least that range they give up little to the 70s or even 95s, they actually shoot the same or flatter and the wind drift is virtually the same. He will never notice the small differences. No need for esoteric stability calculations or voodoo either.

I had wonderful accuracy and terminal results with the Nosler BTip in my .243 and 6mm, yes both have tighter twists than the OP’s but they will be stable in his rifle. How accurately they will shoot in his rifle....who knows?


.

[2ndtimer]

Originally Posted by sjpitts

I know that I heard that bullet length was a major part of the issue. But is it really that much of an issue when are getting down to 60-80 grain bullets? It doesn't seem like even a boattail would be that long when it is only 70 grains. But I don't really know.

Basically, how long is too long with a 1:12 twist?

Part of the problem is that not everyone publishes their bullet lengths. And I am not sure if things like the ballistic tip really matter when it comes to length.

Some length numbers (some taken from JBM ballistics site)

Barnes 62 gr Varmint Grenade ----- 0.978
Nosler 55 gr Ballistic Tip Varmint ----- 0.787
Nosler 70 gr Ballistic Tip Varmint ----- 0.910
Nosler 80 gr Ballistic Tip Varmint ------0.990
Sierra 60 gr Varminter ------------------0.732
Sierra 70 gr BlitzKing -------------------0.898
Sierra 70 gr MatchKing -----------------0.834
Sierra 75 gr Varminter ------------------0.815
Speer 70 gr TNT-------------------------0.810
Speer 75 gr Varminter------------------ not on jbm's list

One of the reasons why I am a little hesitant on the 62 grain Barnes, because it is listed as being a bit longer -- which again is understandable because it is lead free. That and their website is not clear. But what about the 70 gr Nosler? That is a boattail--- so that explains why it is also a little longer. But is that too long?

Thanks again

I have tried most of the lighter weight bullets in a few .243 Winchesters over the years, and have always been a "bang for the buck" guy. For that reason, I like the Speer 70 gr TNT. Accurate, explosive on varmints and affordable.
https://www.grafs.com/retail/catalog...roductId/17375
13 cents per bullet + $10 shipping and handling is a great deal, if your rifle likes them. My Steven's loves them with Ramshot Big Game, and I believe they would work well with W-760/H-414 or one of the 4350's or IMR-4064. I never had as good of results with Varget, while many others have.

[scatterbrain]

Light weight bullets, my note had 87 grain V_Max as acceptable, are not a problem. The longer bullets such as 95, 100, and 110 grains may not stablize in the 1:12.
As an example, at the range this spring a guy was trying to zero in his Ruger .223 rifle at 25 yards and he was all over the paper. Being helpful I tried my hand at a 50 yard target and was stunned at what I saw. I had about a 4" group, but all the bullets hit the target in side profile, perfect side profile. I then asked him how old his gun was and what weight bullets he was trying, 1980 on the rifle and 68 grain on the bullet. 1:12 twist.

[44 AMP]

My dad has a 1950's Remington 722 in .244 Remington. As I am sure some of you know, the .244 Remington was originally sold with a 1:12 twist designed to stabilize lighter weight bullets. It didn't sell very well and eventually Remington pulled it and reintroduced the cartridge as the 6mm Remington with a 1:9 twist.

The first step is to verify what twist rate your rifle has. It could be either one. Remington changed the .244 twist to the faster rate after the first couple years production. They didn't "re-invent" the .244 into the 6mm Remington until about a half dozen years after that. SO, you need to know if you have a 1:12 twist .244 or if you have a 1:9 (or10) twist .244.
(according to one of my old Speer manuals, Rem used 1:12, then 1:10" twist in the .244 and 1:9 in 6mm Rem)


The next step is two fold. The first part is to recognize that people writing saying "1: X twist won't stabilize X gr grain bullets" are not stating the rest of the story which is "as well as I want"...

The second part is seeing if that "won't stabilize" statement actually applies to your rifle. It MAY not. The only way to know is to shoot your rifle with those bullets and see how it performs. Every barrel is different, and while most will do one thing a few will do something different and the only way to know for sure is by shooting.

Here's an example of the principle, though with a different rifle and cartridge. I have a Win M70 Varmint in .22-250. It has the standard 1:14" twist and does quite well with 55gr and lighter bullets. Back in the days before 70,80 and even 90gr .224 bullets existed that "slow" twist was considered "unsuitable" or at best "marginal" for the heaviest common .224 slug, which was the Sierra 63gr semi spitzer.

The "experts" agreed, it would not shoot well in my rifle's twist. I got some as part of a package deal, so I tried them, and the experts were both right, and wrong, in MY rifle.

Right, in that the 63gr didn't shoot AS well as the 55gr, wrong in that it shot well enough to be useful. 55gr would shoot 3/4" groups, 52/53gr match slugs would sometimes do 1/2" groups. The 63gr delivered consistent 2" groups. Not good enough for small varmint work, but good enough to be minute of deer. SO, not suited for a varmint gun, but not entirely useless, either.

The point here is that even if 4 out of 5 dentists agree, you need to shoot the bullets in question from YOUR gun to see what they actually do.

For varmints in your .244 (either twist) I would test everything 90gr and under to see how they perform in your gun.

The main reason the .244 never did well, aside from getting to the public a year or so after the .243 Win, was mostly due to some very influential gun writers who at the time were pushing the .243/6mm bore size as the ultimate dual purpose caliber, for varmints and deer. Winchester's .243 did that pretty well. Remington's .244 with the slower twist didn't do both as well. The gun scribes told us, essentially, "brother, you don't want to buy a rifle that won't do both..." And the public listened to them, so that even when the .244 twist was changed to do both well, few people bought them.

So, find out which twist your rifle has, and go from there.

[sjpitts]

While they are not perfect, there are a couple of different kinds of stability estimators available online. I'll mention the easiest one to use, which is at the JBM ballistics site at the bottom of this page. Obviously, you need to know the length of the bullet you will use (the site has a long list of them called Lengths on the side menu). You need your expected or measured muzzle velocity as well as the bullet's weight and diameter. You need the pitch of your rifling and the altitude and atmospheric conditions you will shoot in (or you can just leave those at the default which is for the ICAO standard sea-level atmosphere).

The result from that calculator is an estimate of a dimensionless number called the gyroscopic stability factor (sometimes symbolized as s or GS). All you really need to know about that is that bullets that have a GS of above 1.4 tend to shoot well. Sierra used to give a range of 1.4 to 1.7 for best target accuracy, and 1.3 to 3.0 for "hunting accuracy", but a lot of modern bullets are so well made and have such good mass symmetry that they will keep shooting very accurately with numbers in the mid-2's and occasionally higher.

Unclenick,

Thanks for the advice. My Dad says he wants to try Hornady bullets so I looked up the specs for their 65 and 75 grain V-Max bullets. The JBM website lists their length .840 and .940 respectively. It didn't list their tip length, but based on the other Hornady bullets listed there I guess a tip length of .142.

I don't know for sure what velocity I will get, but checking the Hornady book they had velocities of 3400-3600 for 65 gr and 3200-3400 for 75 gr.

So plugging those numbers into JBM for a 1:12 twist barrel I get:

65 gr @ 3500 f/s = stability of 1.877

75 gr @ 3300 f/s = stability 1.490

Based on that calculation and what you said it seems like either bullet likely work well, right?

Thanks again, that was kind of fun.

[sjpitts]

The first step is to verify what twist rate your rifle has. It could be either one. Remington changed the .244 twist to the faster rate after the first couple years production. They didn't "re-invent" the .244 into the 6mm Remington until about a half dozen years after that. SO, you need to know if you have a 1:12 twist .244 or if you have a 1:9 (or10) twist .244.
(according to one of my old Speer manuals, Rem used 1:12, then 1:10" twist in the .244 and 1:9 in 6mm Rem)

44 AMP--

I understand there are a few Remington 722's out there that might have a faster twist, but I called Remington and they verified that this gun was made in '58 and has a 1:12 twist.

[sjpitts]

The OP doesn’t mention the range for his shots. If ~500 yards or less, go with the 55s. Out to at least that range they give up little to the 70s or even 95s, they actually shoot the same or flatter and the wind drift is virtually the same. He will never notice the small differences. No need for esoteric stability calculations or voodoo either.

TX Nimrod-- this is a good point. And truth be told, any of these bullets will probably shoot more accurately than I can shoot them.

[Unclenick]

Sjpitts,

From the results you got and assuming the numbers are right, yes it would work. Litz lists the lengths as 0.840 and 0.942, which is pretty close. He doesn't give the tip measurement separately, and while, if I assume his drawings are to scale, it is slightly longer than you have, rather than put out a questionable number, I would just call Hornady and ask. They will tell you. Unfortunately, those two bullets have not made it onto the Hornady's 4DOF calculator list yet, as it provides the stability factor as "Gyro" in their range tables. You can see it grow with range because spin rate slows more gradually than forward velocity does, making the bullet more stable with range. Losing control of stability normally happens pretty much at the beginning of flight for that reason. There are a few funny exceptions, like the .308 168-grain Sierra MatchKing flying fine out of .308 Win with 10" twist until they get past about 700 yards, where they start to tumble due to overcorrecting for perturbations, causing oscillatory motion that gets out of hand (a dynamic instability). But that is the exception rather than the rule, and I know someone who shot those bullets to 1000 yard out of a cut-down Palma barrel with a 13" twist.

One thing most folks forget is that rifling pitch has a tolerance. Some kinds of rifling machines can miss it by a bit, giving you, say, an 11.5" or a 12.5" twist instead of a 12". You want to measure your actual twist for that reason. This is usually done by pushing a patch or a brush through the bore with a cleaning rod that has a thrust bearing at the handle so the rod turns freely. Some brands have a mark already, but if yours doesn't, you mark it with a pencil at the start and measure how far it goes through the bore when the mark makes one turn. A fixed handle rod will work if you handle it gently enough to be sure it turns freely as it goes through the bore. You may need to do this several times to take an average result, as the resolution of the mark's return to original position isn't very high.