airedale

"It will have the same Niedner steel buttplate & grip cap as well as a barrel band & boat style (rear) swivel stud." Those are some of the nicest touches a stock can have in my opinion. Al

It should make some barreled action very happy, nice figure. Al

To be honest I did not know a thing about it until I saw Wildcat Junkie's back and forth posts with you. Looks like quite the the program but for me at this stage of the game probably a bit of an overload for my lead poisoned brain. I will be interested in hearing your review of how it works out for you and your reloads. Al

When I was a kid the landscape in NY was a bit different than it is today. I grew up in the country and half of all my friends lived on family farms. Farms were everywhere and that meant there were hay fields and where there were hay fields there were Woodchucks and back then lots of them. I remember well the very first one I took, I was hunting with a friend with my single shot open sight Savage 22 which I think was a model 120. This Savage had to be cocked by pulling the rear of the bolt cocking piece after a shell was chambered. Anyhow we spotted a Chuck out in a hay field and I crawled on my stomach to about thirty yards, the Chuck stood up and I took and made the shot and the kill. I became instantly obsessed with those critters. As I got a little older my Dad started letting me use his Winchester 61 in 22mag which increased the killing range quite a bit over my 22. After a couple of years I graduated up to Dad's Sako 222 and I was pretty much in heaven with that rifle. I put away a lot of Woodchucks with that gun and out to 275 yards or so it was deadly, I also shot my first Buck with that rifle. Well when I was old enough to get a decent job and earn some money I finally purchased my first Varmint rifle, a used in good shape Remington 700 ADL in the then fairly new factory 22/250. That baby added an easy 100 yards to the kill zone and I took full advantage of it's longer range. While I was happy with that Remington 22/250 I still was not satisfied, I dreamed of owning the top dog of Varmint calibers and in my mind that meant the 220 Swift. Problem was nobody back then produced a factory 220 Swift rifle. Winchester dropped the Swift and came out with a lesser cartridge than the 22/250, they called it the 225 Winchester. The Swift always had some bad press about being a barrel burner and, hard to handload for, short case life and the list went on, a lot of that bad press was mostly crap! I think Winchester pulled a boner by discontinuing the Swift and an even bigger boner redesigning their model 70 rifle. In the early seventies I was reading through a Gun Digest and came across an article by Outdoor Life firearms editor Jim Carmichel about Bill Ruger putting in production his model 77 in the 220 Swift with a 26 inch medium heavy varmint barrel. Carmichel who was a huge Swift fan himself gave the preproduction model a glowing report. Man I was excited, I was drooling so bad I must have looked like a mad dog. To make a long story short it was not long before I had one of those Rugers in my possession, she was topped with a straight 12X Leupold scope. I used Jim Carmichel's pet load of 39 grs of IMR 4064 under a 52 gr Sierra match bullet for about 3950 fps and hit accuracy paydirt right off the bat with half inch groups at 100 yds. To say the least me and that Swift back then were a Woodchuck's worst nightmare, I made so many spectacular shots with that rifle that I could not begin to tell about them. What pretty much sums up my thought on the Ruger 220 Swift was on a warm summer day outside of Norwich NY on a hilltop overlooking hundreds of acres of huge hay fields. I had a case guard box of 50 reloads and had just put down number 37 without a miss, I looked down at that rifle and said to myself this thing should be illegal! Al

I have got after them when they build nests in places where I don't want them. One year I had them plug my chimney. Starlings are great mimics, Once time I was in my barn doing some puttering around and I heard a Canada goose calling just outside the door. I stepped out to take a look and no goose. The sound was coming from a hole in the barn roof overhang. Turns out it was a Starling sitting on her nest amusing herself by duplicating goose calls and doing a perfect rendition. Al

Hey Core, nothing more impressive than the 50 BMG I will be going to the Syracuse gun show in a few weeks I might look a 50 BMG cartridge up when there. Al

Stores listing Rio Bismuth shotgun ammo and actually stocking it to sell are two different things. Last fall I searched a 100 mile radius in central NY of every major sporting goods store doing business selling ammo. 2 Gander Mountains 2 Dicks 2 Bass Pros 2 Herb Phillipsons And several small private guns shops. There is non to be had anywhere!! I could not even special order it!!!! I did find distributors online that had it in stock but thanks to our "safe act" no shipping to NY. Shipping to an FFL made the price per shell almost doubled, way too much! A friend of mine took a trip to Arkansas to visit relatives and I gave him $250 and told he could spend it all for non toxic shot shells that could be safely fired in doubles. Guess what even the giant pyramid Bass Pro did not have one shell in stock. We are talking the capital duck hunting area in the US. The best he could come up with is stores that would special order it. which would have done me no good. I made a post on this board for any leads where I might find some non toxic within reasonable driving distance and came up with a fat zero again. The only solution I could come up with is to buy components and reload my own ammunition which is still far from being reasonable. Like I posted before in the other lead apocalypse fear mongering thread, are all going to die someday but absolutely no one is ever going to die or even get sick from eating game shot with lead bullets as long as they care for their meat properly. Al

When it comes to reloading I do not think you can ever have too much information. The Lyman 49 manual you have is a very good one, I started out with a Lyman 43 myself and have several other Lyman editions including the 49 that you have. The reason I favor Lyman manuals is they are not a bullet or powder manufacturer themselves, so when they develop their load data they are not so to say restricted to using their own brand. They use a good cross section of all the manufacturers bullets so one has a bit more to choose from. I think if a person was going to have just one manual the Lyman would be a good choice. Now that being said the reloading hobby has a way of taking hold of you and can kind of become obsessive in the search for perfection. And of course the way one gains more info about about a wider selection of bullets and powder is to obtain more manuals. For me personally over the long period of time I have been at this I have ended getting manuals from most of the major players and have picked up gems of useful information from them all. Today you have these computer program that WJ and Shawn are using that reveal just about all there is to know. So the sky is the limit and if one has a bad case the reloading bug you certainly have plenty of options. Al

Hey Pygmy, if you have a cartridge collection this thing works pretty good and does display them nice, kind of a pain to set up but not too bad. I picked it up on Amazon. It is called the MTM Cartridge Display Board. Al

Gave my reloading room a makeover to have some sort of order where I know things are. Cleaned one drawer that had all of my master shells that I used to set my seating dies and decided to try out a bullet board to store them on along with some other shells that I had at one time or another. I kind of like this thing, it worked out pretty well, got a lot of extra spaces, I guess I need to buy some more guns. Starting at the top from left to right. Second Row Third Row 17 HMR 30/30 32 ACP 22LR 30/06 9 MM 22 Mag 338 Win Mag 357 Mag 22 Hornet 35 Rem 44 Mag 223 Rem 45/70 222 Rem Mag 458 Win Mag 410 22/250 7.62/39 Russian 28 GA 220 Swift 20 GA 243 Win 12 GA 6mm Rem 25/06 284 Win 280 Rem 7mm Rem Mag

The scope normally sells for around $270 the rings can be found on Amazon for just under $60. I purchased the scope off ebay for $200 used. You will never go wrong with Leupold products, the scopes have a lifetime guarantee, even if you buy a used one you are covered. Al

I have spent much of the winter redoing my gun room-reloading room-man cave. Been going through my firearms with a bunch of what I hope to be some improvements in performance such as trigger work, action work, refinished some stocks along with some scope changing and mounting. So I have quite a bit of sighting in to do and I am looking forward to it. I plan on a bit of fishing also and have been going through that stuff too and getting it ready. As for "The Walking Lead Mongers" they are on my ignore list. Al

Don't know what kind of time schedule are on for selling, the Syracuse Gun Show is just around the corner and there are plenty of buyers there. Al

It is a beautiful mount for sure. Al

The thing that jumped out for me was the confiscated muzzleloaders which the felon apparently was using for poaching. The more relaxed rules that the black powder community has for purchasing and owning that type of equipment is based quite a bit on the premise that nobody ever commits any crime with those sorts of weapons. I would not be surprised that there will be some legislator that will see this and try starting a push for some tighter regs. Al

Yes it can be shipped to an FFL and I know anything I find will not be cheap but with the prices I have been seeing along with the shipping and the FFL guy's cut what I have found so far is totaling way too much. I would make my own out of the 204 Ruger cases before paying those kinds of prices. Al

It has been out of production for some time now and is really tough to come by these days. I have done many internet searches for a long time, about the best I can come up with is an online auction once in awhile. Any ammo from out of state can not be shipped so that eliminates just about everything I find. I was hoping maybe someone here might have some laying around. If worse comes to worse I can make it out of 204 Ruger cases but I would rather just obtain the regular 222 mag factory cases if possible. Al

If anyone has or knows of a source to obtain either empty cases or even loaded ammo in 222 Rem Mag I would be interested in buying them. Al

WJ I had an old timer turn me on to MRP many years ago, he too had a 280 and the gun it was chambered in was of all things a Remington Model 4 auto loader. He loved the Nosler 160 partition bullet and he ended up settling for his final load using 62 grs of MRP and was getting slightly over 3000 fps with absolutely no sign of overly high pressure. Man I thought he was crazy until I saw it all at the range in person and believe me I was standing back when he touched things off. For me I ended up settling for 60.5 grs and the 150 partition for slightly over 3000 fps, again the cases fall out of the chamber with zero signs of overly high pressure. The load worked fine on everything I tried it on and I still use it today. By the way Natchez also carries MRP and I just picked up a couple of pounds myself. Al

WJ I am a big fan of MRP powder, it was almost like gold at one time and very hard to come by. I use it mostly in a 280 Rem and have seen some amazing MVs produced by that stuff along with wonderful working pressures. Al

Thanks for the compliments guys, one more thing I can't wait to give those Leupold quick detachable rings a try to see how they hold zero. Always used conventional type rings this is my first set of this kind and I have always wondered how well they would work. Al

The bottom line is with the gun hating administration we have along with all the other gun haters and animal rights groups out there and there are a lot of them with resources, if there was the least and I mean the "LEAST" amount of traction they could get by using the excuse that hunters are lead poisoning themselves along with their families there would be a full court press to push for the ban of lead bullets. The media would jump on it in a heartbeat and the blitz of any propaganda they could prove true would be unrelenting and monumental. Believe me do not think for one moment this has not occurred to them, the reason it has not happened is simple. There is no concrete evidence that hunters eating a deer that has been taken with a lead bullet is poisoning people to the point of any significant consequence. Al

That little Leupold really makes this rig right, it fits the gun, it does not weigh hardly anything and has huge eye relief and nice big field of view. I picked it up used on ebay and saved $70, from the looks I do not think it was ever mounted. That being said I still liked that receiver sight an awful lot. Al

There is a huge difference between smoking cigarettes and a person eating a deer shot with a lead core bullet. The hard evidence was insurmountable showing millions of people through the years having lung cancer, heart problems emphysema, so on and so forth and dying. An idiot could see the tobacco companies were lying. You show me hard evidence that millions of people eating millions of tons of deer and other game meat for several hundred years that have been shot with a lead bullet that has been properly butchered and prepared that are sick from lead poisoning? Al

When one starts to get a little age on them you tend to start looking and thinking light weight. I picked up this little Marlin 44mag a few years ago, it has the 16 1/2 inch ported barrel. It is amazingly accurate with some ammo I purchased about 20yrs ago put out by an outfit called Top Notch. 300 gr Noslers that will all group touching at fifty yards. I had a Williams receiver sight on it and I had no problem putting them in there on target in decent daylight. But I had it out hunting a couple of years ago and had a doe meandering around in front of me at about sixty yards when the daylight was fading early with all the leaves still on the trees. With no intention of shooting I lined her up in the sights and had a very hard time seeing her clear enough where I would take a shot. If that had been the big one in her place I would have been in trouble. Now I really loved that receiver sight because it contributed to the overall handiness of the rifle but I had to get real, I knew that I needed a scope in the above conditions. So keeping with the theme of the rifle I looked up the lightest most compact scope that Leupold makes and found their Vari 2 2,5 lightweight. I also got some quick detachable Leupold rings and got this gun set up right I think and hopefully will get a chance to try her out and kill one this coming fall. Al