What kind of groups with what kind of ammo do you get?
From a sandbag rest, all three will put 10 shots into one ragged hole at 50 ft, which is the distance for 95% of the shooting I do with them.
I'm currently using CCI Standard Velocity in the GSP .22. I know that some folks don't feel that ammo matters at 50 ft, and I can only speak for me and my gun, but I disagree. I've carefully tested about a dozen different brands of target ammo and I see clear differences. My Walther likes all of the CCIs, with Pistol Match clearly better than either SV or Green Tag, which shoot essentially the same. Although PM is
consistently better, it's not
much better and until (and unless) my scores improve significantly I can't really make use of the additional precision. Some guys on my pistol team really like Wolf or Aquila, but they simply don't shoot in the Walther. I didn't see much of a difference between CCI PM and the much more expensive Eley Tenex, which was the ammo the factory proofed the gun with:
Nice group, huh? And that one's at 25 yards - and I assume from a machine rest. Earl claims that Walther has someone shoot those groups offhand, but that seems impossible to me. I think he was looking to see if I believed what he was saying, at which point he would have tried to sell me some land in Florida. Meanwhile, I was looking to see if
he believed what he was saying, at which point I would have tried to sell him a bridge in Brooklyn. Why would any factory introduce another variable into the equation if they were truly interested in how inherently accurate their gun was?
I've done a fair bit of load development with the GSP .32, and am currently using 98 gr. Lapua HBWC over 1.8 gr of W231 in Lapua cases. I say "currently" because I've lately tried replacing the very expensive Lapuas with much, much cheaper Magnus 98 gr BBWC, and I can't see a difference, so I'll be switching over to those when I need to reload next. I suspect there's a better load out there (there's
always a better load out there, right?) but right now the gun shoots better than I can, so until I find myself with a lot of spare time on my hands, that's it for now. Here's what a typical 50-ft 5-shot group off the bags looks like:
I shoot the Colt a lot less than the others and I'm less happy with my current load, which is a 185 gr SWC over 5.0 gr of Bullseye. I don't bother sorting cases by headstamp - if there's a difference, I can't see it. That's a pretty stiff target load, which is why I'm not as pleased with it, but when I drop the charge down the groups open right up. I've upped the standard Gold Cup spring to 16 lbs and use a shock bushing to cut down on the wear and tear. Off the bags, I can pretty much cut 10-shot cloverleafs (admittedly somewhat larger ones than I'd like) consistently, with an occasional flyer. I'm still using the factory barrel and bushing in the gun, but have plans to change that and have some other work done at the same time, so I've figured it's not worth the time to find a better load right now.
