So, since everybody was so great, let me give y'all a little more background about how/why I suddenly showed up on your reloading board. I grew up on a farm in the midlands of SC and grew up deer/duck/dove hunting. The only reloading we ever did was during long summer nights my dad would pull out the old MEC Progressive (non-auto) and we'd spend hours reloading AA 20ga hulls to take to the dove field the following Fall. It was sort of like a right of passage when Dad would let my older brother and I do our first box by ourselves and then, later, let us experiment (by the book, of course) with heavier charges or different size shot. But anytime one of us asked about reloading bullets for the family .243 Winchester, my dad would say "No way! Too complicated!" and that was that. After graduating high school I joined the Army and spent the next 11 years all over the world, mostly in the middle east or central america. On those rare occasions when I happened to be home on Leave during deer season, I'd borrow the .243 and head out to the woods. After 11 years in the Army, I got out and joined the US Coast Guard for 6 years. My first two years were down in Key West, FL...can't hunt Key Deer and a 15 hour drive was a little much just to go deer hunting. Then I spent a year back in the middle east and then I spent 3 years in south Georgia...barely 4 hours from home and not only that, but every other weekend I had a long weekend and plenty of time to go hunting (gas was still cheap). One day, I happened upon an inexpensive Winchester '94 AE that I liked and I picked it up new for next to nothing. That was in the Fall of 2005. I bought a box of Winchester Grizzly Silvertips at the local sporting goods store and several days later took off for the deer stand. Now, all those years of shooting Dad's .243 (Winchester Model 88--Midas grade stock, B&L 3-12X40 scope), I was used to excellent shot-placement inside 150 yards and satisfactory placement inside 200 to 250 (and not bad results at 300 yards on the range), but I was used to deer taking a few steps, sometimes a few hops and a leap or two, before finally collapsing. So imagine my surprise the first time I lined up those iron sights on that .30-30 at 100 yards on a 170 pound 8 point...and rolled him! One shot, one kill. Dead on arrival. DAMN! I was hooked!! Later that season I shot a 110 pound doe (on a doe-day) at 90 yards and cut her a flip...no hops, no leaps, no wondering if I'd have to test my tracking skills...just, blam! The following year, I shot two deer with the exact same results: one shot, one kill. The following year I had limited hunting opportunities because of job conflict and didn't shoot any. The year after that I got one. Then I had an opportunity to hunt somewhere with some long-distance shooting and I borrowed Dad's trusty .243 for another season. I moved again and in the moving process I left my .30-30 with a relative who, not knowing any better, moved all of my possessions to an outdoor storage barn...with a leak. My .30-30 went through a year and a half of wet/dry/wet/dry/wet/dry....lots of surface rust and the wood foreend got soft in one area. I rescued it as soon as I realized what had happened to it, but it sat in my gun rack for another year before I tackled the process of learning how to tear it all the way down, cleaning with a red-pad, 0000 steel wool, RemOil, and Hoppes #9. I got all the rust off but my rifle has some permanent scarring that will never go away. 90% of the bluing is gone and every time I touch it I have to coat it down before it goes back in the gun rack. And I love it more than ever. I've got 5 deer with it this year and all of them were right at the 100 yard mark (with one exception...a spike at 40 yards from a ground blind). Needless to say, that original box of 20 rounds of Grizzly Silvertips is just about gone and that's what led me to start looking for an alternative. I picked up a box of Federal 150gr flat tips and promptly missed the first 3 shots I took with them. That box went back on the shelf in the gun cabinet...I'll pull the bullets and dump the powder and start over. Which leads me to my next point: my cousin recently picked up a nice Dillon Precision progressive reloader from an estate sale that came with 10 or 12 dies/plates. He's offered to teach me to reload my own rounds if I'll buy the die/plate for .30-30. Is there any way to attempt to exactly-recreate that 170gr load that I love so much? Will that reloading data be in one of the reloading books or will I be able to find it on one of Winchester's websites?
Thanks again for all of the great replies.
