I can't tell you how many rifles I've seen shoot well with the cheap (used to be anyway) Black Hills Blue Box 52 gr Match Hollow Point. That's a remanufactured round and somewhat cheaper than their red box new ammo. A buddy of mine just bought a 1K case from Creedmore because that was obviously the best round for his AR and he's too old and rich to waste time reloading on his Dillon 650.
I have two VERY different 223 Rem Savage bolt guns that also shoot the BH BB 52 gr MHP EXTREMELY well, I think BH stumbled on to a "best case" load on this one. The same friend helped me work out the best factory loads ~7 years ago when I got my first Savage 223 FP10, he's old so he had forgotten that and had no preconceived notions about what a scary accurate round it would turn out to be.
If you want to reload, that's a different matter. At 200 yards, the differences in ammunition become MUCH more obvious, and when I was recently working up a non-lead load for shooting ground squirrels (this is California, after all), I started my OCW series clearing the barrel with H322 and with a "known good" 52 gr V-Max load.
From a "wet" CLP bore, the first shot was low and left, with the next 4 going into the expected group - even then it was ~1 MOA. With H322 in the warmup series, the rest of the data collection with a 35 gr non-lead bullet went well, with an outstanding .32 MOA 5 shot group settling the "optimum" load argument.
My point is you can't guess a good load, you can't ask for a good load, you can either buy a lot of commercial ammo and hope for a good result. OR you can handload and work your way to a good result.
In either case, when you acquire ammo you are going to spend serious money, but one is more satisfying and accurate than the other.
Regards,
Brian in CA
