TackDriver284
Handloader
- Feb 13, 2016
- 2,311
- 1,558
This is my 4th range session trying out the 180 Ballistic Tips in the 300 Win Mag and I had some difficulties making them shoot tight. The Ballistic Tips has always been my favorite hunting bullet. The last two sessions hasn't been so good with some grouping together and one big flyer. The first range session was 3 round development from 74 grains to 75.8 grains of RL-22 and 74.4 grains was a decent half inch group at 200 yards and .010" off the lands. The 2nd and 3rd session I had tested a few rounds of the same 74.4 grain load I picked and did not do well with flyers mixed in. So on the way home I thought about it, and remembered that I annealed every other firing on this batch, and assumed maybe I should anneal each firing instead and remove the sizing button and run a mandrel instead. This batch of Norma brass is on its 7th firing. So I deprimed , annealed at 700 degrees, resized with a Redding full sized die with the bushing without the button in it. After sizing, I cleaned up the pockets and inside necks and ran them through a .002" carbide mandrel and loaded them all up with the same load. Yesterday afternoon the crosswind was blowing moderately around 12 mph. Set up the rifle on a bull bag and the first three rounds at 300 yards produced this 3 shot group (3,125 fps and 9 ES) that I could not be happier with. I'll be annealing on each firing instead of every other firing. I assume neck tension may change after one firing since I recently felt some uneven seating pressures ( 2nd firing after annealing ) before annealing. Other cause may be the running the button tightly through the necks causing it to get unaligned, but either way I am happy. Ballistic Tips never failed me. 
