Gary Reeder
I also am a 22-250 Improved freak and have taken
Friday, December 06, 2024, 13:46

critters the size of Arizona's Couse Deer with it. When we did the ballistics on it (I think Sean was in on this) when we cut the barrel down from 24" to 15" for an XP-100 we lost no more than 32 FPS per inch which amounted to less than 350 fps. It still beat the standard 22-250 in every instance.
My original custom XP-100 was chambered in 224 Weatherby and with a 15" barrel in the XP we only lost less than 32 FPS per inch over the factory listed speed. A gun shop in Nashville was selling off all their Weatherby ammo and they had around 30 boxes of 224 Weatherby priced somewhere around $4 a box. I bought all of it and used it groundhog hunting in Tennessee for 2 or 3 years before I ran out and started loading my own. I had every "expert" known to man telling me I would lose 1000 to 1500 fps using the factory ammo in a short 15" barrel. They were totally full of crap as the loss amounted to less than 32 fps per inch over the quoted factory velocities. They also said I would burn up the barrel in less than 500 rounds. That was also total BS as when we moved here we had no groundhogs and only prairie dogs as varmints so I sold my original XP in 224 Weatherby to a friend who wanted it. Before he bought it I did a long test using several bullet weights and after more than 4000 rounds the gun was almost as accurate as it was when I built it. The groups with it when I built it were dime size and after almost 8 years of shooting the hot Weatherby loads the groups were nickel size so as far as I was concerned that was not from a burned out barrel. It was as accurate as it was back in 1978 when I built it.
I am in the process of building a new XP-100 in 22-250 Improved and plan on duplicating my original XP-100.