Well, I finally got to shoot my .220 Swift the last two weekends at the range. Last weekend had some horrible weather, windy with rain blowing either angled or straight into the firing line. I got some good results with 40gn Vmax bullets and a variety of powders and actually had a very enjoyable day despite the weather. I decided to see how the shots fell at 100, 200 and 300 yards. At 100 yards, the shots landed about .9 of an inch above point of aim. At 200 yards, the shots landed about 1.2" above POI. At 300 yards, the shots landed about 3" below POI, BUT they got blown off to the right a little more than I expected, with 2 shots punching through my target frame. I gota tell you, I was surprised to see the little varmint bullet punch such a neat hole through the steel, especially at that range. You can see in the below photo, one shot clipped the frame, whilst one shot has gone right through the center of the upright. The shot fully through the frame has created a hole of about .350. Its only mild steel, but that's not the result I would have expected to see.

This weekend I went back with the chronograph to see what the loads were doing velocity wise. I have got this bullet up to 4600 fps in the past, but accuracy was terrible. This time I was getting good groups with some slower powders, so was keen to see how they rated for speed. The load that seemed to give the best groups was a very full case of H4350, which turned out to be doing 4237 fps.

A load of Varget up to the bottom of the case neck gave me 4395 fps, with just a little less grouping potential. I'm going to stick with the Varget load since accuracy is good enough & the extra velocity will be a good thing in the field. Also, I really cant get enough H4350 into the case.

Fergus