A BOLT-ACTION FRANCHI 224 VALKYRIE

Testing New Loads

- Patrick Meitin

Bullets used to test the .224 Valkyrie included, left to right; (1) Nosler 60-grain Ballistic Tip Varmint, (2) Speer 70-grain Varmint Softpoint, (3) Sierra 77-grain Tipped MatchKing, (4) Nosler 85-grain RDF, (5) Hornady 88-grain ELD Match and (6) Berger 90-grain VLD Target.

Federal Premium brought the .224 Valkyrie into the world by necking the 6.8 Remington SPC down to accept .224-caliber bullets and adding a 30-degree shoulder angle, which seems to have become a new-cartridge standard. Federal just happens to have 6.8 SPC ammunition contracts running into the billions of rounds with military organizations in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and maybe others, so I'm guessing some company ballistician looked at all that parent brass and thought, "You know, necking that down to 22-caliber would be interesting." Those massive military contracts also keep the price of Valkyrie brass and ammunition reasonable – or at least more reasonable than other .224-caliber favorites like the .22-250 Remington and .220 Swift.

The rifle was a Franchi Momentum Elite Varmint with heavy fluted barrel with a 1:7 twist and a detachable magazine.