35 Whelen load info

[wisconsinteacher]

If all goes well, I will be able to load for my new to me 35 Whelen in the next few weeks. I have IMR 4064 and Varget on hand along with Hornady brass, Win LR primers, and 250 Hot-Cor bullets. The rifle I am getting will have an 18.5" barrel. Where would you start with load development?

 

[truck driver]

I take it the rifle is a 7600 pump? I would start with the Hodgdon recommended load of 50grs. and work my way up to the max of 55grs.

 

[wisconsinteacher]

It is a 7600.

 

[Thebear_78]

54.0gr of varget behind a 250gr speer gave me right at 2410fps out of my Rem 750 that also had an 18” barrel. I’m betting it will do the same or better for you. I found this load to work very well, the speer hot core bullets hold together well at these velocities. The rem 750 shot well but there was no quiet way to load the rifle, it required you to drop the bolt with some force to seat it. Since I never carry with a round in the chamber it made it difficult. I sent it down the road because of that. Those rem auto and pump rifles handle like an 870, nothing points as well for me.



This is the only bullet recovered from a water logged 18” piece of drift wood. I had a target sitting up alongside the log to text zero on a hunt. I found the bullet laying on the sand on the other side of the log about 5” behind the log. The bullet weighted 237gr and mushroomed well.

 

[Thebear_78]

I meant to mention that the magazines are the usually failure point. I woudl make shure to pick up a couple extra magazines. 99% of the time if they aren’t function correctly it is the magazine at fault.