Love my Mini 14, but don't be surprised if it throws the brass 15 or 20'. (or into the next county if you live in a small county)
I like to mark the base of my brass with a sharpie, that way I can ID it easy and know I have the primer pocket crimp removed.
(since they are in the next county you can't see where they are landing....
start looking about 15' to the right and about 8 feet back
)
MOP- minute of pie plate, they will start to wander as the barrel gets hot which it does fairly quickly. Still like it, loads of fun.
Good ammo does help a lot.
I bought a WFT (worlds finest trimmer) to trim my .223 brass ~$75 but money well spent if you are loading a lot of .223.
I don't even measure the brass now I just run it all thru the trimmer, if it needs it it gets trimmed. I would also recommend getting a case guage. I purchased the LE Wilson one but there are other out there.
.223 is not hard to load the two thing that eat up time in brass prep is trimming and removing primer crimps, something you usually don't have to deal with when loading pistol rounds. (I recycle any crimped pistol brass I run into).
H335, 8208XBR,BLC(2) and TAC have all worked well for me and meter decent thru a measure.
I would say I like TAC the best out of the 4. (BLC(2) second.
Rocky Mountain Reloading generally has good deals on .223 bullets and offer THR members a 5% discount. code thehighroad5 and your screen name.
Did I mention Mini 14s have nice positive ejection