Big thanks to all here for all the excellent reports here for a newbie to reflect on. Hoot, you're my hero! Well, long story short, I have had a fairly large military weapon collection (as in 300+) over the years that I am beginning to divest myself of as time marches on. I turned 70 last summer and found it an odd time for ARitis to strike. All those historic pieces and I had never had much interest in AR's, or most modern newer (post 1950) weapons. I guess I thought I might as well do a easy build just to say I did, and now I have a 5.56, 224 Valk, 6.5 Creedmoor AR 10, and the latest, the Bushy in the fold. Sigh...it never ends. I digress.
I really wanted to keep cost down and yet have a decent build so I went with an Anderson lower, Aero parts kit and a Bear Creek 18" upper after reading some surprisingly good reviews on them here. I added a Schuler brake and now its off to load development. Since this will be a dual deer/hog rifle I eschewed the 225XTP despite the glowing reports by hoot, due to concerns on penetration and toughness if a hog were hit in the girdle rather than a more desirable location. I read a lot here, and online in general, and decided to give the 300 grain Speer SP (not the deepcurl) after some glowing testimony on a few MZ pages. I ordered some 300 MP to try from 37-41(?) grains, or till pressure is observed. I'd like to be at 2000+fps to make my max 250 yard shot reasonable. I had some 250 FTX's on hand, and ordered a few$$ 275 Barnes XPB's to try over Lil Gun, also on order. 38-40 grains or so I suppose.
Wish me luck, and comments/suggestions welcome.