Woodchuck tool

[MarkB_MI]

A few weeks back, I asked for everyone's opinion on the purchase of a Thompson-Center Contender rifle in .17 Mach IV (aka .17 Remington Fireball). I ignored everyone's advice and went ahead and ordered a Contender frame and barrel. I finally got my barrel in last week. Here's my new rifle:

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The 24 inch .17 Fireball barrel was custom made by Match Grade Machine in St. George, Utah. It took a little over 12 weeks for them to deliver it, but I'm happy with the results, as you can see below:

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This is a five-round group I shot at 50 yards (all the distance I have in my backyard range. I'm sure the flyer is me, not the gun.

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The .17 Remington Fireball, introduced a few years ago, is almost identical to one of the earliest .17 caliber wildcats, the .17 Mach IV. As I currently load it, it pushes a .25 grain bullet to around 3700 feet per second. The picture shows, from the top, .30-'06 Springfield, .308 Winchester, .22-250 Remington, .223 Remington, .45 Colt and .17 Remington Fireball

All I need now are some volunteer woodchucks.

 

[RayP(MI)]

Last one I took out was with a .22LR semi-auto.
Caught him in the polebarn. As he made a hasty exit, I clipped him, he did a summersault. Hit him twice more before he hit the ground! Landed and never moved again...

For ambushing, I prefer my NEF .223, for shots of about 50 yards.

 

[TimV]

Hey, Mark--all we can say is what we'd do--it's your money, and it looks like you got a nice rifle to show for it! I think you'll find the .17's require quite a bit more cleaning than "normal" (.22+) calibers, but for the amount you'll probably be shooting it that shouldn't be a hardship. Good luck with finding cooperative woodchucks! Older gent locally uses his .17 Remington on coyotes, and he loves it--minimal noise and recoil, flat trajectory, and minimal pelt damage.

 

[Fawteen]

Nice!

No chucks around here, which I guess is fortunate for my buildings and grounds, unfortunate for my varmint-plinking entertainment.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Tell us about the scope you have on it.

 

[keh]

Scope looks like a Leopold with a 50mm objective lens.

KEH

 

[MarkB_MI]

KEH is close. It's a Leupold 3-9x40 VX-II. I agonized a bit over my scope selection and decided to play it safe with scope that has a known track record. In retrospect, I wish I'd bought something with adjustable focus and maybe a bit more magnification. I had a tough time getting my group size down on my 50 yard range: with the fixed focus parallax was a real problem until I got consistent with my cheek weld.

 

[MarkB_MI]

Tim, the .17 Remington has a bad reputation for fouling and burning out barrels. The .17 Mach IV has a much better reputation in those regards, which is probably why Remington decided to standardize it as the .17 Fireball 36 years after they came out with the .17 Remington and 44 years after the Mach IV was introduced.

So far, I've been cleaning the heck out of it in accordance with the maker's break-in instructions. Fouling doesn't seem too bad, and it seems to be getting better the more I shoot.

 

[TimV]

Yup on all counts, but that teeny-weenie hole can sure plug up in a hurry--what are you using for powder? Don't reload for anything smaller than the .222/.223 myself (though I helped a buddy with his .22 Hornet a few years ago) but I would suspect H4198 would be one decent choice.

 

[MarkB_MI]

Tim, I'm using Hodgdon Benchmark, although 4198 is supposed to be a good choice as well. There is a new powder out, IMR-8208 XBR that is supposed to be fantastic in .17 Fireball, but I couldn't get any locally.

 

[Gun guru]

Hello Mark,

For those pesky rodents see if you can buy the Varmit grenade-- made by Barnes I think.
The Varmit grenade just about vaporizes the rodent. (thats if they are pi$$ing you off by eating your garden)
A friend of mine has the TC .17 cal rifle==super accurate. He was a good shot in the Army, and can hold groups smaller then a golf ball at 100 yards.
I am not that good, I can hold baseball size groups with my AR all day, any day.

 

[Gun guru]

A guy at the O-ville gun range let me shoot his Savage .223 with a 3x14x50 scope on it, you can see a fly on the target at 100 yards. Real nice, this guy holds bullet hole diameters at 100 yards.

I watched him put 5 orange stickers on a 8x11 sheet of paper and the stickers are the size of a quarter. Then he puts the paper 100 yards downrange and easily hits the middle of each orange sticker. I wish I was that good.

 

[TimV]

Funny you should mention IMR-8208 XBR. No experience with it myself either, but a fellow at the range last night (the local rifle range is 1/4 mile from my house, which is handy when I'm working up loads!) was trying it for the first time in his .22-250. So far so good, but the only bullets he had available were 50-gr V-maxes, and I know from past experience with him that his particular rifle is happiest with 55-grainers, so his results weren't as good as he had hoped.

 

[MarkB_MI]

Yes, 8208 is an interesting powder. Double-base extruded, supposed to be very dense. I'd think it is a bit too fast for .22-250, but the Hodgdon site shows load data for it. They're getting very good velocity, but the pressures are close to ridiculous.

 

[MarkB_MI]

Off the bench, any decent factory rifle should be able to shoot less than minute-of-angle groups with handloads. Now the top highpower competitors have to be able to consistently put their rounds in the 10-ring (3 inches at 100 yards) while shooting OFFHAND. That's a whole 'nother problem.

 

[bc]

Nice gun. You missed the dime by a half inch every time. Must shoot to the left. Just aim for the right eye of the woodchuck.

 

[TimV]

Like I say--no personal experience with it, or the .22-250 for that matter--don't happen to own one. A co-worker does, and uses Varget for his with good results. The fellow at the range is an experienced, methodical reloader--I shot a 3-shot group for him myself as he wanted to give his load a second set of "eyes", as it were, and saw no warning signs--hard bolt lift, flattened primers, etc., so I trust he's well within safe pressures, though I don't know how close to max his loads were. His rifle (a lightly tweaked Savage 110) is, from past experience, capable of cloverleaf 3-shot groups at 100 yards, but he was hoping the 8208 would gain him some extra temperature range without group degradation, something the new Hogdon/IMR "extreme" powders are supposed to do.