Originally Posted By: WeaselCircusOriginally Posted By: Flesh Eater
I've noticed the .17 Hornet is okay with a VMax around 100 yards for body shots. The JHP does nothing. I hit one walking this weekend and rolled down the hill and laid there. When I started walking to retrieve it, it got back up and was just about to go in its hole when I shot it again. Needless to say, it made it back in.
The V-Max will be ordered this week and tested again soon!
About what weight are those groundhogs? Like Broper mentioned we have rockchucks out here and I'm not sure how close they are in size to your groundhogs, but some of our rockchucks get pretty big and fat. I've had very good success on them with my 17 hornet and factory vmax loads. Taken them out to 300 yards and never get crawl-offs. I also recently bought some of the 25gr HPs to test on ground squirrels and chucks. Not quite as explosive as vmax but seem to work just fine so far. Got 2 chucks a few days ago with the HPs at 210 and 235 yards and both were instant kills (1 body shot, 1 head shot). Now the 22 hornet Hornady soft-points I tried once were a different matter - those were horrible and after 3 in a row crawled off I put them aside and never shot them again.
Here's a photo of a nice big rockchuck I took last year for reference:
Those look about the same size as our groundhogs. I hate posting pics on forums, or I would.
I see you're also shooting a CZ 527. I've got the 24" Varmint barrel version and can't get it to shoot sub MOA groups no matter what. I've tried a spotless barrel, in-between dirty barrel, and a dirty barrel. Nothing will hold sub MOA. Any tips? I've got about 100-150 rounds through it.
