The 17 Mk IV is probably the most efficient 17 caliber around. There are many which use a smaller case and others that use a much larger case. They all work, of course, but the bigger the case the less efficient it becomes. Anyone who is interested in the various 17 calibers, would be wise to get Dick Saunders handbook. It has extensive data on many 17 caliber wildcats.

Shooting and loading the 17 is not as troublesome as it used to be. In the past, one of the worse things about this caliber was the hassle in keeping the barrel clean. Nowadays, with excellent match grade barrels available from a number of reputable makers, which do not seem to foul as bad as the normal ones available on factory rifles in the past. Plus the fact that NECO has come up with the idea of coating the bullets with molly, loading for the 17 is no longer any worse than loading for any other caliber. There is one fact that should be born in mind with this caliber though. VERY small charge increases can cause both velocity and pressure to creep up.

In my load development for this rifle, I used increments of 0.3 of a grain increases in the powders charge. This seems to work very well with this case size.

There is a number of other powders that are suitable for the 17 Mk IV, which I have not tried. My intention was to develop a decently accurate load at some reasonable velocity. My own goal was to find a load that would shoot in the 2s with a velocity of around 3600-fps. When this was achieved, I stopped load development.

The rifle had a HALL single shot action, # 719, JEWEL BR trigger, the barrel is stainless steel, 24 inches long, and fluted. I mounted a BAUSCH & LOMB Elite 4000 6-24X scope in JEWEL live center rings on KELBLY bases.

All loads were with the BERGER 30 grain HP bullet, molly coated. Primers were WINCHESTER SR and the cases formed from REMINGTON 221 FIREBALL brass. The bullets were seated to just touch the rifling – in this case 1.860". Hopefully, sometimes in the future, I will try some of the lighter bullets in this rifle. All shooting was done off the bench in an underground shooting tunnel.