This is my first post !, im glad i found this sight. There seems to be alot of great people and good info. Anyway, I have always been an avid groundhog hunter and Have mostly used guns in .222, 223, 257 roberts and 17 hmr, It was time to try a new gun and i decided on a 204. I bought a howa heavy barreled action, Bell and carlsons medalist stock and timney trigger and got er put together. It was last fall when i got the gun put together, I sighted it in with factory loads and took it hunting, I killed one groundhog and decided to quit groundhog hunting for the year because it was almost bow season. I saved up enough money over the winter to get a leupold vx3 8.5x25 with varmint hunters reticle. I loaded up some test loads with h322 and Reloader 15 with the 32 grain v-max with cci br4 primers and hornady brass. Every load i tested with reloader 15 went an inch and under for 5 shots at 100 yards, but 29.1 grains of Reloader 15 shoots awesome, H322 didnt do as good As i thought it would. My gun also shoots great with the factory hornady 32 loads. I havnt yet played with bullet seating depth, or weight seperating bullets and brass, I set my bullet seating die to a factory load. I am 100% satisfied with my groups, but i might also try some sierra bullets since alot of guys get better accuracy with them. any way I'll stop rambling on, here are some pics.
Here is the howa right after i got it with its first and only kill, I had a mueller eraticator on it.

After mounting the vx 3

Best 5 shot group out of 4 groups shot with hornady factory 32 grain loads.

Group i shot using 29.1 grains of RL 15 and hornady 32s, 28.8 to 29.1 all made about the same size groups with a slight edge to 29.1
