I've been messing around with 2 of my .30-30s trying to find their respective Loads. A couple weeks ago I found the reduced velocity Lee Soupcan load for my 24F: CCI 200's, Winchester brass, 2 tumble coats of PC and 9 grains of Unique for 1563fps. Grouping right around an inch at 50 yards for 5 shots. Seemed like a perfect varmint/small game load. I then went to make up some more loads for some 100 yard practice thinking if the accuracy held, it would a good woods coyote/bobcat calling load with this on top and 3" Lead BB's in the smoothbore barrel. Anyhow, I casted up some more soupcans and when I went to check them realized my "last" box of .30 caliber gas checks was an empty, leaving me with 28 checks and none in stock at the stores around home. After thinking about ordering some, I decided to give my "purchased years ago but never used" .30 PatMarlin's Checkmaker a try. I hadn't used it because I had several thousand Hornady's on the shelf when I bought it. I dusted off the box, and after reading the instructions and after a couple false starts, I made 100 checks out of .014" Amerimax flashing. I loaded 25 loads of each with Hornady checks, Checkmakers installed nose first with a .311 Lee push through, and Checkmakers installed base first.
I fired 3 - 5 shot groups at 50 yards and 2 - 5 shot groups at 100 yards with each load. The base-first installed Checkmaker Checks scored best with 2 - 1" groups and 1- 1 1/8" group at 50 yards, and 2 - 1 1/4" groups at 100. Except for one 50 yard group that was just over 2" (probably a flaw in the nut behind the trigger), the nose first Checkmaker checks took second: 2- 1" groups at 50 yards and and 2 - 2" groups at 100. The Hornady Checks ran just over 1" at 50 yards and 2 1/4" at 100. One thing I'll say for the Hornady checks is the groups were very consistent. Looking at the Hornady groups for the different ranges, it would be hard without measuring to determine which one was better than the other.
Needless to say I'll be trying my Checkmaker checks on my other .30 cast boolit loads.- installed base first! And I'll be test firing another 50 soupcans with base-first aluminum checks. If they keep shooting the way they did during this little test, I'll be volume loading them for practice and small game hunting. There wasn't a ton of difference, but I'll take what I can get- squirrel heads and coyote hearts are kinda small.....
Be safe out there!
John