Barrel contour question
Full disclosure: I am very new to long range. I have read the pinned posts and damn near all the wiki.
I mostly shoot at a 200 yard range with my .22LR and more recently, my .233 AR. I have access to a 600-800 yard range, but will most likely be sticking with .223 due to the availability and price of ammo, as well as the fact that I’m in New England without a whole lot of affordable options for distance shooting.
I would love to get a Tikka Super Varmint, but $1700 is pretty much my high end of budget for rifle, scope, bipod combined. This brings me to my big question…
I will most likely go with a Howa 1500/mini action chambered in .223 Rem, but a lot of the bull barrels that I see are not threaded (I would like to have the option of a suppressor or brake). The heavy barrels also seem to be 20”. I don’t know enough about this yet to know if that is optimal, or short. My AR has a 16” barrel and I still hit my 3” target at 200 yards with a Vortex 5x prism scope, but the groups open up really fast.
Are the “standard” barrels on the Howa heavy enough if I’m only shooting 5 shots before cooldown? I’ve read that heavier is better, but I don’t know if that means “just don’t use pencil barrels or super light hunting barrels”.
TLDR: Is it okay to get a standard “not heavy” barrel 22” Howa 1500 in .223 to shoot 200-700 yards, or is a heavy barrel necessary? Also, is a suppressor/brake for .223 such an improvement that I should overlook non threaded heavy barrel options?
Thank you for reading all this.