Last weekend I drove down to Alturus County Ca. and participated in our annual digger squirrel hunt on a ranch in Big Valley. These digger squirrels are dug in under the alfalfa fields and eat massive amounts of the green stuff and have undermined the fields so that the ranchers cannot ride their horses for fear of the horse breaking a leg. I loaded up some Barnes 55 grain "Varmint Grenade" bullets and a batch of 55 grain Speer "TNT" bullets as an experiment this year, to shoot out of my Remington 700 Varminter rifle. I also brought along 200 rounds that were loaded with Sierra 55 grain "Gameking" flat based exposed lead tipped varmint bullets. The squirrels are smart and if they smell or see you they head underground. We located a group of mounds and situated ourselves on a rise overlooking these mounds and ranged them at 185 yards. I found that the Barnes bullets did not group well, the Speer bullets grouped so so, and the Sierra bullets would literally go through the same hole. We shot too many squirrels to count, mostly at the 185 to 200 yard range. The wind picked up at 1 pm and by 2 it was howling so we had to change our position to a place where the wind was in our face so it had little effect on the strike of the bullet.
I used 38 grains of Hodgdon H-380 in Winchester cases with Win primers. That is the most accurate load I have come up with for the thick Remington 6 grooved varmint barrel. From now on I will stick with the tried and tested Sierra bullets since they are the most accurate and why they shoot more accurately than the other brands is beyond me.
This ranch was up at 5500 feet in elevation and my rounds hit 3 1/2" high due to the difference in elevation from where I live at 2000 ft . The air is not as dense at the higher elevations so the bullets fly higher and longer than down on the lower elevations.