Just got home from a big box gun store and they were kind enough to have a like new rem700 bdl in you guessed it 17 rem. I have been looking for one of these for alot of years and today was my big day. We had some coyote hunters that came to ne. each year and hunted on our acreage. One of them told me great tales of killing every huge and dangerous critter north of the equater and some south of it also with the fastest bullet in the world. So as a young boy would be I WAS HOOKED. Now I got one and can't find brass in any of the shops within a days drive. So I would be more than be willing to buy from some one on the forum before going to the web stores and ordering some. Also the reason I posted here on the reloading forum is that I would love to soak up some of your wisdom on reloading for the cartridge. I am going to buy hornady dies and hope that the small bullet holding collar that drops free of seater die will save the tips of my fingers. Any body else load for the lazer cartridge of my youth. Thanks in advance and God bless. 66er Sorry for the long post a little gitty tonight.

Midway has Remington brass in stock:

MidwayUSA - Remington Brass 17 Remington

Along with new dies, you will probably need a .17 powder funnel, and a 17 cleaning rod with attachments.

You will need to spend a little more time on new 17 brass, as it usually has a large burr around the ouside of the neck.

Keeping velocities down a little will help alleviate barrel fouling problems. Using the 30 grain Berger bullet works well for me in my 700, and gives the bullet a little more wind resistance.

The 17 Remington is a good little cartridge, it just takes a little more effort than usual to do well with.

I have had a .17 Remington for 20 years or more now. It is my favorite varmint round by far! I use IMR 4320 powder exclusively in it. That has long been one of the stand-by powders for this round. I get about 4050 FPS across my Oehler with it, using 25.2 grains under a 25 grain Berger bullet, ignnited by a Rem. 7 1/2 BR primer in Rem cases.
It will shoot groups consistantly under an inch with that load at 100 yards. Usually well under an inch.

It is wicked and deadly on groundhogs. The bullets never exit either. This is one round, and load where you will definately hear the bullet smack into the chuck!!

Crows literally disintegrate when struck center of mass.

Been there! It looks like a pillow fight.

I've also had very good luck with 4320. The 30 grain Berger over 22.5 grains of Varget for 3770 ft/s shoots well under 1 MOA in my gun.

The smartest thing I ever did when I started relaof=ding for .17 caliber centerfires was to call Huntingtons and special order a Competition seating die for .17 caliber. The advantage to the RCBS Comp seter over the Redding or anybody eles including high dollar Wilson dies is that the RCBS has a window in the side of the die you simply drop the bullet into. I rattles around and ends up seated WITHOUT getting the tip of your left index finger anywhere near the case mouth. Messing with standard seatinf dies is like repeatedly exposing your fingers to razor blades. One ow two holes punched in the end of you finger will justify the cost of the custom die in a heart beat.

I have actually been loading for .17 caliber before the .17 Remington was around. My first was a custom Sako from Obrian Rifles in Las Vegas in .17 Mach IV and then another Sako in .17-222. I have several others now oncluding a Shilen barreled Ruger #1 in .17 Remington.

I will say that all of the .17s are a very specialized cartridge and do a few things very very well. They also are limited in range and wind drift even with the heavier Bergers is an issue.

That being said, the ability to shoot a bullet a 4000+ fps with zero recoil is a kick in the ***.

The Hornady or Remngton 25 grainer at 4000 fps kills coyotes without exiting. It also blows jackrabbits all over the sagebrush.

I killed an antelope a few years back with a lung shot at 100 yards with a 30 grain Berger, but consider it more a stunt than anything else. But heck, if PO Ackley could kill all of the goats on Catalina Island.

The .17 remington would be my first, second or even third choice as a general varmint rifle. On the other hand as a niche rifle with a specialized purpose/use it's a lot of fun to shoot and reload.

Now that the 17 Fireball and the 17 Remongton exist as factory SAAMI cartridges and loaded ammo, there really is no need for any of the wildcats, other than to play with them.

I don't find them limited in range at all! I have taken chucks at 280 yards with no trouble what so ever. I have fired at targets at a little over 300 yards with a grouping of under three inches, and that was from simply leaning against my truck. It was blowing about 15 MPH that day, and I expected the bullets to really drift, since that is what I had always read, but it's BS. They didn't drift any more than my Bro-in-law's 22-250 did with 55 grain bullets. Both drifted about 4" at the range we were shooting. That was real world testing, not simply relying on data in a manual somewhere.

My point was that I back off on the velocity a little bit to keep jacket fouling down. The biggest issue with my 17 Remington is bore fouling. Going to a heavier bullet at lower velocity results in less wind drift than a light bullet at lower velocity. My experience is only in the M700 I've had for the past 15 or so years. Accuracy starts to fall off after I drive 15 or 20 rounds down range at 4100 ft/s, backing off to 3800 ft/s allows me to shoot 20 - 30 rounds before having to clean my bore - not an issue at the range, but a PITA afield.

Nygma-
My post was in response to Wickahoney's above.

I haven't had any fouling trouble though, now that you mention it. I had always read that, that was the case, but not as far as I can tell. I can fire 50 rounds, without cleaning, and the last group will be as tight as the frist.

The only trouble I ever had, was back when I first bought it back around 1989 (Rem 700 BDL), I noticed that my loads could be upped substantially from published max loads, and I still was only getting around 3900 with the best of them. I took a .177" pellet and drove it through the bore (.172"), chamber to muzzle, and noticed after the first 10" of bore, the pellet was much easier to push on through. Upon pushing it back through, it hung up about 14" down the tube, or in roughly the same place. (Since it is a 24" barrel) I tried this several times with the exact same results. I called Rem., and they told me to ship them the rifle, which I did right away. They called about a week later and asked what I was experiencing, and why I thought I had a problem. I told them about my experiment, crude though it may have been, and they said they would check things out. A few days later they called and said they had air gauged the bore, and found that it was oversized for most of it's length, right where I said it was. They said they would install a new barrel, and I asked if I could get it without any sights. They said sure if you don't want them, and I said heck yea, I'll never use them, and don't like the way they look on it anyway. (I had removed my sights on the original barrel)

I got it back, and no more trouble with velocity using established max loads.

My inventory list shows that I have 250 new pieces of Rem 17cal brass in my collection. If you still need some, I would sell it for .40 cents each delivered to you in NE.

I had a 14" tc contener barrel at one time for it and never loaded anything. Supposed to be a real laser and nasty on small game.

Let me know

The 4000 fps is in a #1 with a 26" match grade Shilen tube. Doug must have got a pretty good bore on it because with the load listed at 4000 in the Hornady book they were going across the chronograph at a little over 4300 fps. I backed off 2.7 grains and got then down to an even 4000 fps with sub MOA.

The funny thing about shooting the various .17 caliber stuff is the bullets are so small that when yoou look at a group they look just terrible. Then you mike them and the are .673 or some other number well below 1". They just don't touch each other.

When I first started with the various .17 caliber cartridges years ago I used to worry a lot about bore fouling. Heck it might even happen. I just don't worry about it and I don't shoot my .17s any different than anything else including the .204 and a truck load of various .224 centerfires.

I think part of the "problem" with the .17 Remington was an idea very very similar to the original jot rod 220 Swift. Yes a guy could shoot the barrel out of one especially if he nevr let it cool down and shot it with a fouled barrel.

Like the 220 swift I think a lot of the BAD press on the .17 Remington came from the same place, shooting it very hot and fouling the bore.

One has to remember that the Swift originated in an era when even the 22-250 (Varminter) was a wildcat and the only factory varmint nhot rob was a Swift and guys usually owned exactly ONE varmint rifle. So it got over shot.

Things have changed dramatically over the years. There are pleanty of good varmint calibers. Serious varmint shooters certainly own more than one rifle chambered in varmint calibers.

Because you get to shoot them a lot more than big game rifles I tend to own a bunch of varmint rifles. At last count I think it was something like 35 or 40 rifles in 24 different cartridges. Of that 8 or 9 are chambered in various .17 calibers, 17 Hornet AI, .17 Mach IV, .17 Fireball, 17-222, .17-223, .17 Remington and even a .17 22-250 AI.

Yes you can hit stuff out at 300 with various .17s. Sorry but where I come from that is NOT considered long range varminting. Long range starts at 500 and you'll get laughed at if you miss badly at 750 yards.

The .17 remington and even the other bigger .17s just shed velocity too fast to be much use beyond 300 - 350 yards.

As an example. If I use the rifle silohuette targets at home I can hit the chicken off the 100 meter rail ever time. In fact the .17 Remington actually knocks a hole right through the chicken. Looking at the hole it looks like it vaporizes the steel and it blows back as a liquid towars the shooter. It looks just like the rain drops that form the "crowm" when filmed ayt very high speed. !00 yards and you have a very dead coyote or any other varmint.

If you shoot the javalina off the 200 meter rail it'll hit it every time. However unless you hit it right up on the hump of the back it usually doesn't knock the javalina of the rail. It does peck a hole about 1/2 deep in the steel.

If you shoot the full sized turkey off the 400 yard rail it will knock it off the rail, IF you hit it with 1/2" of the very top of the head. Then the turkey turns ever so slowly and then slowly falls off the rail. You can see the hit in the black paint but there is no visible indentation in the steeel.

I have NEVER knocked the 62 pound ram off the 500 meter rail. It doesn't matter where you hit it. It doesn't even matter about bullet weight. I've shot 35s at the ram. The light bullet has simply shed so much velocity within 500 yards that the energy figures are down to nearly nothing. It just isn't something I could/would shoot at a live animal. Ethically I just think that at those ranges it isn't enough.

My #1B in .17 Remington is actually one of the very few rifles I anticipate I will have to re-barrel in my life time. It's headed towrds 30 years old. The actual round coiunt is just under 5000. The throat is aligatored and it doen't shoot as well as it used to. On the other hand it still shoots sub MOA, pushes 25s up to 4000 fps and is fun to shoot. If I shoot 100 in a day then that's what I shoot. I clean it when I get home.

Of course if and when it heats up I park it and switch to something else.

In the early yrs, some of the 17 barrels were quite rough, causing fouling, Remington was aware of this, and in later yrs the bores were polished much better, i bought a new BDL in 17 a few yrs ago, the bore is really smooth, it shoots excellant, and i dont worry about fouling, like in the old days, its one of my favorite rifles, George.

__________________
George Tucker

Thanks for all of the responses. I will give the used brass alittle thaught for 40 cents per. I have found some new remington brass via the internet for around 39 per up to 45 per before shipping. Thank you for offering to sell all the same. Great conversation going on on this thread reading it at 11:00pm is like being in a local shop listening at 10:00 am on a sat. Thanks again for all the help. 66er