From the beginning:
I bought a Stevens Model 200 22-250 with the basic gray synthetic stock several years ago. I fit it with a cheap Simmons Prairie Master 6x24x50 scope when I bought the gun. My friend and I built several test loads and found it liked 40.5 grains of H380 with 40 grain Vmax bullets. The rifle was always very accurate.... until recently.
About 1 month ago I head shot a groundhog off the hard tonneau of my truck at about 180 yards. From that point on I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with the gun. I thought "what changed?".
A few weeks after shooting the groundhog the gun fell off the back seat of my truck and onto the floor (yeah I know.. I should have it in a case) so I thought the scope got bumped off. I cleaned the bore with some basic solvent, loaded up some round and went out to check the scope. It was all over the place. I was sure it had to be the scope. $300 and a new Vortex Crossfire II 6x24x50 later it still wasn't shooting right. Off to my friend's house! We cleaned the bore with some copper solvent he uses, built some more of the same load, went to the range, still no joy! Time to make up some more test loads.
We made up two different loads with H380 with 37 and 40 grains of powder and bumped up to 50 grain Nosler ballistic tips. We also made some loads with IMR 4320. 32 and 36 grains of powder Off to the range! The H380 shot well with 37 grains but was erratic at 40 grains. The IMR 4320 shot well at 32 grains but opened up at 40 grains. We decided to go with 34 grains of IMR 4320 with the 50 grain Nosler and SUCCESS! I was back to where I wanted to be.
I noticed that my synthetic stock had a lot of flex in it so $200 later and a new Boyd's AT One stock later and all of the flex is gone. I could have tinkered with the old stock but I have owned the rifle long enough that a new stock was in order.
Lesson Learned!
There was nothing wrong with the Simmons scope, the issue was due to copper fouling and what we think was the barrel changing a bit. I now have a Dewey rod, nylon bore brushes, Bore Tech Elimator and Bore Tech Copper Cu+2 copper solvent.
The target below is off a lead sled at 100 yards. I'm waiting for the weather to improve so I can see how the new load does at 200 yards off the sled.
Groundhogs beware, It's back!
