Perfect .22-250

Alliant, IMR, Hodgdon and Western Powders Propellants

- John Haviland

The .22-250 Remington has been in hunting fields and on target ranges seemingly forever. After nearly nine decades of existence in one form or another, the cartridge should be wheezing its last gasp, but that is far from the case. The reason for the .22-250’s continuing popularity is the introduction of new powders that have continually improved the cartridge from when it was a wildcat during the 1930s to Remington applying its name to it in 1965, and especially up to today.

The Lyman/Ideal Handbook No. 39, published in 1953, lists six powders for reloading the “.22/250 Varminter.” Today’s reloading manuals list about 10 times that many powders suitable for loading the .22-250.

When I started handloading the cartridge in the 1980s, I read Jim Carmichel’s 1975 book The Modern Rifle, where he noted his favorite .22-250 handload was 38.0 grains of IMR-4320 loaded with 52or 53-grain bullets. “This goes close to 3,800 fps in a 26-inch barrel and will usually squeeze out the last dollop of accuracy any rifle has to offer,” he wrote. Several reloading manuals of the time suggested upward of 36.0 grains of IMR-4320 as maximum for 52-grain bullets. That amount of powder fired Speer 52grain HP bullets at 3,539 fps from my new Ruger M77V .22-250. Groups at 100 yards with this combination averaged .75 inch. IMR-4320’s short kernels also allowed dispensing a precise amount of powder from my powder measure. That saved a lot of time at the loading bench because over the next few years, I shot pound after pound of IMR-4320 through the Ruger’s barrel.

I eventually pulled my head out of the IMR-4320 can and in the ensuing years saw there were plenty of other powders, some of them new, that gave the .22-250 a boost in velocity, and with great accuracy.