Sorry Evan......didn't get back til today and also didn't want you to think I was attacking you. Text can do that.......
I bought a TC carbine for my sons birthday in March this year chambered in .204 factory barrel. We shoot tons of pds on my sisters farm and have many chances to go. Originally started out using an old Savage 110 in 22-250 worked great but often got very hot and required down time. I set up a TC carbine in .221 for me, son used 22-250 up til his birthday this year.
Out comes the .204, we still use several other guns but man the .204 will reach out there and this one is deadly to 400 yds. ....gets the majority of use. His is setup with a Mueller 3.5 x 10 Eradicator...factory stock.
I liked his so much I built one for me on a TC Contender frame I had. 23" Match Grade MAchine full bull Stainless on a Bullberry/Woodsmith stock and just ordered a Weaver KT15 scope on Burris Z rings.
We prefer the 32 gr. bullets and since they shot to the same POI I can alternate between Vmaxs and Blitz kings no prob. Using 29.0 gr. of RL-15 is very accurate and slightly under listed max. For this kind of volume shooting I don't like max loads, they waste material and are just not necessary. We will shoot 600-700 rounds on a good May weekend.
Take care and Happy Thanksgiving !!
The old Savage is pretty much relugated to coyotes and shots during cooling times for the other guns....the throat in it has long since been smoked. It will still make those long shots and it still wears a nice Leupold VXIIAO 4x12 that my son won't let me take off of it.
We will be hitting them again next week as we have a plains deer/pheasant/pd hunt going on all week.
PS in CO anything less than .243" 80 gr. bullets is not legal to shoot big game animals with so that consideration is mute here. The game that can be taken with .224"bullets is basically the same as what is legal with a .204".
