Yotehntr
FNG
- Joined
- May 5, 2021
- Messages
- 25
I've been interested in the 17-204 wildcat and just haven't "pulled the trigger" on one. During the powder shortage we've been going through I was looking for some varget for my 22-250. As everyone knows that's hard to get hold of. But I found a site that had some Winchester Staball 6.5. I did a quick search and even thought the psi seemed high there were some loads for the 22-250 so I bought a couple lbs. I ended up finding some varget so my next favorite gun is my 17 rem. Looked up the data at the hodgdon site and it has some crazy velocity numbers. I've been wanting to shoot a 30 gr bullet faster (in the past I was between 3600-3700 fps. Well their data on the hodgdon site said 3904 for 30 gr pills. I loaded some up and was in the mid 38's.. thought there was plenty of room in the case for more powder and since I wasn't showing any psi signs I slowly worked my way up to the average vel of 3910 fps absolutely no psi signs, no primer piercing and nothing at all to think I was aproaching any issues. Accuracy wasn't great but still sub MOA. (my 17 rem has done some 1 hole (clover leaf) groups at 100) I look at the 17-204 data and that's the same way they figure out a load (slowly increasing while watching for psi signs). I'm feeling like I have a winner here and there's not a lot of difference between my velocities and what I hear the actual velocities of the 17-204's are putting out. The Staball powder gets it's name for it's temperature stability, I'll be doing another check when the temp get up and hope I'm still good. I'm thinking/hoping I've found a really good fur friendly load for my 17 rem.