Made it out to the range today for some much needed therapy! I had a couple of loads to test out in my custom built 260. I have a hard time not just feeding it what it loves but I'm a tinkerer and have to at least experiment. My go to load is using 140 Berger Hybrids over 42gr of IMR 4451. It'll stack em into a little bitty ragged hole if I can manage to do my part. That load chrono's at 2755fps, ES 23.24, Sd 7.21.
First up was the 129 ABLR. I've tried a few different loads with this bullet prior with nothing spectacular to report. Today I tried them over 45gr of H4350, cci 200 and seated 0.1" off the lands. I shot a 10 shot group. The group isn't awe inspiring but I'm pretty confident that the flyers high and low are due to my error rather than the load. The 10 shot string chronographed at 2902fps, ES 23.62, Sd 7.21. I'm pretty happy with that one. I think it'll make a fine hunting load.
Lastly I played around with my 338 Lapua a bit. I'm thinking I might use it to shoot an elk this year as I've never shot an animal with it before. I finally found some RL-33 at my local shop and bought a jug to test out. I loaded up 97.5gr of it under a 300gr AccuBond and seated it at 3.681". I didn't produce a spectacular group with it as it was about an 1" or so but I was impressed with the velocity with this powder. It went for a 10 shot average of 2734fps, ES 46.99, Sd 15.49. Not too shabby. I think I'll try tweaking the seating depth a little and see if I can tighten it up a bit but it should be good enough to take an elk with.
All in all it was a good afternoon at the range. The only thing I didn't accomplish was shooting at longer ranges than 100 due to there being a pile of other people there and the way our range is set up you can't shoot long if anyone else is using the 100 yard line. Oh well, guess I'll just have to go back and shoot again!
First up was the 129 ABLR. I've tried a few different loads with this bullet prior with nothing spectacular to report. Today I tried them over 45gr of H4350, cci 200 and seated 0.1" off the lands. I shot a 10 shot group. The group isn't awe inspiring but I'm pretty confident that the flyers high and low are due to my error rather than the load. The 10 shot string chronographed at 2902fps, ES 23.62, Sd 7.21. I'm pretty happy with that one. I think it'll make a fine hunting load.
Lastly I played around with my 338 Lapua a bit. I'm thinking I might use it to shoot an elk this year as I've never shot an animal with it before. I finally found some RL-33 at my local shop and bought a jug to test out. I loaded up 97.5gr of it under a 300gr AccuBond and seated it at 3.681". I didn't produce a spectacular group with it as it was about an 1" or so but I was impressed with the velocity with this powder. It went for a 10 shot average of 2734fps, ES 46.99, Sd 15.49. Not too shabby. I think I'll try tweaking the seating depth a little and see if I can tighten it up a bit but it should be good enough to take an elk with.
All in all it was a good afternoon at the range. The only thing I didn't accomplish was shooting at longer ranges than 100 due to there being a pile of other people there and the way our range is set up you can't shoot long if anyone else is using the 100 yard line. Oh well, guess I'll just have to go back and shoot again!
