A new hand loaders report

[LTH]

Last year I did a load work up for my hunting rifle ,a 3006 vanguard s2.
In October at 70° I sat down with imr4350 starting at 53 - 57 gr using Nosler brass, CCI RL and 165 gr BTs.
I had several nodes , so I decided to go with a 56 gr charge.
When the temps got down in th 40s the groups opened up to 1" , so I went hunting and took 2 deer with it.
After the season was over I did some more testing at 30 * and the groups opened up to 3", so I tried new charge weights , seating depths and fed 210s and it was still 3" groups at 100 yards .

I found a new load at 30* of w760 (52.5 gr ) , Sierra 180 gr pro hunter, Nosler brass and cci250 shooting in the .400s ( 5 shots groups ).

I just wanted to share my experience with you guys and say thanks for answering questions I had.
This was a very interesting experience ,
while frustrating and fun at the same time .

LTH.

 

[Milt1]

Say what?

 

[AnselHazen]

He saw IMR4350 lose it's accuracy when the temps went down. Switched to W760 and a Sierra 180gr bullet and shot less than 1/2 inch groups with the 52.5gr load.

 

[WelshShooter]

Looks like you've just found out that certain powders are temperature sensitive. Varget has been renowned for extreme temperature range performance so that might be worth looking into. Works great in a lot of calibres and can't see it not working in .30'06.

 

[LTH]

Thanks, Varget is hardly on the shelf.
Isn't ball powder the lesser choice ?
But it did prove to work.

Or maybe it's the mag primer.

 

[WelshShooter]

Mag primers definitely help "heat" things up. I was under the impression stick powder was more resilient to different temperatures compared to ball powders but I'd be happy if some could confirm this for me.

 

[LTH]

Me too WelshShooter

Sent from my HUAWEI Y536A1 using Tapatalk

 

[Arkansas Paul]

Isn't ball powder the lesser choice ?

I wouldn't call it a lesser choice. They're popular and still in production for a reason.

H414 which is the same powder as W760 just with a different label, is the first powder I ever used. I worked up a very accurate load with 165 grain Hornady SSTs with it. I have since used several other powders, but if all I could find was H414/W760 I would be jsut fine with .30-06 and .308.