My range consists of my fourwheeler as my bench rest and woods out by the soybean field. I learned for myself what a difference brands and bullet grains make today. Below is a pic of the target set at 100 yards after I fired about ten rounds each of different brands of ammo, American Eagle 55 gr. FMJ, Remington UMC 45 gr. JHP and Ultramax 52 gr. JHP at 20 yards. At this distance, the Ultramax was definitely the tightest groups, basically one hole shots, the American Eagle was all over the place and the Remington was a little scattered and high by about three inches over the Ultramax.
So, I used the Ultrmax to fine tune it at 20 yards then moved out to 50. Still same results, Ultramax was still right on the cross hairs, AE was low and left, Remington was high but center. I decided to let it cool down a little while I worked on my Marlin 882SS 22 mag. Well, a few minutes later I was back to the Handi .223 and moved out to 100 paces. Started with the Remington UMC and was consistently high and couldn't get better than a 5 inch group, so back to the Ultramax. One shot barely left of the bullseye. Then I decided to just shoot off a bunch of the American Eagle since it was not shooting worth a damn at all. I fired five fairly quick shots without taking any real aim and of course they were scattered all over the target and the barrel was getting hot, so I said to myself "one more and I'm done". It went just a little high but pretty much on center. So, of course I had to try just one more shot! Well hell, look at that, touching the last hole. Ok, just one more shot and I'm going home and I'll be damned if it didn't go right in the last hole I shot. You can't see it real well in the crappy picture below, but that is a three hole shot at 100 paces with ammo that wouldn't do squat for me at 50 paces and the barrel was really getting warm! Think I need to join a real range to get some better test results. Oh, I did find out that those Ultramax will absolutely obliterate a milk jug at 50 yards! Needless to say, not a lot of good actual data today, but sure had a helluva lot of fun shooting that .223!
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the reason I was so impressed with the three hole shot is because I was weaving and shaking like jack rabbit in a fox den! Hadn't eaten all day and was tired, plus bending over in a half squat is not a very comfortable way to shoot! ;~}
Sorry guys, I just noticed on the pic of the target that I had the American Eagle listed as JHP, they're actually FMJ.
