But the 53 V-Max should shoot one hole groups out of a 1/9 barrel.
Have you had excellent accuracy with the rifle shooting factory V-Max Varmint loads? Or factory Match loads?
Like the OP, I use CFE 223 to load the 53 gr V-Max for my 1/12 twist rifle and while I can't put 'em in one hole at 100 yrds, they are sub-MOA.
But for fun, I bought a box of factory Hornady Superformance loads also using the same 53 gr V-Max bullet. As promised on the box, they were fast. But they grouped about 2" at 50 yrds - and I'm not kidding. They were horrible. I had never had such a bad group out of that rifle.
Thinking perhaps something had happened to my scope or the rifle, I shot 5 of my 53 gr V-Max rounds right after the bad 2" group . But at the same 50 yrds, that 5 shot group WAS one hole.
The factory loads were almost 200 fps faster than mine, but as far as accuracy was concerned, I think the real difference was the COAL. The factory Hornady rounds were 2.24 - the same as suggested in their 9th edition manual. My hand loads are 2.285.
One of the changes that Hornady made to the 53 gr V-Max to boost the BC was the ogive. If you compare the profile of the ogive on the 53 gr V-Max to any other .224 V-Max, you can see that it is much "sharper" or in other words it looks to be closer to a secant than a tangent ogive. If that is actually the case, secant ogive bullets are known for being more finicky with regards to seating depth. That is one reason why Berger came up with their hybrid (now called classic) bullets for hunting use. While the target folks could tune the seating depth of the secant ogive bullets in their target rifles for use on paper, hunters quite often could not seat those bullets long enough to both fit in a mag and get adequate accuracy due to the longer leade in most hunting rifles.
So Rudy, perhaps check your rifle to see if you can safely seat the bullets out further than the 2.24 listed in the manual. I'm willing to bet that your groups will tighten up as you get closer to the lands.
