Hydra-Cons plus more...............

[Richard]

Last week there was a tread to the effect of what other bullets Parker has and do they work? A few years ago I was in contact with Tom Parker and shooting some groups for him. He sent me Ballistic Extremes and Match hunters along with 250, 275 and 300 gr. Hydra-Cons. The Hydra-Con basically looks like a Barnes Original or spitzer type lead nose bullet…….BC can’t be very good but better than the “ XTP” type. At the time they did not do very good for me so I put the remainder on the side. In that thread, Edge indicated that they might improve with the new Brux barrel so I gave them a try this week with the very few I had left (3-300, 4-275 and 7-250) With so few, it was not much of a test but did tell me something about the ones I shot with the charge I put behind them.
To foul my J-B cleaned barrel I scrounged up four 250 gr. FTX’s that I had previously machined off the base to expose the lead core leaving the bullet at 233 gr. These had shot pretty decent in the old PN smooth sized. I went ahead and put a 5/60 ---Clays/H-4198 duplex under them and got a very strange result. (Now mind you, the weather is hot, humid, clear and not a whisper of wind blowing) Vel. On all four was 2809 with a 74 fps ES which is terrible. But still………. The four shots formed a just about perfect horizontal line measuring 2…4”! Beats the heck out of me?

OK, to the 300 gr. Hydra-Con, knurled and FF sized with a veggie wad and the 8-58 Clays/H-4198 duplex. Velocity was 2643 (which is around the average for 300 gr. bullets and this load) and the ES was 43 fps………so/so? The group changed for horizontal more to vertical at 1…6” Not what is acceptable at 100 yards from this gun.

The next target will combine both the 275 and 250 gr. Hydra-Cons (didn’t want to waste another bullseye since the first two shots with the 275’s were so poor) Due to the extreme spread in distance I decided to shoot the 250’s with a straight charge of 60 gr. H-4198. I added elevation via going to my first BDC and reducing scope power—bad move—put first shot off the paper in my wood frame.
So for me, with these three bullets at the powder charges I used, they were unacceptable. Maybe with a much reduced load (or BP sub) they would work acceptable for shorter range hunting.
The above shooting was all done at 100 yards.
The last five groups are all at 300 yards and use the 8/58 Clays/H-4198 duplex with a .060” veggie wad. All the bullets are of the 251/.252 variety that have been knurled to around .255” and then run thru a FF die.

Group #5 is with the 300 gr. Parker BE using the scope setting that worked for the 290 TEZ last week which was Power set at 17X along with the second BDC below the X-hair. One flyer out of five opened up a 3” four shot group to 4”. Vel. At 2655 with a 26 fps ES
(various scope settings were made down to the last group and testing done on an adjacent steel target-in the head area)

In #6 I am using a Sierra 300 gr. Flat Nose bullet. Here I changed the power setting down to 16X. The POA is actually at the target above and it experienced a 6” drop in POI. This load should be shot at 18X using the third BDC. Even with a less than quality long range bullet it managed to keep five shots inside 4.5” and four in 3.4”. With the right scope setting it is a viable 300 yard deer load. It sure made that steel target go bonkers!
Minor scope adjustments were made with targets 7 and 8 before the eight shot group on target #9. This produced a five (in a row) 1.849” group and even all eight grouped at 3.090”. I took the average velocities from 7, 8 and 9 and came up with a combined average of (14 shots) 2660 fps with a total ES of 35 fps

If I can get my hands on some 250 TEZ by next week, I will be testing them also. So far, I am not seeing the Parker bullets as being any more accurate than the Barnes. That however could change with different loads after I get back from Kentucky. I will be doing a lot of brain picking with the “Who’s Who of Muzzle Loading!”
Richard

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