223 Remington

I am just going to have to strongly recommend, if you want to shoot benchrest and be competitive and if you're serious about it, get a 6PPC rifle. Here is my little story. Didn't know anything about what benchrest shooting was. Knew you place a rifle on the rest and shoot from a bench. Read on line about a match only about 80 miles away, sent an email asking about entry, and was told come on, be glad to have you and you sign up when you get there. Grabbed my 223 remington and off to kick butt. Great rifle and could hold a 1" group at 100 or 200 yd. all day long. They let me shot and when the match was over - last place and you could have taken the next to last place over all score, doubled it and he still would have beat me. One shooter at the match had a 6PPC for sale, meet him the next week, made the purchase and have never looked back. Cost of brass is nothing, travel several 100 miles, pay for a hotel room for 2 nights and other expenses - brass cost will not be a factor.
 
This is not short range benchrest, but I noticed recently that a shooter with a .223 tied an F Class 1000 yard record in Great Britain. And this was with a Savage action! Even though it might not be the cartridge of choice for 100 -200 yard BR, it's certainly a versatile round. I have a hard time finding a load that won't shoot decently in my Savage varmint rifle. But now I am getting into apples and oranges.

So I'll answer the previously posed question. If I could have only one BR rifle for competiton (which I do not currently participate in) it would not be chambered in .223. If I had unlimited funds (i.e. RICH) I would have one built just to see what it could do. Though I might lean toward a .222 if that were the case.

In cases where recoil were an issue due to shoulder problems of some sort, then I think a 22 caliber (22PPC, 22PPC Short, 220 Beggs, .222, or .223) would be good choices to consider.

Tony Carpenter
 
Lefty
A small input from across the pond.
If you check on AccurateShooter.com for an article re 'GB Shooter equals 1k yds record in UK with 223' you can see how Laurie Holland performed. Laurie has done a LOT of work and written articles on this calibre.
Might be worth a read if you're set on 223
Hope this helps
JohnG

I hope I haven't caused a problem with a link to a different site!
 
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