Savage 12FV
- Thread starter DrawBlood
- Start date
The full write up is at jamescalhoon.com, got in poop for hot-linking to the site before. Under "Informative articles" there is "2 Bee or .223" and "Revisited" Jim and me were shooting these loads 20 years ago, I still do, he's obviously strictly .19 cal shooter. With my pet load of 13gr Bluedot and a 37gr Calhoon DHP it is no louder or more costly to shoot than a .22mag rimfire. A great feature of this load is the barrel does not heat up near as much as with a full-house load. So if shooting lots thru a sporter weight barrel you have little to worry about cooling off when the gophers are acting suicidal. In the heavy barrel 12 FV this is not a concern of course.
you are giving me ideas...when i get the rifle i may have to try that as a practice load
A few years ago the gophers were crazy and I ran out of Calhoons. I bought a few boxes of Hornady V-Max 40gr and with the same powder load blew the sh t out of many gophers. The V-Max are an excellent varmint shredder, the Calhoons just blow them up a little more violently. I would really caution against 15 gr Blue dot as pressures get really high- really quick. Work it up slow and don't get greedy. And don't forget, high temps. affect it when you push the pressure edge. If you want higher speed, there are tons of safe loads using Benchmark, Varget, BL(C) 2 etc. Do study what's out there, it's a lot of fun, take it easy and post your results.
Johnny_Canuck
CGN Regular
- Location
- Edmonton mostly
I have a 12FV in .243 that has a Bushnell 4200 6-24 mil dot that is a pure bone stock tack driver. Its a Savage, it'll shoot. I know posting group sizes on the internet is asking to be flamed, so I'll just say that it is well under MOA without bedding and such. I, like many others have already mentioned, am not a fan of the stock. I plan to build a stock for it soon, will post the madness of my methods for others looking to try that route. And I'll throw in my 2 cents for the 243 instead of 223 or the triple deuce fifty, not to disparage either fine cartridge. With 243 you get the ability to push 55gr pills at 4000+ fps, or long slippery 100 gr pills at 3000. Excellent selection of 6mm bullets with Ballistic Coefficients and sectional densities that buck wind and punch deep when dealing with larger targets that will work well with your barrel twist rate. Larger targets being of the edible variety. With the 243 you can also legally hunt large game.
