223 - interesting results

The rifle: DPMS TAC2 1-9twist (verified) 16" bbl, chrome lined, 5.56 chamber, rifle gas system. It's a nice rifle and functions fine. This is a friend of mines rifle who is getting back into shooting after a hiatus.

Some interesting results from helping him zero and test some loads in it Saturday at the range. We were shooting some 55gr American Eagle to zero and were only getting 2" at 100yrds and 4-5" groups at 200yrds.

Had some handloads with me 60gr vmax bullets, CCI primers, 26gr BLC2, LC brass and it shot these at just around 1.5" groups at 100yrds with it. These same loads have grouped as well as 1/2 - 3/4" in a couple of other AR's...didn't chono these.

Then we tried a couple of old boxes of Black Hills blue box 68gr Heavy Match Moly coated bullets (advertised 2850fps) and we were putting them 3 and 4 touching 5shot groups at both 100yrds and 200yrds. Next Tried Black Hills blue box 52gr Match Moly bullets and same thing type of results. Both the Black Hills blue box moly loadings shot the lights out!

Weird thing is the 68gr velocity seemed really low over the chrony 2550fps to 2575fps the 52gr were clocking right above 3000fps also slow for a light bullet. The 55gr Fed were going 3220fps . I'm scratching my head on this. Was it the Moly? Was it the slow for weight bullets that contributed to the dramatic change in accuracy? Also weird the 68gr and 52gr shot same POA POI at both 100yrds and 200yrds. I've never seen that happen with two rounds so different from each other. Anyway I cannot explain it but accept the results.

I'm going to work up some loads based on the Black Hills blue box performance and see if we can match it for this rifle with non moly bullets and then same loads with moly bullets. This one has me puzzled.