The Roaring 20's

The Roaring 20’s

by Justin Uhlir

April, 2022

I was laying on an old stack of hay bales late in the spring. The snow had begun melting and water was standing in many areas of the pastures that I hunt. Rather than do my normal still hunting on foot, I decided that sitting atop the hay stack was probably going to be more effective and far less messy than walking through the slop that the warm weather had created. My Dad was with me and running my fancy rangefinder I was using at the time. The optic was sold by Gunwerks as the G7 Ballistic Rangefinder. Shooters could enter a “ballistic profile” into the unit and when the range came back the ballistic program inside would give you your drop for the given the distance as well as wind holds for 5 mph increments in wind. It was still up to the shooter to determine wind speed and direction. A coyote moving along a fence line, sat down after I let a lone female invite howl rip from the call I was holding in my hand. My Dad ranged the coyote as she stopped and gave me the corrections for elevation. It was a long way out there but still within my abilities as a shooter and the gun’s capabilities for an effective kill. The wind was quartered slightly towards the coyote from right to left. Light but a little gusty at times. I figured between 5 and 7 mph. I adjusted and let the shot fly. My Dad was now behind me watching everything unfold in his binoculars. The bullet wake was easily visible for him through his binoculars and he watched the hit happen on the coyote. The coyote took 3 big steps and piled up. It was and still is the longest shot I’ve made on a coyote. The cartridge….believe it or not, was a 20-250.

The 204 Ruger

The 204 Ruger was introduced in 2004 in a joint partnership between Ruger and Hornady. The case is based on the 222 Magnum from years ago but the shoulder is moved forward and steepened to allow for more powder capacity. It uses a small bolt face (same as a .223 Rem) and is loaded to an overall length of 2.260” to feed from most internal magazines of commercially produced rifles. The standard twist rate for the 204 Ruger is 12. A 12 twist barrel will shoot and stabilize the majority of the bullets on the market under 35 grains. Bullets heavier than that can be picky. Some 12 twist barrels will work and some may not. I believe Hornady and Ruger picked the 12 twist barrel to focus on the 32 grain projectiles and the ability to shoot them at just over 4200fps. Speed was the goal with this cartridge and it was attained using the slower twist barrel and light bullets. My personal opinion is that the 204 should be using 11 twist barrels or faster to utilize the longer 39 and 40 grain bullets. I have a custom 204 Ruger built with an 8 twist barrel to shoot projectiles of 55 grains or more.

With the popularity of long range shooting and the accessibility of it to so many people, the 204 ruger using 55 grain bullets is a legitimate round for long range plinking, varminting or coyote hunting. From a 24” barrel a 55 grain bullet can achieve 3300 fps from the 204 ruger. Using the 55 grain Berger Varmint/Match bullet and its impressive G7 coefficient of .182 this setup can be used effectively on coyotes to 500 yards or more. I’ve taken a number of coyotes with this particular setup. Fur damage is minimal and most of the time the bullet anchors the coyote where he stood for a DRT (dead right there) kill. Why don’t we see this as a factory varmint round? Overall length of the loaded cartridge becomes problematic. I had to do a lot of tinkering with a Remington 700 and the .223 style follower to make it feed correctly and fit in the magazine. A rifle set up with a removable AICS style magazine would easily solve the issue however I prefer not to have a detachable magazine on a walking varmint rifle. This is based completely on personal preference and nothing else. The 204 was also marketed and sold as a speed demon. Many people don’t understand external ballistics and would scoff at a 55 grain bullet at 3300 fps since a 223 Reminton will do that and more in many cases with the same weight of bullet. However the longer and sleeker .204 projectile wins the ballistic war between the two cases.

Moving slightly lighter and less problematic for OAL we can move to 50 grain projectiles in the 204 Ruger. For my mileage I believe the 50 grain Berger Match bullet (discontinued) loaded in the 204 Ruger to a speed of 3400 fps is a GREAT combination for coyote hunting and could be sold commercially as a factory offering. This setup worked great for me over a few seasons. The 50 grain Berger was easy on fur and killed great to 300 yards. After my supply of the Berger bullet dwindled to nearly nothing, I called Don Unmussig and ordered some of his 50 grain .204 bullets which are equally impressive as the Berger. In fact, in most of the rifles I’ve tried them in they typically shoot a bit better and seem to shoot slightly flatter as well. A great bullet for fur and accuracy.

Lighter bullets, traveling at high speed was always the goal of the 204 Ruger and I’ve taken quite a few coyotes with the 32 Sierra Blitzking, 35 Berger Match and the 39 Sierra Blitzking. The 32 and 35 grain bullets will usually run somewhere north of 4000 fps, have virtually no recoil so the shooter can see the hits on the target and shoot flat enough that one can hold “on fur” to 300 yards or a bit past depending on your zero range. The 32 Sierra has been a great bullet over the years for me. It slips through the wind quite well for a light bullet and is hard enough that “splashes” happen less frequently than other plastic tip bullets have. A splash usually occurs when the bullet hits a bone and blows up on the outside of the coyote rather than on the inside. It's a messy situation that, more often than not, results in a lost animal or the loss of the pelt due to damage. Match hollow points have less of this problem and the 35 Berger was a very good choice over the years for the 204. I’ve killed more coyotes with this setup than any other 204 projectile/case combo I’ve used. It is a great calling round out to 250 yards or so. The 35 Berger has a relatively low BC and in windy condition drifts quite a bit. It's a combination the shooter wants to practice with to understand the tendencies of the round. The 39 Blitzking, when run around 3700-3800 fps becomes a very flat shooting and hard hitting round from the 204 as well. I’ve taken coyotes with this setup from 150-330 yards and have had great luck with DRT kills and low fur damage. I believe the lower velocity from this bullet results in less tendencies to splash on entrance thus making it slightly more reliable than the 32 grain version.

Prior to using a suppressor most of my calling rifles sported a 24” barrel in a Douglas number 4 taper, or just slightly larger than a standard Remington sporter contour. With a lightweight stock and scope combo they typically weighed around 8lbs ready to hunt. The 20 BR was built on a standard Remington 700 short action, Douglas 9 twist barrel and sat in a High Tech Specialties lightweight stock. I used a 4.5-14 Leupold on top. It was a superb calling rifle. I built the gun around the 50 grain Berger bullet. Shortly before receiving the rifle the bullet was discontinued and thankfully I had bought enough of them to last the life of the barrel of this rifle. With a stout load of varget the 50 Berger would leave the muzzle a little over 3600 fps. Other reloaders have achieved more speed but that is where this one shot the best and it was as hot of load as I wanted in the gun. If I could do my part it would routinely shoot groups under a half inch at 100 yards. Sometimes much smaller. The 50 grain Berger was a superb bullet in the 204 Ruger going slightly slower and was even better at 3600 fps from the 20 BR. I killed close to 150 coyotes with this particular rifle/bullet combination and I don’t believe that I ever had a single one of them run more than a few feet and less than a half dozen that had some kind of fur damage. DRT kills from 50 to 300 yards were the norm and very little recoil made for, in my eyes, as close to the ultimate calling rifle there is except for one thing………..BR cases are very short and they don’t feed reliably all the time. People will argue this point and I believe it is possible to get them to feed from a standard 700 box but with the hassle involved I’d simply choose to use a different case design.

When a guy calls in a pair of coyotes and has to make 2 or more shots count you tend to get more rammy with the bolt than when you’re testing the rifle for feeding issues. I could almost always make the 20 BR case feed when I was at home working on it, however nearly every time I called a pair of coyotes in with it, I would have a problem. In fact I believe had the rifle worked on each double I called in with it the number of killed coyotes with the setup would be closer to 175. I’m stubborn I guess as I thought I could make it work. Like the 204 OAL problems discussed earlier this problem could be solved with an AICS magazine. At the time I owned this rifle however, there was no easy BR case conversion for the AICS mags like there is today. After 1 full season and part of another with the rifle I had it converted to a 20-250 to take advantage of both the 50 grain Berger’s great performance and the slick feeding of the 22-250 case.

The 20-250 is probably my favorite coyote hunting cartridge I’ve used to this point for calling situations and extended range shots. It took me a few barrels to understand the intricacies of the round but I’m quite pleased with it today. The 250 case would do everything the BR case would do and then some plus it would feed much better from a standard Remington box. 50 grain bullets are easily pushed to 3700 fps, even though they don’t need to go that fast to be effective. In fact I’d rather slow them down and shoot them slightly slower to preserve fur rather than push them hard just to gain a few extra yards of point blank range. A large overbore cartridge such as the 20-250 benefits more from the extra case capacity with heavy bullets than it does with light bullets. I believe the shooter reaches a point of diminishing returns with sub 50 grain bullets.

I settled on the 55 Berger Match/Varmint as my bullet of choice with the 20-250. My first 2 barrels were finished at 23” and the 55 would easily run at 3600 fps. Many “internet reloading experts' ' will say they can run this much faster, and it is completely possible however I don’t think it needs to be. Anything over 3600 fps with the 55 Berger is extremely impressive ballistically however even at 3600 fps I found the bullet to be hard on fur. It would usually exit and leave a larger than desirable hole. Often times it would look like a bomb went off on the exit side of the animal. When suppressors became part of my hunting gear I shortened the barrel of my 20-250 to 18” to make the rifle easier to handle when the suppressor was attached. With that length of barrel the 55 Berger will exit the muzzle at 3400 fps. This did two things for me. It gave me a ballistic twin to my 22-250 ai shooting the 75 Berger at 3250 fps and it gave me a setup that is much easier on fur, kills bang flop dead and isn’t running extremely high pressure. It also still shoots flat enough with enough delivered energy to 400 yards to kill a coyote DRT. I realize it might not make sense to many of you as to why I run this big of an overbore cartridge with a short barrel. Simply put….it's EXACTLY what I want and it does EXACTLY what I need it to do.