selmerfan
09-12-2011, 08:31 PM
Well, I finally had a morning to spend at the range with four rifles and 100 yds with me all by my lonesome (private setup). I was shooting my .308 FN PBR XP with cast boolits, M77 .260 Rem. with jacketed and TC Encore MGM 17" pistol barrel in .260 Rem with jacketed and my Marlin 881 .22 LR for fun 100 yd. plinking at 8" steel disks.
It was nice to be able to rotate 3 centerfires for shooting groups on load development - shoot one group, grab a different gun, shoot another group, grab a different gun, shoot another group and the first one is cooled off! I have great hunting loads with both .260s now, the handgun gets used for MN deer in the shotgun zone in about 6 weeks.
Here's the question:
I have two loads in the .308 Win with cast boolits that I'd like to hunt mule deer with this fall in South Dakota, 200 yd self-imposed max range with cast. (I've killed deer with this gun in the area I'll be hunting at over 500 yds with jacketed loads, it's a great shooter!)
Both loads shot .75" 5 shot groups at 100 yds, but I'm not sure which is faster because I have trophy chrono mounted on the wall... [smilie=b:
Load one is a 311290 HP boolit from Ben with 33 gr. of Varget behind it and load two is the same boolit with 27 gr. of Reloder 7 behind it. They shoot to the same POA/POI. I'm looking for something in the 1800-2000 fps range - will these loads fill the bill? Next step is stretching them to 200 yds and seeing how bad the drop is on both of them. Thanks for looking, I had a GREAT time today!!!
Oh - and the kicker is that I just got done cleaning rifles. I ran 60 rounds of cast through the .308 Win this morning - three patches of GM Top Engine Cleaner had it whistle clean, zero leading. I'm using a 50/50 concoction of Saeco Green and Bullshop's Speed Green. I'm glad I have a lot of it, it's working great! The .260s cleaned up in just as fast a time, I attribute a good portion of the ease to having the barrels treated with Ultra Bore Coat. It makes cleaning soooo much easier - even unnecessary to a degree until accuracy degrades, but I'm sure someone else is OCD like me...
It was nice to be able to rotate 3 centerfires for shooting groups on load development - shoot one group, grab a different gun, shoot another group, grab a different gun, shoot another group and the first one is cooled off! I have great hunting loads with both .260s now, the handgun gets used for MN deer in the shotgun zone in about 6 weeks.
Here's the question:
I have two loads in the .308 Win with cast boolits that I'd like to hunt mule deer with this fall in South Dakota, 200 yd self-imposed max range with cast. (I've killed deer with this gun in the area I'll be hunting at over 500 yds with jacketed loads, it's a great shooter!)
Both loads shot .75" 5 shot groups at 100 yds, but I'm not sure which is faster because I have trophy chrono mounted on the wall... [smilie=b:
Load one is a 311290 HP boolit from Ben with 33 gr. of Varget behind it and load two is the same boolit with 27 gr. of Reloder 7 behind it. They shoot to the same POA/POI. I'm looking for something in the 1800-2000 fps range - will these loads fill the bill? Next step is stretching them to 200 yds and seeing how bad the drop is on both of them. Thanks for looking, I had a GREAT time today!!!
Oh - and the kicker is that I just got done cleaning rifles. I ran 60 rounds of cast through the .308 Win this morning - three patches of GM Top Engine Cleaner had it whistle clean, zero leading. I'm using a 50/50 concoction of Saeco Green and Bullshop's Speed Green. I'm glad I have a lot of it, it's working great! The .260s cleaned up in just as fast a time, I attribute a good portion of the ease to having the barrels treated with Ultra Bore Coat. It makes cleaning soooo much easier - even unnecessary to a degree until accuracy degrades, but I'm sure someone else is OCD like me...