Who Wants to hit a PD at Half a Mile?

The Shilen-Gritters Long Range .220 Swift

Like a new girlfriend, a new rifle can cause lots of sleepless nights.  Ah, the excitement of what lies ahead.  But sometimes we set expectations too high...and when we do find happiness, we often wonder if maybe we shouldn’t increase expectations.  However, while it is tough to have more than one girlfriend at any one time, we don’t find ourselves limited in the same way with rifles.  Happily, neither law nor morality prevents us from rifle polygamy.

My latest girlfriend is a real beauty.  She started out life as a brunette, wearing a dark barrel - a Remington 700 VS in .220 Swift.  Performance was wonderful from day one – Berger 55 grain moly-coated bullets, Hornady 52 grain hollow points, Nosler 55 grain ballistic tips; it didn’t matter, they all shot in the 3’s and 4’s.  At my favorite long range (700 yards), the Berger combo consistently shot 3 to 4 inch groups.  Good performance, no doubt.  But as the days shortened and the temperature fell, I noticed an alarming trend – bullet trajectory fell right off the table.  Other long-range loads suffered in cold climes, but nothing as severe as this hotshot .22.  And let’s just keep the horrible wind drift a family secret.  Like a beautiful woman who snores, this was a problem that had to be addressed.

If you have read any of my previous writing, you know the culprit – the low ballistic coefficient of any .224 bullet 55 grains and under.  A 55 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip, sleek as it might appear, has a BC of only .267 – about the same as a 110 Speer Spire Point.  While either of these bullets can be launched with lots of initial velocity, they shed it quickly and are very susceptible to wind drift.  Bullet drop is a function of time of flight; time of flight is a function of initial velocity, ballistic coefficient, and air density.  Like anything in life, increasing ballistic coefficient creates a situation of diminishing returns.  For example, suppose you launch at bullet with a BC of .22 at 3000 fps out of a rifle zeroed at 200 yards.  At 700 yards the bullet will strike 188 inches low (that is a little over 15 feet).  It will strike 133 inches low (53 inches less) at 700 yards if we increase the BC .1 to .32.  Increasing the ballistic coefficient another .1 to .42 produces a drop of 113 inches (another 20 inches less) below the point of aim at 700 yards.  A bullet with a ballistic coefficient of .52 drops only 98 inches (only 15 inches).  You get the picture – increasing the BC helps, but the margin of improvement decreases as we increase the BC.

Sounds bad, huh?  Well, every gray cloud has a silver lining.  The BC supplied for any bullet really only applies at standard atmospheric conditions (59° Fahrenheit, barometric pressure of 29.53”, and 78% relative humidity); the proclivity with which it slices through air is really a function of the environment.  As air cools it becomes denser and effectively reduces the ballistic coefficient.  The same thing occurs when the barometric pressure changes.  In other words, cooler and/or denser air degrades the effective ballistic coefficient.  This is very important, because by the nature of diminishing returns for BC improvements, any degradation in BC is going to make a much larger impact on the those bullets that don’t have a high BC to start with; those that start out high loose a lot less.  That is why lighter bullets, with their lower ballistic coefficients, are impacted much more as atmospheric conditions change.

My original Remington 700 VS was very accurate, but given its fitful performance as the weather changed, I decided to move to heavier bullets.  Unlike their larger bore cousins, however, .22 centerfires are made to shoot light bullets.  It is generally understood that the slowest bullet rotation required to achieve gyroscopic stability provides the best accuracy.  In other words, we want a twist fast enough to stabilize the bullet; no more, no less.  Since shorter bullets (which are most often the lightest) do not require as fast a twist to stabilize them, the factories have dutifully obliged us by supplying most .22 centerfires with twists of 1-14 or 1-12.  Trouble is, such a twist will not stabilize heavy .224 bullets (especially 75 grains and higher), and that is what you need to get the BC above .400.  (Note: Barnes X bullets, since they are copper, will have higher BCs than their weight would otherwise indicate.  They will also be longer than lead bullets of the same weight.)  So given the facts, I gritted my teeth and sent a brand new rifle that grouped in the 3’s to Doug Shilen.  I asked him to put on a stainless #5 1/2 contour barrel with a 1-8 twist.

When the UPS woman delivered the long brown box several weeks later, I found a sparkling silver barrel screwed into my action.  Doug even sent back the original barrel.  Inside the box was a note from Doug.  He wrote, “The bedding on this rifle is really bad...we don’t bed rifles, but I would suggest you get it fixed.”

Warren Page, in his famous (and still great) book titled The Accurate Rifle wrote that, “With rifles, as in life, most good and bad things happen in the bed.”  I take a lot of pride in my ability to bed my own rifles, but since this rifle was destined to be my very best ever long-range shooter, I sent it off to Gordy Gritters (1-641-628-3044) for one of his professional bedding jobs.  I must say, his was a lot neater than my jobs.  Gordy also lapped the lugs and added a lighter trigger spring.

I broke in the barrel as best I could, but asking me to be nifty for the first fifty is tough...I think I cleaned after the first ten and, then started shooting 3 shot groups before cleaning.  For load development, I was hell-bent to use only two components: Hodgdon Varget and Hornady 75-grain A-Max bullets.  Hodgdon’s extruded powders have been reformulated as the Extreme line.  The Extreme line’s value proposition to the shooter is consistent velocity in various temperatures and across various lots...and after testing them, I can assure you it is not hype.  I chose the Hornady bullet because it had the highest BC I could find (but truthfully, I did not look too hard).

I started my handloading process by determining the best OAL (over all length).  I missed not having a .220 case for my Stoney Point OAL gauge.  Instead, I used a case with a slit neck to determine OAL to the lands.  I then seated the bullets to miss the lands by .003 inches.  I neck-turned the cases, but otherwise did nothing special.  I used Redding bushing dies and selected a bushing that gave me enough neck tension with the neck turned cases.  I selected various weights of Varget, carefully measured them on my RCBS Model 304 scale, and then headed for the range.  My first groups, 3 shots all, were promising: everything grouped in the 4’s to 7’s.  However, after loading enough rounds to test five shot groups, disappointment set in...8’s to the disdainful 1 inch group.  I wanted to try some leftover loads from the factory barrel days, but the Shilen cut chamber would not even think about allowing sloppy factory chamber dimensioned loads inside.  Because Redding supplies a full length sizing die separate from the decapping and neck sizing die, I resized the loaded cartridges (I am sure Redding, as well as our esteemed editor, don’t recommend this) and was back at the range in no time. 

Much to my delight, the Berger 55-grain bullets, consisting of 35 grains of IMR 4064, plunked into .396 inches.  I half thought of saying to heck with it and using the Berger bullets, but I knew that like most compromises, I would be disappointed in the end.  So I headed back to the bench and started playing with what I have found to be the most critical factor in handloading – over all cartridge length.

I would love to make a short story long, but the truth is I quickly found that accuracy improved as I seated those needle-nosed Hornady bullets deeper into the case.  Using 33.0 grains of Varget, a Hornady A-Max bullet seated so that the overall length was 2.87 inches resulted in five shot groups in the 4’s.  (The same load with an overall length of 2.88 – only .01 inches longer – grouped .8 inches.)  Even though I own three chronographs, I really hate using them, so I estimated the muzzle velocity using QuickLoad, then used RCBS.Load to calculate the number of clicks of come up to connect at 700 yards.  The combination of these two software tools has made it foolproof to get on paper at long range once I shimmed the scope to get enough elevation (see the sidebar).

Like a lot of shooters, I prefer Redding bushing dies; I have used nothing else but them since acquiring my first one.  However, when I first seated the Hornady A-Max bullets I noticed that my .220 Swift seating die imparted a fine circle just below the plastic bullet tip.  At first, I thought this cosmetic blemish might impact accuracy, but the results speak for themselves. 

At 700 yards I do all of my shooting in a sitting position using a Harris bipod and a tight sling.  Groups at this range in my new rifle are nothing short of phenomenal.  My first three shot group plunked in at 3.1 inches.  I had one period of time over several days (meaning different atmospheric conditions) in which 8 shots spanned a group measuring only 5 inches.  To me, shooting at long range is all about guessing how to compensate for atmospheric conditions (wind, temperature, etc.) and then taking your best shot (pun intended).  Consequently, other than zeroing, I almost never fire more than two shots, and frequently only one.  At extremely long ranges, I would rather shoot one shot a day for ten days in a row than fire ten shots in one day – it is how I learn to compensate for different conditions.  My two shot groups at 700 yards with this rifle have never been larger than five inches; the smallest is ¾ inch.  The average is around 3 inches.

The accuracy of this rifle is wonderful, but I am even more pleased with its lack of ballistic degradation as temperature changes, and absolutely thrilled to death (as I am sure the PDs will be) with the reduction in wind drift over the lighter 55 grain bullets.  So far, I have fired the rifle in temperatures that vary from 72 degrees to 32 degrees.  I originally zeroed the rifle at 45 degrees, and after clicking up I had only time for one shot before it got too dark.  That bullet hit 3 inches below my bullseye.  The next time I went shooting the temperature had warmed considerably.  Nevertheless, since I had hit 3 inches low the last time I shot, I came up two clicks, which is 3.5 inches at 700 yards.  I fired two shots, one of which hit four inches high and one hit seven inches high.  The next time I shot it was 70 degrees, so I came down two clicks.  One bullet hit the 3-inch bullseye and the other hit 3 inches to the left.  Since then, I have not had a single bullet strike more than 3 inches higher or lower than my aiming point.  Table I compares the ballistic performance of the 75 grain Hornady A-Max bullet to the 55 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip.

Table I  Comparison of Wind Drift between 75 gr Hornady A-Max and 55 gr Nosler BT

Temperature affects may be important, but practically speaking, the wind makes life far more difficult than a mercurial thermometer.  And when it gets windy, nothing in a 55-grain .224 bullet can compare to that 75 grain Hornady A-Max.  Table II lists some popular varmint bullets and the effect of wind drift.  Since lighter bullets are naturally launched at higher velocities, I tried to use published maximums to make a fair comparison.  One key metric that I use to quickly judge wind drift is drift per mph of wind speed.  At 700 yards this figure is 3.8 inches, which is not bad when you consider a 180-grain .308 Nosler Ballistic Tip at 3200 fps drifts 2.5 inches per mph of wind.  That means that in a ten mile per hour wind, the bullet drifts 38 inches – not much more than a 7mm 150 grain Nosler BT launched at 3200 fps.  (Note: it seems that every gun writer’s wind always crosses at a perfect right angle.  In real life, this is seldom so...on any given day there is a 50% chance the wind will be at your back or face, which makes life easier.  Anything less than a perpendicular wind means less drift.  A wind blowing at a 45-degree angle to you results in 71% of the drift if it was blowing at a 90-degree angle.)  My field shooting shows it is infinitely easier to connect in a moderate wind.

Table II: Comparison of Wind Drift of Popular Varmint Bullets

Of course, a precision rifle is no better than its scope, and this rifle wears what has become my favorite scope for long range shooting: the Leupold 6.5-20X with target knobs and a mil-dot reticle.  I almost never use the mil-dot reticle as a holdover device, instead preferring to crank the target knobs.  And if the wind is blowing across me I will often dial in drift using knobs as well.  However, if the wind is blowing from the front or behind me, I usually use the mil-dot system to compensate, for the simple reason that the drift is small and I can hold using experience.

Perhaps what I like best about my new .220 Swift is the ballistic similarity of it and other favorite rifles.  It shoots slightly flatter at very long ranges than my 7mm Remington Mag firing 150 grain Nosler BTs at 2900 fps (that gun is currently getting a new Shilen barrel as well) and nearly as flat as a 7 mm STW.

My new Shilen barreled rifle has a lot going for it.  Certainly, it will not replace my No. 1 PD killer, which is a stock Remington 700 ADL in .223 Remington.  The pet load in that rifle is 27.5 grains of H335 under a 50-grain Nosler Ballistic Tip.  It is accurate for dogs out to 300 yards and beyond.  But once the wind gets blowing or I just plain-old want to connect with a small target at long range, my Shilen-Gritters .220 Swift will get the nod every time, unless it is my newest work in progress: a Shilen-Gritters-MacMillan .300 Remington Ultra-Mag.  But that is another story.